Apple has unveiled the new seventh-gen iPad

https://bgr.com/2019/09/10/ipad-2019-release-date-price-and-specs-10-2-inch-tablet-official/

by artsandsci • 7 years ago

116 161 7 years ago

I have the iPad Air 2, released in 2014 and looks identical to the new iPad released today. It has the latest OS updates and it's never had any performance issues. Why would someone upgrade from this 5 year old device?

r00fus• 7 years ago

Arguably they wouldn't. This is for folks who want to buy their first iPad or are upgrading from Air1 or previous.

spike021• 7 years ago

They gave a number, something like 60% of new iPad owners are buying in at this level. Assuming there's truth to that number then this is meant as an entry-level iPad, not an "upgrade".

cma• 7 years ago

One reason people might upgrade from that one is I think Apple Pencil isn't supported on the 2014.

nickthegreek• 7 years ago

pencil support, better gaming, or 1 yr of tv+ service that I believe comes with all new apple products are some possible reasons. Screen is also slightly bigger. You could always hustle that Air 2 for a decent amount and pick up the new one for a great deal.

hadlock2• 7 years ago

We're going to buy an iPad for our boat to keep track of systems (they all have bluetooth now, especially the solar power stuff) and gps/navigation/charts ("maps"), plus have a copy of all the manuals in PDF ready to go. Also it interfaces with the onboard navigational sensors via a wifi gateway. It will probably live on the boat for 8-10 years before it's replaced, but since it's expected to have a long lifespan we want one with a new battery. Also also, the newer models are typically IPX-something rated (waterproof/resistant-esque) better than the old models.

Not everyone bought in to the tablet craze in the first few years.

js2• 7 years ago

None of the iPads have any splash, water, or dust resistance rating. Only iPhone 7 and later, and the Apple Watch have ratings:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207043

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205000

You should definitely put any iPad in a case if you need water resistance.

barkingcat• 7 years ago

I don't think an ipad would last 8 years. Some of the existing models will have bulging batteries within 2 years.

Add the water / wet environment, and as a previous poster says - no waterproof/resistant rating.

Put it in a watertight case, and expect to change it within 3 years.

yardie• 7 years ago

We had an iPad 2 onboard our boat for almost 2 years. I'd get a waterproof case like a Lifeproof. Sea spray can be especially harsh on electronics.

It was one of the best purchases we made. We use Navionics, not only were the charts cheaper for the iPad than our chartplotter. We could also connect to the boats AIS, charging equipment, navigation, and satellite phone. Easily saved us hundreds of dollars on charts. Each component had an optional screen addition (ie. small screen for the AIS) that easily was the cost of an iPad.

For our next boat we're going to drop chartplotters completely and do all our navigation and planning directly on the iPad. Just one 10" chartplotter could buy 4-5 10" iPads.

fucking_tragedy• 7 years ago

Well, if you bought a new iPad mini in 2014, Apple is deprecating your device in this release.

Based on previous iPad deprecations, your iPad Air 2 will probably be deprecated within the next two years.

Convenience and security wise, you'd want to buy a new device before your old one is made incompatible with new iOS releases.

Fnoord4• 7 years ago

To me the answer seemed obvious, and I wanted to reply "it isn't supported anymore in iOS". To my surprise, this 5 year old tablet of yours is still supported in iOS 12.4.1 [1], and it will also be supported in iPadOS 13 [2].

That's impressive. Which Android tablet from 2014 or 2015 is still supported nowadays?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad_Air_2

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPadOS

ocdtrekkie2• 7 years ago

The crazy reality is: major carriers like Verizon still sell iPhone 6S devices today, brand new. So there's an expectation that they have to support a brand new iPhone with iOS upgrades for a significant number of years. And Apple can do it because they only sell a handful of models that have a very common hardware set.

willtim6• 7 years ago

Is there even an Android tablet market anymore? (Excluding Kindle Fire)

noxToken2• 7 years ago

That's impressive. Which Android tablet from 2014 or 2015 is still supported nowadays?

Nexus 7 owner here. No support, has always needed a better battery, and the sensors need a power cycle occasionally, but I still don't regret the purchase. I mainly use it for videos and reading.

hrktb• 7 years ago

As someone planning on upgrading a kid’s device, better performance: you never have any, we get tons, in particular when multitasking. I confess I am used to the 13” pro so I am more sensible to the glitches perhaps.

Touch ID is a real QOL improvement.

A better camera is actually nice, I don’t understand people making fun of it.

All in all I think there’s a ton to love in this new version. That doesn’t make older ones obsolete, but it’s significantly better I think.

landcoctos• 7 years ago

I have an Air 2 as well but my screen is cracked. The glued glass/display is great however the cost to repair is nearly equal to what I paid (on sale). The current ipad does not have a similar display setup.

breakbread• 7 years ago

I recently inherited a gen1 iPad Pro (9.7in) and did not realize the Pro models were originally released in 2015/2016. I can see it being relevant for quite a while, especially considering I don't use it for anything "Pro" in nature.

AdrianB1• 7 years ago

I have an even older iPad 4 since 2012; I use it for a single purpose, flying (LSA planes) with a specific app that has no comparable (good enough) version for Android. I will not upgrade until the app will no longer work, I guess you will do the same.

pfranz2• 7 years ago

My wife has an iPad Air 2. The screen cracked over the years (it's mostly our 3yo's now--the source of the cracks). I went to get the screen repaired and was quoted at $169 (because the screen was "a one-off" for Apple) other devices were quoted closer to $99. The battery life isn't the best anymore, either.

If you're playing videos and using basic apps, it still works great. My wife likes to use Garage Band to jot down ideas and over the years it has gotten a bit sluggish. She also really likes the keyboard case on the newer iPads. If it wasn't for Garage Band she'd probably get a Surface.

If you're happy with what you have, keep on using it.

kayoone• 7 years ago

This is the lowest end iPad for students and people who just want a basic tablet, it's also only $320. It has the CPU out of the iPhone 7 and pencil and keyboard support. I own the previous 2018 one and combined with the pencil it's a pretty great tablet for a good price. Used it a lot for note taking in the past and to control media around the house.

Tepix• 7 years ago

I upgraded from the iPad Air 2 to the iPad Air 3. Performance is better (mostly noticeable when upgrading apps), the display is slightly larger, which is nice.

ianamartin• 7 years ago

I have the exact same iPad. It's a stretch to say it has no performance issues. It's sluggish, at best. It's not so bad that I'm ready to buy a new one. But it's slow, it's memory constrained.

It is damn impressive though. Many laptops don't have a working life near this long before they become unusably slow.

grepthisab• 7 years ago

Same boat here, I got an iPad Air (first gen) refurbished many years ago. Still works great, and I used it this morning. Showing no signs of not working properly, unlike old iPhones seem to do when they're dated. I like the new ones, but I can't imagine spending money on one in my current situation.

arielceja• 7 years ago

Bummer that it's only compatible with the first-generation Apple Pencil and not second-generation Pencil. What's their rationale?

iaabtpbtpnn• 7 years ago

The second-generation Pencil only charges by attaching magnetically to the flat side of an iPad Pro. It has no ports or any way to plug it in to charge otherwise. Only the iPad Pro has the physical design to accommodate it.

the_watcher• 7 years ago

Since when has ease of charging stopped Apple? I'd have expected it to only be compatible with the second-gen Pencil, along with an announcement of an optional Pencil charger.

NOTE: I'm 95% joking about this. It does seem like a missed opportunity for them to sell a second gen Pencil charger if it's the only way to use it with a non-iPad Pro though.

closetohome• 7 years ago

I still think it would have made sense for the first-gen pencil to charge off the (keyboard) accessory port. It's magnetic, it has power, and all the iPads have it now.

wlesieutre• 7 years ago

The magnetic attachment and charging uses the vertical flat sides on the 2018 iPad Pro design, and the non-pro versions still have rounded edges. Maybe they could have stuffed the charging/pairing hardware into the front bezels though?

yread• 7 years ago

Bummer that it's only compatible with the first-generation Apple Pencil and not second-generation Pencil. What's their rationale?

That sucks. I just lost my 1st gen pencil because it has no attachment or clips. Such a 'beautiful' but impractical design.

sschueller• 7 years ago

USB-C or lightning?

akersten• 7 years ago

It is compatible with the 1st Gen Pencil only, which has a Lightning plug to charge it, so I presume that the iPad has a corresponding Lightning port.

jonny_eh• 7 years ago

I'd assume no change, so lightning, since they didn't mention it.

izacus• 7 years ago

It's compatible with 1st Gen Apple Pencil which charges through Lightning... so lightning I guess.

Disappointing though :/

SlowRobotAhead• 7 years ago

Disappointing though :/

Esp as it makes it less likely new iPhone will be USB.

wang_li• 7 years ago

There’s something completely whackadoo about charging an iPad and then discharging the iPad in order to charge the pencil.

protomyth• 7 years ago

Lightning, so all the schools with the classroom cabinet will just have to swap the iPads and not the power supplies. Plus all the accessories still work.

willtim6• 7 years ago

Am thinking about picking one of these up for my daughter, 32GB seems a bit stingy though, will that be enough for apps and games?

ghaff• 7 years ago

It does sound stingy although it's mostly media (audio and video) that's the storage killer.

extesy• 7 years ago

My daughter has 64GB version and she often struggles with insufficient storage. And she doesn't really have much media, just a bunch of games and apps.

coldtea2• 7 years ago

Depends on the game, an AAA could be several GB by itself. On the other hand you can have 100s of smaller games on a few GB...

leetcrew5• 7 years ago

I would say it's pretty rare that younger people store media locally on their devices these days. I personally would like to but my music collection is >125 GB of mostly mp3 v0 files so I don't bother.

currently I'm using 28 GB of storage on my pixel 2 (including os install). 32 GB would be a bit cramped, but probably sufficient for the next couple years if she doesn't have tons of games installed.

iamnotacrook6• 7 years ago

Hmmm... You say that but my music collection is 3+ tb of flacs so that's not fitting on any sd card currently. I have a 64gb phone with a 200gig SD card in and whenever I consider getting a larger one, or a phone with more storage I realise that there's no point as I'm only thing to get another free percent of music on there. Given that I routinely copy/listen/delete music to my phone I'm not sure in practice there's a lot of difference between a 64/128gb phone with an SD card slot and just a 32/64gb phone without it.

pfranz2• 7 years ago

It really depends on the usage. Our iPads don't have cellular and our kid often watches movies and tv in the car. I've also downloaded YouTube videos so they can watch. 32GB is a very small amount of space for that kind of usage.

alistairSH2• 7 years ago

Yes, it's stingy. No, it won't be enough. It might be enough if she doesn't want/need to store media locally. But, if she wants to keep movies, music, and photos available offline, she'll run out fast. If you can swing it, 64gb is a much more reasonable starting point.

nailer2• 7 years ago

Still waiting for xcode for iPad. If iPads are to be taken seriously as a laptop replacement we have to be able to make software with them. I'm confident Apple will eventually get there though.

ddoolin• 7 years ago

Agreed. I tried to make it work (for a mix of systems and web development) and although it's possible, it's ham-fisted at best. I would love to see some first-class developer support for the iPad (or Pro only, not picky, although this seems like only a software solution).

simonh3• 7 years ago

I don't think Apple seriously sees them as laptop replacements, not in the complete sense. For some people yes, but not in general.

I think they'll get there with XCode or something like it eventually, but there are already several dev environments for the iPad. They are primarily aimed at people for whom code is a tool, who code to get their job done, rather than people coding to produce apps for distribution, but they can do that too.

Codea (Lua) is one, Pythonista and Pyto (Python) are two more. Once you develop the app on the iPad, once it's ready for release you copy the code into an XCode template and submit it to the App Store.

theshrike792• 7 years ago

iPads used to be just pure consumption devices (video, web, books). But now they can actually be used for media production and writing.

The only thing still missing is software development, but that's a bit of a special case anyway.

tonyedgecombe• 7 years ago

I wonder if Swift Playgrounds will get access to SwiftUI, it seems an obvious feature to me.

rchaud2• 7 years ago

I hope they're retaining the 4:3 aspect ratio. Samsung IMO shot themselves in the foot by switching back to 16:10 for their recent tablets after going with 4:3 for the Tab S3.

16:10 on portrait is far too tall and narrow to use comfortably, while in landscape it's far too wide. 4:3 has a nice balance, and is shaped like a piece of paper, which is extremely useful when reading PDFs. Websites also render in their desktop view in portrait, whereas you get a weird semi-mobile view in 16:10 on portrait due to the breakpoints that have been set on most sites' CSS.

Mindwipe• 7 years ago

They will retain the current ratio, but both parties are in the wrong - 4:3 isn't the shape of a piece of paper, 1:√2 is.

The most mainstream tablet device to have had that ratio was Google's discontinued Pixel C, which was a fantastic device to read on because of it (granted, when the damned hardware worked).

whereistimbo• 7 years ago

Which paper size? Letter? A4?

Zach_the_Lizard• 7 years ago

4:3 isn't the shape of a piece of paper, 1:√2 is.

US letter sized paper is 8.5 inches wide and 11 inches tall.

4/3 is 1.333....

11/8.5 is about 1.29.

It's not 4:3 exactly, but it's pretty close.

A4 and friends are of course not 4:3--and aren't arbitrarily sized.

akmittal• 7 years ago

It has the A10 bionic chip(which is 3 years old), Same as last yeras model. It is very similar to iPad 6th gen. They should have atleat put A11.

kalleboo2• 7 years ago

I would love to see the pricing of their chips to understand the upgrade cycle. It looks like A10->A11 transitioned them from 16 to 10 nm, I wonder if the newer process is still appreciably more expensive for them?

ksec• 7 years ago

1. Yes.

2. 10nm is a short term node, only as a stepping stone to 7nm.

3. A-11 would move it too close to Pro.

Since they did not mention EUV in their A13 presentation, I am betting A13 is actually a 7nm+ design. And all 7nm are long term node, iPad upgrade path might look more like A10 >> A12 > A13 over the span of next 3 - 4 years.

chooseaname• 7 years ago

Especially when the iPad Mini 5 has the A12.

willio58• 7 years ago

I don’t understand the large screen bezels on non-pro versions of the iPad in late 2019. Once they release a cheap iPad without large bezels, I’ll get one.

beaner• 7 years ago

Don't bezels make it easier to hold without touching the screen?

Thin bezels on a tablet just seem uncomfortable.

sambe• 7 years ago

Yes; I find it strange they have gone down the thin bezels and non-curved edge route with iPad. It seems much less ergonomic, and a big reason for me to hold off upgrading.

I read into it that having some specs for announcements has become more important that the spec itself. I also note the increasing number of specs that are announced in these events which were already in the previous model(s).

airnomad• 7 years ago

I still use first gen iPad for occasional Netflix and it's working just fine. Hopefully Netflix won't drop the support for older clients like YouTube did.

torgian• 7 years ago

Meh?

I dont understand why there are incremental updates to these devices every year. It doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Do it every two or three years and it'll probably end up being better products anyway.

codnee• 7 years ago

The short answer is because people will pay for them.

rtcoms• 7 years ago

There are enough people every year who need a new tablet. Millions of people would've bought iPad 3 years ago, for them this would be significant upgrade.

theshrike792• 7 years ago

Because they aren't targeting the people who upgrade every year. The current iPads (and iPhones) are for the people with 4-5 year old devices.

For them it's not an "incremental upgrade", 4-5 yearly incremental upgrades sums up to one big upgrade.

ken• 7 years ago

Doing updates every few years means half the internet is going to spend 2 of every 3 years complaining "I don't want to buy a years-old device" and asking "should I wait, is there going to be a new one soon?".

Continuous delivery has also shown itself to be a much more reliable way to deliver technology products at all. Compared to shipping 10 new features in a year, shipping 30 new features in 3 years is much more than 3x harder.

jve2• 7 years ago

I can't believe Apple made an dense and ugly slide like this: https://boygeniusreport.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/apple-ip...

sjwright4• 7 years ago

It's dense (but they've had dense slides before) and it's a departure from their previous aesthetic (which they've also done before) but it's not objectively ugly.

nolok• 7 years ago

Personally I’ve never used an iPad (nothing against, just more of an android guy) but I’m more surprised that split view, pop over, custom fonts, external storage displayed in the storage viewer and all are apparent just new on it. Phone I can understand but on tablet it seems late.

dahfizz• 7 years ago

I don't think people buy apple products for the amazing cutting edge features. Android has beaten apple to just about every feature ever.

People buy apple for the same reason they buy a Mercedes. It does all the same stuff, but it feels nicer.

Infernal• 7 years ago

Based on using a 10.5" iPad Pro since 2017, I believe what this slide is saying is that all of these things are new to the volume priced iPad, which after all just got an upgrade to the 3 year old A10.

On my Pro, I've had most of the stuff on this slide from the beginning. Not sure about custom fonts as I've never looked into it, and I think native external storage support is new in the upcoming OS (though it was achievable with third-party apps since iOS 11).

But yeah, bottom line of this slide is that these formerly pro-only features are now in the $329 product.

sudofail• 7 years ago

Looks like a Grafana dashboard :)

spiderfarmer• 7 years ago

jve is short for j onathani ve? Anyway, I thought the same when I saw that slide (and a couple others).

jve2• 7 years ago

jve is short for j onathani ve?

Nop

jbverschoor• 7 years ago

Yeah.. last years all presentations are all about specs. Might have to sell my shares in a year or 2

Apple has unveiled the new seventh-gen iPad

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