I think the industry has already agreed to give this product category to Apple. Everyone needs a phone, but only specific types of users need a tablet. Apple's tablet is Good Enough for everyone, and they last forever. The o.g. iPad Air we bought in Nov 2020 is still chugging along and we use it... basically only to watch movies on airplane rides etc. And I am primarily a linux/android user, but this is the one Apple device I "use".
If/when it finally dies (we're on year 6) we'll just buy another one, I guess. The biggest risk for our single household tablet is Apple drops support for it. We have no plans to upgrade it ever, so long as netflix and youtube keep working on it.
Apple's tablets are great, but I think we're just pretty close to the limit for these entertainment devices.
I have a now 7(!) year old Tab S5e that I use to consume media, and it's 5.5mm thick, with 10 hours of battery, a 1600x2560 super AMOLED, and quad firing speakers.
Nothing on the market makes me feel I need an upgrade over what was a $400 mid range tablet, because I have an incredible media experience on all my streaming apps.
I don't know whether to consider the fact that you find a device lasting 6 years an impressive feat as testament to how crappy devices, especially mobile ones, have been for the past decade, or how used everyone is to abandon perfectly good devices just because "it's X years old".
In my case I use my 8.4" tablet to watch free to air TV with a TVHeadend client for Android (no idea if there is one for iOS.) I run a couple of YouTube alternative apps that Google would love to kill. Firefox. Not much else. It's handy as a portable TV set.
The only Apple product I still have is a 2010 ipad 1. Only use it as a clock, violin tuner, and workout timer, but am amazed it's still going like an old volkswagen.
Original gangsta, which has come to mean “original” with a tint of “I respect it”
They’re either using loosely, as in “my first iPad Air purchased”, or tightly, as in "the original iPad Air release", which was in 2013 but could be purchased used, presumably.
It's been around long enough to have gained cromulence, I think.
I started using "OG" ~16 years ago to disambiguate the Motorola Droid that I had (which was the first Android phone available from Verizon) from the Droid 2, 3, and 4 that came later.
"OG Motorola Droid" has specificity, while "Motorola Droid 1" is something that never existed.
Yeah but 10 years late to be described as the original. That said, my parents got rid of their actual OG iPad only 2-3 years ago (did not hold a charge for a long time, finally decided it was time to get one that did).
I had an iPad that Appled forced into obsolecence. I had to throw a perfectly ok piece of hardware on the trash because it was madr unusable by the manufacturer. It's the main reason I despise Apple, including its hardware.
I replaced it with a Samsung A7. It's even better than the iPad as I could sideload a manga reader that syncs with Komga, amazing stuff to read manga.
Yes, I was wondering about this. Old iPads running iPad OS 15 received updates last month. So even an iPad Air 2 from 2014 could receive updates in 2026.
The big issue with old iPads though is that apps drop support for older iPad OS versions. Usually their older versions do keep working, though.
Yeah I soon as I saw the price, this article fell apart completely.
The Neo has a great screen and an older iPhone processor. You can take the keyboard off a Neo add a touch screen but you still have to make a device that fits the battery and has all the same technology. You're back to at least a $600 tablet.
I’m confused as well. Did the author not consider the existing product line? iPads are not that expensive for the base model especially during the holidays.
I think the the author is greatly overstating how big the tablet market is for the product strategy he's hoping for. "Tablet-optimized apps" are a historical artifact of the 2010-2015 period when tablets were a new and exciting category of internet-connected gadget with a plethora of use cases in entertainment and productivity, held back only by 'blown up' versions of mobile apps. Within a few years however, most apps people use (Netflix, Office, Google Docs) were redesigned to scale to the size of the screen, in the same way websites do.
A decade on, the market has spoken. Tablets are overwhelmingly used for Netflix, YouTube and casual mobile games, use cases where specs don't matter and every tablet is more or less "good enough". Maybe a million or so users have an iPad for digital art or as a laptop replacement. Even the cheapest model iPad has pen, mouse and keyboard support. So what would an iPad Neo add?
For that to happen, I think there has to be room at the bottom for a product that will not cut much into the sales of higher priced iPads.
For laptops, it seems they had/found that room, but I doubt that room is there for iPads. The low-priced product will have to suffice for browsing, reading, and watching YouTube, and I think that covers the use cases for a large fraction of customers.
Of course, they could go for lower prices, hoping for that to increase iCloud subscription revenues, but long-term, there is a risk of (EU) regulations requiring better competition for that.
For all of the Apple hate recently (with glass + MacOS bugs) - it's still great to be able to invest in high quality hardware. I made the switch to Mac, oh about 12 yrs ago, and sometimes forget how spoilt we are with really tight hardware + software integration.
Apple hardware isn't exceptional, it's maybe slightly above average, sometimes, and still costs more than it should - even the neo with its paltry 8GB of RAM. Apple has had plenty of hardware problems and design foibles. So many.
Their software is equally average in most respects, and has a far smaller market share worldwide across all form factors they support.
iOS is the reason I'll never own another iPad.
I mean, it's fine that you like it, but "spoilt" seems like an exaggeration.
> Apple hardware isn't exceptional, it's maybe slightly above average
Is this a serious statement? If Apple's hardware is maybe slightly above average - what's above it? It's an easy company to hate on - but you don't have any other platform integrated as well as Apple's right now IMO. Unless you maybe count Huawei.
Edit: I think I may be referring more to the holistic picture. But still curious what hardware you think is better.
Yeah, no way that is a serious statement. My Macbook Air from 2011 still works perfectly, and the original iPhone that I found stashed inside one of my dad's cabinets charged, turned on without issues and was fully usable as well. That's a device that's almost two decades old. If that's not hardware quality, I don't know what is.
I am forced to use a MacBook for work and I think it is shit. I partucularly abhor its reflective screen and the toy keyboard. I hate that it has only 4 usbc ports that force me to have a dongle.
I can't fathom why people like that crap apart from looking slick.
Mac OS is shit, and I would unironically prefer to be forced to use Windows at work.
I never understood googles strategy in mobile. At the beginning I assumed that they would make a reference platform showing what's possible - a high-end pixel with all of the latest hardware and software features to promote their OS and software. Driving advancement in hardware by others using android. But instead it seems like they're competing at all levels with their hardware and are trying to win at consumer-level hardware against china instead of with their software and search and now ai - areas with high margins and where they make money.
Since their hardware group is t working at promoting their software group they should probably just spin off and do their own thing.
The Nexus and early Pixel eras have been a series of weirdly positioned and priced models year after year. Google didn't even bother trying to sell them in more than a handful countries.
Then Google switched to a pretty bad Exynos based SoC and consistently shipped underwhelming hardware at price points aligned with Apple... requiring absolutely insane discounts or promotion campaigns, even at launch. Can you imagine Apple giving you AirPods Pro or a Watch if you buy the next iPhone 18 on day 1?
We've seen things like the Pixel tablet that should have been sold at half its MSRP to stand even a small chance against the iPad.
And I won't even talk of the many hardware issues... my dad's Pixel 7a was fully reimbursed for 25% more money than he actually spent buying it.
> Can you imagine Apple giving you AirPods Pro or a Watch if you buy the next iPhone 18 on day 1?
Apple does exactly this, they just launder it out to their carrier partners. My wife's carrier was recently offering a free Apple Watch if you pre-ordered a new iPhone before launch.
Similarly, Apple was already selling a laptop (the M1 MacBook Air) at MacBook Neo prices, but only via Walmart (and they were continuing production of the M1 MBA specifically for this deal).
Carrier deals aren't comparable as they're subsidized by inflated phone plans.
If you buy an iPhone on day 1 from the Apple store you're certainly not getting any gift or discount. With Google you can pre-order and get a $200-300 gift, wait for deals (Black Friday, Christmas, ...) or if you aren't in a rush, wait six months for resellers and carriers to invariably start dumping their stock at half the MSRP. Meanwhile the base iPhone price has decreased by 10-15% maybe.
And I don't see how older MacBook Airs are relevant here. Apple has always sold previous generations of their hardware for years, directly or indirectly, either by actively maintaining production or simply letting resellers deal with old stocks. Google keeping the previous year generation on their product line-up is a very recent development. Not very long ago they would abruptly stop selling the Pixel N before the N+1 were even announced.
> Carrier deals aren't comparable as they're subsidized by inflated phone plans.
I don't have any insight into what deals the carriers have on the backend, but in my region, the price delta between like-for-like BYOD plans and plans with subsidized iPhones are effectively nil.
Either the carriers are getting discounts from Apple, or everyone with BYOD plans are subsidizing phones for people who get them through carriers.
e.g. I'm currently seeing a carrier plan where the total plan + device cost over 24 months is ~$1,600 and you come out of it free and clear with a 512gb iPhone Air that's $1,749 retail. I don't see how that's possible for the carrier to offer if they're not getting discounts from Apple.
My point is that Apple doesn't want to look like they're giving discounts on their store, so they engineer any discounts to go through third parties.
I work at a carrier in Switzerland, if I take the phone we push at the top of our inventory, the iPhone 17 Pro 256 GB:
Phone: 1099 (Apple's MSRP).
24-month phone plan, 50/month the first year, then 81/month: 1572. Discount: -300
Now BYOD:
Phone: 1067 at the biggest and most reputable online retailer.
Near identical phone plan sold through our discount/virtual brand: 30/month i.e. 720 over 24 months (but you can leave anytime).
So even assuming you buy it on day 1 with zero discount from Apple's MSRP, that 300 gift costs you 852 CHF really.
Now if I look at our most agressive competitor, you get the phone for free if you spend at least 1752 on a 24-month phone plan.
They have a better phone plan at 15/month i.e. 360 over 2 years. BYOD is still way cheaper.
They need to be competitive to some degree for the hardware to actually work as a valid reference and explore those spaces. They also need the business to be successful enough to be a proper threat to would be rebellions from the hardware partners. In general, it is about the software.
I think the industry has already agreed to give this product category to Apple. Everyone needs a phone, but only specific types of users need a tablet. Apple's tablet is Good Enough for everyone, and they last forever. The o.g. iPad Air we bought in Nov 2020 is still chugging along and we use it... basically only to watch movies on airplane rides etc. And I am primarily a linux/android user, but this is the one Apple device I "use".
If/when it finally dies (we're on year 6) we'll just buy another one, I guess. The biggest risk for our single household tablet is Apple drops support for it. We have no plans to upgrade it ever, so long as netflix and youtube keep working on it.
Apple's tablets are great, but I think we're just pretty close to the limit for these entertainment devices.
I have a now 7(!) year old Tab S5e that I use to consume media, and it's 5.5mm thick, with 10 hours of battery, a 1600x2560 super AMOLED, and quad firing speakers.
Nothing on the market makes me feel I need an upgrade over what was a $400 mid range tablet, because I have an incredible media experience on all my streaming apps.
I don't know whether to consider the fact that you find a device lasting 6 years an impressive feat as testament to how crappy devices, especially mobile ones, have been for the past decade, or how used everyone is to abandon perfectly good devices just because "it's X years old".
> only specific types of users need a tablet
In my case I use my 8.4" tablet to watch free to air TV with a TVHeadend client for Android (no idea if there is one for iOS.) I run a couple of YouTube alternative apps that Google would love to kill. Firefox. Not much else. It's handy as a portable TV set.
The only Apple product I still have is a 2010 ipad 1. Only use it as a clock, violin tuner, and workout timer, but am amazed it's still going like an old volkswagen.
Perhaps you can use it as a Schneidebrett: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3zm0q1
> The o.g. iPad Air we bought in Nov 2020
o.g. ?
Original gangsta, which has come to mean “original” with a tint of “I respect it”
They’re either using loosely, as in “my first iPad Air purchased”, or tightly, as in "the original iPad Air release", which was in 2013 but could be purchased used, presumably.
It's kid slang for "original", apparently.
It's been around long enough to have gained cromulence, I think.
I started using "OG" ~16 years ago to disambiguate the Motorola Droid that I had (which was the first Android phone available from Verizon) from the Droid 2, 3, and 4 that came later.
"OG Motorola Droid" has specificity, while "Motorola Droid 1" is something that never existed.
Anyway, my usage is old enough to drive a car. :)
That was my first reading but "original generation" and 2020 don't go well together.
Yeah but 10 years late to be described as the original. That said, my parents got rid of their actual OG iPad only 2-3 years ago (did not hold a charge for a long time, finally decided it was time to get one that did).
50 year old kids
first gained general use in ~1991, so 35 years ago
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/OG
are these "kids" also in the young republicans group chat?
I had an iPad that Appled forced into obsolecence. I had to throw a perfectly ok piece of hardware on the trash because it was madr unusable by the manufacturer. It's the main reason I despise Apple, including its hardware.
I replaced it with a Samsung A7. It's even better than the iPad as I could sideload a manga reader that syncs with Komga, amazing stuff to read manga.
And I can install LineageOS if need be.
Objectively a better choice than iPad for me.
Why wouldn't you just recycle it instead of throwing it in the trash? Seems wasteful.
I threw it into a recycle bin for electronic devices.
Also called trash.
How did apple make it unusable? What model?
Yes, I was wondering about this. Old iPads running iPad OS 15 received updates last month. So even an iPad Air 2 from 2014 could receive updates in 2026.
The big issue with old iPads though is that apps drop support for older iPad OS versions. Usually their older versions do keep working, though.
I don't remember the model. It waa purchased in 2012. Thrown into the trash circa 2019.
7 years lifespan. My Samsung A7 is nearly there.
wtf are you talking about apple supports their devices significantly longer than android..
This is meaningless when LineageOS exists.
My Samsung tablet will have a much longer lifespan thanks to that.
Apple does make the product described in this article, aside from the fantasy price. It's called the iPad.
Yeah I soon as I saw the price, this article fell apart completely.
The Neo has a great screen and an older iPhone processor. You can take the keyboard off a Neo add a touch screen but you still have to make a device that fits the battery and has all the same technology. You're back to at least a $600 tablet.
The starting price of the iPad is $349
I’m confused as well. Did the author not consider the existing product line? iPads are not that expensive for the base model especially during the holidays.
I think the idea not explicitly said is it’d be MacOS not iOS.
They should rename it the iPad Neo so we don't refer to as "the just iPad" or plain ipad.
And maybe the second generation could be the New iPad Neo ...
thankfully they quickly gave up on "new" after the 2nd iPad....
I think the the author is greatly overstating how big the tablet market is for the product strategy he's hoping for. "Tablet-optimized apps" are a historical artifact of the 2010-2015 period when tablets were a new and exciting category of internet-connected gadget with a plethora of use cases in entertainment and productivity, held back only by 'blown up' versions of mobile apps. Within a few years however, most apps people use (Netflix, Office, Google Docs) were redesigned to scale to the size of the screen, in the same way websites do.
A decade on, the market has spoken. Tablets are overwhelmingly used for Netflix, YouTube and casual mobile games, use cases where specs don't matter and every tablet is more or less "good enough". Maybe a million or so users have an iPad for digital art or as a laptop replacement. Even the cheapest model iPad has pen, mouse and keyboard support. So what would an iPad Neo add?
You can already buy a $349 tablet. Is $200 really the bottom price where growth skyrockets? I’m doubtful.
You can also buy very cheap laptop prior, but the hardware wasn't that good... Until MacBook Neo came along.
I think this is pointing out that the base iPad which has nice hardware is already 350 and 200 is not gonna encourage that many new buyers.
For that to happen, I think there has to be room at the bottom for a product that will not cut much into the sales of higher priced iPads.
For laptops, it seems they had/found that room, but I doubt that room is there for iPads. The low-priced product will have to suffice for browsing, reading, and watching YouTube, and I think that covers the use cases for a large fraction of customers.
Of course, they could go for lower prices, hoping for that to increase iCloud subscription revenues, but long-term, there is a risk of (EU) regulations requiring better competition for that.
For all of the Apple hate recently (with glass + MacOS bugs) - it's still great to be able to invest in high quality hardware. I made the switch to Mac, oh about 12 yrs ago, and sometimes forget how spoilt we are with really tight hardware + software integration.
The hardware is great, but it has been crippled by the software. That still makes it a bad product, imho.
Apple hardware isn't exceptional, it's maybe slightly above average, sometimes, and still costs more than it should - even the neo with its paltry 8GB of RAM. Apple has had plenty of hardware problems and design foibles. So many.
Their software is equally average in most respects, and has a far smaller market share worldwide across all form factors they support.
iOS is the reason I'll never own another iPad.
I mean, it's fine that you like it, but "spoilt" seems like an exaggeration.
> Apple hardware isn't exceptional, it's maybe slightly above average
Is this a serious statement? If Apple's hardware is maybe slightly above average - what's above it? It's an easy company to hate on - but you don't have any other platform integrated as well as Apple's right now IMO. Unless you maybe count Huawei.
Edit: I think I may be referring more to the holistic picture. But still curious what hardware you think is better.
> Is this a serious statement? If Apple's hardware is maybe slightly above average - what's above it?
The only hardware I can think of that's consistently higher-quality than Apple is niche stuff at a much higher price point.
e.g. the Seneca keyboard, Sennheiser Orpheus headphones, etc.
Yeah, no way that is a serious statement. My Macbook Air from 2011 still works perfectly, and the original iPhone that I found stashed inside one of my dad's cabinets charged, turned on without issues and was fully usable as well. That's a device that's almost two decades old. If that's not hardware quality, I don't know what is.
I am forced to use a MacBook for work and I think it is shit. I partucularly abhor its reflective screen and the toy keyboard. I hate that it has only 4 usbc ports that force me to have a dongle.
I can't fathom why people like that crap apart from looking slick.
Mac OS is shit, and I would unironically prefer to be forced to use Windows at work.
Style over substance. Pure crap to me.
I never understood googles strategy in mobile. At the beginning I assumed that they would make a reference platform showing what's possible - a high-end pixel with all of the latest hardware and software features to promote their OS and software. Driving advancement in hardware by others using android. But instead it seems like they're competing at all levels with their hardware and are trying to win at consumer-level hardware against china instead of with their software and search and now ai - areas with high margins and where they make money.
Since their hardware group is t working at promoting their software group they should probably just spin off and do their own thing.
Google just sucks at this.
The Nexus and early Pixel eras have been a series of weirdly positioned and priced models year after year. Google didn't even bother trying to sell them in more than a handful countries.
Then Google switched to a pretty bad Exynos based SoC and consistently shipped underwhelming hardware at price points aligned with Apple... requiring absolutely insane discounts or promotion campaigns, even at launch. Can you imagine Apple giving you AirPods Pro or a Watch if you buy the next iPhone 18 on day 1?
We've seen things like the Pixel tablet that should have been sold at half its MSRP to stand even a small chance against the iPad.
And I won't even talk of the many hardware issues... my dad's Pixel 7a was fully reimbursed for 25% more money than he actually spent buying it.
> Can you imagine Apple giving you AirPods Pro or a Watch if you buy the next iPhone 18 on day 1?
Apple does exactly this, they just launder it out to their carrier partners. My wife's carrier was recently offering a free Apple Watch if you pre-ordered a new iPhone before launch.
Similarly, Apple was already selling a laptop (the M1 MacBook Air) at MacBook Neo prices, but only via Walmart (and they were continuing production of the M1 MBA specifically for this deal).
Carrier deals aren't comparable as they're subsidized by inflated phone plans.
If you buy an iPhone on day 1 from the Apple store you're certainly not getting any gift or discount. With Google you can pre-order and get a $200-300 gift, wait for deals (Black Friday, Christmas, ...) or if you aren't in a rush, wait six months for resellers and carriers to invariably start dumping their stock at half the MSRP. Meanwhile the base iPhone price has decreased by 10-15% maybe.
And I don't see how older MacBook Airs are relevant here. Apple has always sold previous generations of their hardware for years, directly or indirectly, either by actively maintaining production or simply letting resellers deal with old stocks. Google keeping the previous year generation on their product line-up is a very recent development. Not very long ago they would abruptly stop selling the Pixel N before the N+1 were even announced.
> Carrier deals aren't comparable as they're subsidized by inflated phone plans.
I don't have any insight into what deals the carriers have on the backend, but in my region, the price delta between like-for-like BYOD plans and plans with subsidized iPhones are effectively nil.
Either the carriers are getting discounts from Apple, or everyone with BYOD plans are subsidizing phones for people who get them through carriers.
e.g. I'm currently seeing a carrier plan where the total plan + device cost over 24 months is ~$1,600 and you come out of it free and clear with a 512gb iPhone Air that's $1,749 retail. I don't see how that's possible for the carrier to offer if they're not getting discounts from Apple.
My point is that Apple doesn't want to look like they're giving discounts on their store, so they engineer any discounts to go through third parties.
I work at a carrier in Switzerland, if I take the phone we push at the top of our inventory, the iPhone 17 Pro 256 GB:
Phone: 1099 (Apple's MSRP). 24-month phone plan, 50/month the first year, then 81/month: 1572. Discount: -300
Now BYOD:
Phone: 1067 at the biggest and most reputable online retailer. Near identical phone plan sold through our discount/virtual brand: 30/month i.e. 720 over 24 months (but you can leave anytime).
So even assuming you buy it on day 1 with zero discount from Apple's MSRP, that 300 gift costs you 852 CHF really.
Now if I look at our most agressive competitor, you get the phone for free if you spend at least 1752 on a 24-month phone plan.
They have a better phone plan at 15/month i.e. 360 over 2 years. BYOD is still way cheaper.
They need to be competitive to some degree for the hardware to actually work as a valid reference and explore those spaces. They also need the business to be successful enough to be a proper threat to would be rebellions from the hardware partners. In general, it is about the software.
At costco they already sell an ipad for $299
That is just £219 and the article wants £200
7in iPad with old Apple Watch processors.
This made much more sense when I read it as asking for an iPad Nano
It's an iPhone Pro Max without the cellular radio!
Give me the iphone neo
umm the macbook neo is an ipad lol. with a keyboard attached.
Not what words mean