iPad Fever Is Officially Cooling 386
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Christina Bonnington reports that the public is not gobbling up iPads like they used to. Analysts had projected iPad sales would reach 19.7 million but Apple sold 16.35 million iPads, a drop of roughly 16.4 percent since last year. 'For many, the iPad they have is good enough–unlike a phone, with significant new features like Touch ID, or a better camera, the iPad's improvements over the past few years have been more subtle,' writes Bonnington. 'The latest iterations feature a better Retina display, a slimmer design, and faster processing. Improvements, yes, but enough to justify a near thousand dollar purchase? Others seem to be finding that their smartphone can do the job that their tablet used to do just as well, especially on those larger screened phablets.'
While the continued success of the iPad may be up in the air, another formerly popular member of Apple's product line is definitely on its way to the grave. The iPod, once Apple's crown jewel, posted a sales drop of 51 percent since last year. Only 2.76 million units were sold, a far cry from its heyday of almost 23 million back in 2008. 'Apple's past growth has been driven mostly by entering entirely new product categories, like it did when it introduced the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, and the iPad in 2010,' says Andrew Cunningham. 'The most persistent rumors involve TV (whether a new Apple TV set-top box or an entire television set) and wearable computing devices (the perennially imminent "iWatch"), but calls for larger and cheaper iPhones also continue.'"
While the continued success of the iPad may be up in the air, another formerly popular member of Apple's product line is definitely on its way to the grave. The iPod, once Apple's crown jewel, posted a sales drop of 51 percent since last year. Only 2.76 million units were sold, a far cry from its heyday of almost 23 million back in 2008. 'Apple's past growth has been driven mostly by entering entirely new product categories, like it did when it introduced the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, and the iPad in 2010,' says Andrew Cunningham. 'The most persistent rumors involve TV (whether a new Apple TV set-top box or an entire television set) and wearable computing devices (the perennially imminent "iWatch"), but calls for larger and cheaper iPhones also continue.'"
Original iPads Work Well ... (Score:5, Interesting)
So why would I want to use a new one yet? Apple has set a new standard in lifespan & reliability.
One simple reason for this (Score:5, Interesting)
Apps are becoming progressively worse, not better, over time. In the early days there were a lot of cool apps written by people who just wanted to write cool apps for a cool new tool.
Now with the preverse incentives of the app market, the app store is saturated by apps trying to squeeze a maximum amount of money for a dwindling amount of useful application.
In app purchases, in particular, are well on their way to completely destroying gaming at all levels.
Every free app you download any more is ususally worthless until you shell out significant amounts of money in IAP to make it usable, and then its still usually still not good
I'm all for paying software and content developers for their efforts but the methodologies for achieving this in app stores and on the Internet in general has completely failed.
Increasingly the only thing I use my tablets for is an ereader. They excel at that, but for just about everything else the app comcept has failed.
It was bound to happen sooner or later (Score:5, Interesting)
Once technology becomes "good enough" for a substantial chunk of the market and a substantial chunk of the market already owns such a "good enough" device, people are no longer so eager to spend globs of cash on incrementally better devices. The threshold for "good enough" is now starting to move down the price point ladder so interest in premium-priced models will likely fade in the near-future - it becomes difficult to justify spending over $500 on a tablet when you can get most of the same features on $150-250 models.
Re:I never thought I'd live to see the day... (Score:4, Interesting)
...when the public is calling for larger cell phones.
A wise man once said "The greatest thing about smartphones is that you don't have to use them for phone calls." Once you start down that path, you really wish they had a proper screen.
Re:Maybe not? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not an 5 digit UID but 6 is pretty damn old and I am not a drive by commenter. I've been thinking more and more about giving up though. Primarily the problems are with shills, trolls, and distribution of mod points to those people. This is in addition to what has become paid marketing articles instead of tech news.
Slashdot is still better than Reddit, but I'm not sure how much any more.
One of the biggest current problems is that the Beta fiasco drove many of the old regulars away. This left a disparate number of sock puppet accounts, and the mod system has been reflecting this since January. Sock puppets have always been an issue, but regulars getting mod points used to be able to offset their ratings to some degree.
I have noticed in the past few months that high volume topics which have a propensity to make certain Government agencies uncomfortable get pushed off the main page with trash submissions.
Nope, I don't have a solution to the problems. As a suggestion Slashdot should set about finding and banishing sock puppet accounts, they have the information which would allow them to search. The mods here are already busy, so they would need to find a way to staff the project properly without forcing an already overworked staff of people out. That may curb part of the modding issues but the pay-for articles would still exist. Hard to say if the article issue is just that mods are too busy to notice, or if Dice change practices. The former is fixed also by staffing, the later.. well, I'll refer to your wisdom of shutting it down.
Re:I never thought I'd live to see the day... (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. I have an iPad and an Android smartphone, and I am thinking of dumping the smartphone for the dumbest of dumb phones, which can only make phone calls and send SMS - and only needs to be charged once a week
As we know, it never succeeded, but this was the design with the BlackBerry PlayBook. The PlayBook tablet was wirelessly 'twinned' with a much smaller phone. It was pretty cool when it was all working.