'Clearance sale' shows Apple's iPad is over. It's done "The iPad is done," writes Europe's shrewdest hardware scribe Volker Weber in the aftermath of Apple's annual revamp of its tablet line. The revamped iPads contain no new features, just price cuts, making it a "clearance sale". "Apple is just refining the components, but there isn't much they can do these days to make yet …
That programme was always a let down.
If it was longer, pretty much all about Ed's mechanicking and in considerably more detail, it would have been really good. Unfortunately it was all about Mike's ability to speak fluent cockney and haggle, which isn't something you need to see every week.
Yeah I noticed a video from him on YouTube telling the world why. Basically Discovery bought the show from Attaboy, and they wanted him to cut corners with the work on the cars to make it more of a "show". Basically cut back on the very thing that was interesting about the show. Mike Brewer's alright in small doses, but those doses have started to get bigger.
Ant Anstead is his replacement. He's the chap who was the mechanic on "For The Love Of Cars" with Philip Glennister. Not a bad replacement, although he's no Edd China or Fuzz Townsend. It is a shame. I learnt alot from Edd China on the program and he gave me the confidence to tinker with my own car (now cars).
But er, yeah. Apple in Education? Bad bad very bad etc.
"Unfortunately it was all about Mike's ability to speak fluent cockney and haggle, which isn't something you need to see every week."
My favourite episode is where he's buying an old DS (IIRC) in rural France and tries the 'crafty cockney haggling' palaver on with the seller, who doesn't speak any English.
My only iDevice, a Gen3 iPod Touch, sits atop my radio and it's purpose is to play MP3s from my Linux file server and Podcasts from Radio 4. It does that task admirably and its shiny chrome back also doesn't object to the occasional splash from the washing up.
Not sure about the Pope being Catholic, but I heard a good argument that he might be a Marxist.
Having been in education (UK) from 1980 through 1990, kids in education in the 90s and working in education between 2000 and 2007 (Germany), I saw exactly one Apple device during that time, an old Apple II that never got turned on.
When I was learning, it was all Commodore PETs and a few C64s and a BBC Model A, then at college it was PETs again, a handful of BBC Bs, which were then replaced by IBM PC clones.
That remained the status quo, even when I became a guest lecturer in Augsburg, there it was all Fujitsu, with a few convertible Windows XP Tablet Edition devices.
Apple might be big in the USA, but in the educational establishments where I studied / worked, they were pretty much non-existent.
The Apple II didn't just fail to see much international usage in education, it generally didn't succeed internationally. But its method of colour generation* doesn't map to the world beyond NTSC** so that's not so surprising.
* a pixel clock that is four times the NTSC colour clock, with the developer required to store a suitable pattern of pixels to create appropriate colours. So a hypothetical PAL version would need a clock rate around 20% faster, and developers would need to rewrite their software for a different aspect ratio display and to deal with the phase alternating part of PAL.
** although the Oric pulls a similar trick, outputting four discrete levels for per colour clock (assuming a solid colour; the clocks are asynchronous), it does it in hardware via a small colour ROM. The programmer just asks for colour N, and the rest is taken care of.
"Aye, i know at least one secondary school where Ipads are actually mandatory, with various finance options"
I was furious when my lads school sent home a letter stating all children would need an iPad in the following term. They had an offering for the latest and greatest with finance, and a disclaimer stating that lesser models might not be capable of running the schools software.
They were effectively painting a target on the backs of all the kids saying "mug me". Every kid in town now walks to and from school with a grands worth of iPad waiting for the bag snatchers.
On the other hand I have several hundred 'creative types' working under my auspices ... and we have precisely 1 iPad Pro. Not even sure why we have that one though: I suspect it was a 'we have GOT to have one of those' fanboi reaction.
"On the other hand, the primary school where my grandchildren go to, has over 100 iPads..."
I used to work in schools, there were many, many iPads, and far too many 'Learnpads' (half decent Android tabs hampered by a crap custom UI).
Problem was, the iPads were bought because the IT co-ordinators assumed they could do everything they needed, but they were wrong, many educational web sites still use flash, and then couldn't be accessed on the iPads. Some sites had bought the Puffin browser, which just added frustration rather than solving the problem. Plus iPads are a PITA to manage, for some reason Apple Educational VPP is an entirely separate entity to iTunes, you can't get educational discounts using the same account, you have to register twice, once for VPP and once for regular iTunes, Apple Configurator isn't exactly slick, and requires a Mac to drive it, or you pay for an MDM solution. Plus I worked in Junior schools, and iPads were just too fragile, even in Survivor cases we got broken screens, charging cables were mangled regularly, and I never saw a charging flight case (GoCabby) without bent hinges, as teachers got the kids to put the iPads away, and the kids just slammed the cases shut.
The Learnpads never broke however. They were so dire they were never removed from their charging cabby.
Problem was, the iPads were bought because the IT co-ordinators assumed they could do everything they needed, but they were wrong, many educational web sites still use flash
They were handed out from a local uni for students on a occupational therapy course a couple of years ago. With exactly that problem.
"On the other hand, the primary school where my grandchildren go to, has over 100 iPads..."
My work takes me into many schools, and it always surprises me how many have recently (ie last couple of years) have bought in and issued iPads for all the pupils. Chromebooks do seem to be taking over, but considering how much cheaper Chromebooks are, I can't quite see the financial reasons for those schools which choose Apple. (Since the last thing on most educators minds is data slurping, I'll assume that's not a factor in not choosing Google over Apple)
A university in NSW, Oztralia, got 13,000 iPads for their students (the stooodes had to pay for them obviously).
I attended a training session where one of the speakers was a very senior Apple guy in OZ. He said, [quote] I am going to tell you 25 times (holds up an iPad) that THIS (gently shakes said iPad) is NOT a computer. [/quote] People tend to forget that. They, and the Android equivalent, can be a very useful tool but they are not a computer and as such have very limited use in the computing field. They are quite good for educational use but are a pain to weave into a Domain to make them network useful.
THIS (gently shakes said iPad) is NOT a computer.
OED defines computer as "A calculating-machine; esp. an automatic electronic device for performing mathematical or logical operations; freq. with defining word prefixed, as analogue, digital, electronic computer"
So presumably incapable of performing mathematical and logic operations. Maybe he was channelling John Sculley and mistaking the iPad for a bottle of Pepsi :-)
Apple might be big in the USA, but in the educational establishments where I studied / worked, they were pretty much non-existent.
Well, in the UK there is no money left after buying a couple of RM badged beauts. RM: the only company that makes Apple stuff look cheap.
Lots of schools these days have lots of iPads.
However the logistics of managing them and their installed apps is a pain in the butt, even with Meraki or Lightspeed.
They also fall short in many ways such as printing hires images over wifi networks, and the broadcast, non routable nature of most Apple protocols.
Chromebooks are a much better fir for the education market.
They also fall short in many ways such as printing hires images over wifi networks
Not sure if this is really a fault of the iPad per sa. Having repeatedly suffered from failed Airprint's and printers hung waiting for submission completion of an Airprint job - that according to the iPad were successful, I do wonder if the real problem lies in the way Airprint/IPP is designed and implemented, both by Apple and by the printer vendors. I draw this conclusion because whilst an Airprint can fail, the same print using the vendor's own utility or Google cloud print doesn't.
Because printer vendors don't tend to list the Airprint/IPP pdl formats supported, I don't know what true enterprise grade printers support, but I note that it seems consumer grade printers only support the raster and/or jpeg image formats. So I've noticed that what I thought was a simple 4MB Jpeg print job, can actually be a 40MB+ transfer over the sub-50Mbps WiFi.
It would be nice to get the protocol analyzer out and investigate further, but a complete investigation would also involve looking at the printer and how it manages memory, although you would have thought a 40MB print file shouldn't be a problem for a printer with 128MB of memory...
As for the broadcast non-routable nature of the protocols, whilst I understand this can cause problems in enterprise deployments, in smaller deployments it's not so much of an issue, although things have been a little more problematic, I've had problems with routers and powerline adaptors not correctly handling broadcast traffic across all interfaces, although most have been fixed by firmware updates.
However the logistics of managing them and their installed apps is a pain in the butt
Agree, it does seem that Apple, like MS, aren't to keen on actually adding features to their OS's that actually improve provisioning and device management.
"Not sure if this is really a fault of the iPad per sa"
Yeah, I had some printers print fine, and others just not accept print jobs, Bonjour print service was running fine, seems some printers needed firmware updates, and I wasn't up for that, I just made the staff pick up print jobs from the Library printer which worked. Plus it meant they had to think before they printed, the amount of printed waste was horrendous.
Yes. Europe completely missed the boat during those years. I think you got screwed on purpose in exactly the same way the U.S. got screwed on phones until the iphone. What we used for cell phones compared to you was pathetic. All you needed for that Apple II was the software. And a lot less paid in tariffs maybe. You know that Apple clones were basically free right?
The US had less need for cell phones because of our very advanced wired network. Pretty much anywhere in the country not only could you get a landline but it would be turned on within a day or so of your request.
In places with a less robust wired phone network there was a shortage of lines and could often be a long wait before you phone was installed.
It was a lot easier (cheaper) to install a cell network than expand the landline infrastructure.
We get a lot of end of lease iPads where I work, the ones coming back from schools are usually pretty well trashed by the kids who used them (big surprise)! With my experience with Apple, (the company), when it was time for me to get a nice tablet I bought a Samsung.
the pope is still a catholic.
It might surprise you to learn that this is indeed a matter of theological debate.
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Ever since the days of the //e and GS, Apple has been trying to saturate secondary schools and high schools, as well as offering deep deep cuts to school personnel and university students. I remember back in the day, my apple rep implied that their goal was to go through the kids and teachers and stick with what they know.
Unfortunately, Apple didn't extend the same kind of discounts to businesses, otherwise they'd be kicking the snot out of the wintel platform. Now that pi and chrome books are starting to saturate that vertical market, it's only a matter of time that they either force apple to focus on just iPhones and get out of the pc/tablet business all together.
And that's still a lot for a glorified picture frame
Pretty much sums it up. Mind you TVs aren't much more than that and you can see the advantage of cheap tablets for families on long journeys. But then price really does start to matter.
I still think there's something in it for Apple to go all out on ARM and make and I-Pad Pro worthy of the name: with a real keyboard. Maybe they're hoping the clearance sale will give them the room to do so?
Kudos for the Pi-Top reference: great little things that you can run off AA batteries and tinker with the hardware.
@big_D
I, too, love the Model M style Apple keyboard (I have a Model M as well but it's just so loud). Looks filthy because it's white but it's the one I can type best on.
Which particular MacBook Pro keyboards are you referring to? Didn't notice much difference when I switched to an early 2016 model (Thunderbolt not USB-C). But seeing that this is usually hooked up to my KVM (Mac HDMI to DVI-Dual-link works great) I guess I haven't give it much of a workout yet.
Apple are no longer innovators, they are just another tech company peddling average gear.
Their laptops are mid spec and expensive
Their phones are mid spec and expensive
Their TV box has never been any good despite repeated tries selling it
The ipad was a decent tablet, but charging £150 for a keyboard cover and £90 for a "pencil" is just ridiculous considering these things should really be included in the first place.
Look at the Nokia N95, it was absolutely massive in 2007/2008 and pretty much everybody had one, even despite the high price. Then two things happened .... Nokia were stuck on S60v3 and never pushed forward, and the follow up N96 was rubbish. It gave competitors like Sony ericsson and Apple a chance to get in to the market. I can see the same thing happening to Apple with competitors like Huawei and such lining up.
This new ipad is basically parts left over from the factory floor shoved in a clearance box.
Apple may think they are too big (and arrogant) to fail but history tells us otherways.
Nokia couldn't have made an iPhone-like device based on S60 (an OS based around hardware memory constraints that were then becoming less relevant, and it wasn't designed for hardware graphics acceleration as iOS was), though they of course had a couple of Linux-y OSs in the works that would have done the job nicely. He'll, Nokia had some iPaddy concept devices too. Anyway, the Nokia post-mortem has been covered on other Reg articles.
Nokia released Symbian 3 in 2010 and followed it up with Symbian Anna and Belle. So maybe three years late, but the N8 also released in 2010 compared favourably to the iPhone 4, which you had to hold the right way if you wanted to make a call and had a rather naff camera compared to the N8's 20MP full HD one.
Then Elop came along and burnt the platform.
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