Tag Archives: iPad 3

Shelf life…

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From the moment you buy any new bit of technology, the clock is running. Call it shelf life, planned obsolesce, or corporate money grubbing, the only great truism in high tech, is the next great thing is always just around the corner. Another, more or less unspoken truth has always been that Apple released it’s new and improved products about a year after the last model came out. Amortized out over a period of 12 months, even a $700 iPad could almost be considered a yearly purchase, especially when you account for its relatively high resale value. By the time it was said and done, the total cost of ownership of my first two iPads came out to something like $20 a month… or one vinti vanilla latte a week.

In rolling out the iPad 4 just seven months after the 3rd iteration launched, Apple has thrown my TCOO calculation all out of whack. The device got a serious spec bump and I would love to have the additional processing power/speed, but the fact is there’s nothing the 4 does that the 3 can’t do (almost) as well. This time around, I’m just not seeing the typical “killer” feature that would usually drive me to switch to the latest and greatest model. Of course that explains why that iPad 3 has been discontinued rather than simply sold at a lower price point. The specs and performance are just too close to the new flagship. I know there are plenty of people who will be up early on Friday to drop in their order, though. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t strongly consider it if for no other reason than to be able to use the same charging cable for my phone and my tablet. Unless you’re in that position, it’s hard to describe just how annoying that actually is. Still, it doesn’t look like I’m going to be a buyer for iPad 4.

Having ruled out full sized iPad out of the equation still leaves me to consider the iPad mini. Since I many use my iPad as an e-reader, I have to admit this one is tempting. I like the idea of a smaller/lighter device, but don’t think I can get past what feels like a “downgrade” in specs going from iPad 3 to iPad mini, by which I mean losing the retina display and not gaining anything particularly impressive in terms of overall performance. I’m really going to have to hold on in my hand before I’m ready to pass judgment one way or the other.

Don’t take any of this as a slam against the world’s most valuable company, because it’s not. I think Apple rolled out a truly ridiculous number of new, improved, and magical devices today. If there’s any of them that I’m super desirous of at the moment, it would be the new retina 13-inch MacBook Pro, but with its 2008-model ancestor basically still running like it was new out of the box and a Mac mini doing all of the heavy lifting in this house, a $1700 bill from the Apple store just isn’t on the table at the moment.

It seems I’m at that uncomfortable point in product life cycles where there just isn’t much incentive to change what’s currently working. If I weren’t already sitting so close to the state of the art, though, any of the new toys Tim and Company spent the afternoon showing off would be a pretty damned impressive addition to the collection.

Shut up and take it!

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All I want to do is give you $600 odd dollars. Why, oh why won’t you turn on your interwebs and let me fork it over no questions asked. With all the site crashing, “We’ll be back soon”, and freezing apps, I’m starting to wonder if you really want my money. A company that really cared about me wouldn’t be this hesitant to shake every last dime possible out of my pockets. Once again, you’ve deeply disappointed me on pre-order day, Apple. But I just can’t quit you.

EDIT: Managed to sneak an order in at 5:29 PM. Regardless of what Technorati says, this blog is clearly influential in tech circles.

And then there was Three…

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Most normal people aren’t particularly attenuated to the comings and goings of fancy new electronic devices. By now you’ve certainly realized that at least in this category, I’m not like most people. What can I say, I’ve got a thing for well-designed bundles of chips, plastic, aluminum, and glass.

I keep telling myself that I’m only taking a look at things for “informational purposes” only. My iPad 2, at a year old, is still pretty much a marvel of modern technology. It runs like a top and has more storage than I can ever reasonably expect to use in a tablet. Really, it’s every bit as good a device today as it was the day I unboxed it last March. Sure, the new one will have a touch more processing power, a higher resolution screen, and a few other bits that make it just a little more polished than the one I have now, but is that enough to justify the inevitable standing in line or waiting around the house all day for the UPS guy to show up? The logical, well-reasoned answer, of course, is no, no it isn’t.

For better or worse, I’ve drunk the Kool Aid. Normal standards of logic, need, or justification really don’t apply. I guess as far as addictions go, things could be worse. At least I only have to go out looking for my fix a couple of times a year. Unfortunately, like any other self-respecting addict, once I’ve gotten a whiff of there being a new and more potent fix on the market, I’m pretty much helpless in the face of my own excitement to get a taste of it. Just like every year around this time I am officially waiting to see the technical specifications before making a decision. In the less affected part of my head I’m even thinking that this might be the year to ride it out and wait to see what iPad 4 has under the hood. If I were a betting man, though, I wouldn’t wager against seeing an iPad 2 posted for sale here on these very pages in the not too distant future.

Molasses…

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I don’t expect alot from my tech, but when I do tend to expect is that it runs quickly when I hit the on switch. Up until a few weeks ago, my laptop delivered as much zip and performance as it did the day I took it out of the box. Now it’s gotten so laggy that I can barely stand to use it. I’ve tinkered around with some of the settings, cleaned things up as best I can without making a major effort, and have pretty much been met with more chop and even less vim and vigor. I’ve got plenty of hard drive space left, sufficient RAM, and a machine that’s acting like it’s severely underpowered. Spending your off hours trying to diagnose a sick laptop isn’t the way you want to spend your time when you’re pretending to moonlight as a real life struggling writer. I need my laptop that just works, to just work and not give me a crap ton of problems right now. I’m going to try to nurse it through the next few days and the dedicate as much time as necessary this weekend to put right. Failing this weekend’s heroic efforts to make a repair, it might be time to bite the bullet and spend some of that tax refund on something shiny and new with some plussed up processing power.

With the impending launch of the 3rd gen iPad, it might be time to consider going back to an overpowered desktop for home using the iPad for all my mobile needs. Sure, it’s another one of those fancy first world problems, but it’s the one that’s in my face giving me fits right now, and that’s the one that always gets tackled first.