Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

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Re: Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

Post by James Steele »

I have an old iPad 2 and it pretty much sucks now for most things. I've given up web stuff on it entirely. Just so slow. I have found a use for it, however. I run a VnC screen sharing app on it and have it set up in my guitar pedalboard setup allowing me to see the screen of my MacBook which is running the backing tracks on DP. I keep the Big Counter window open at the bottom half of the screen set to show marker names and in each chunk, at the very first tick of the first measure I put a Marker with the name of the song. That way when a chunk loads I can look down at the iPad on my pedalboard and get visual confirmation that the correct song is about to play and see the transport running.

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Re: Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

Post by stubbsonic »

Shooshie wrote:I love my iPad.
...
Are iPads worth it? I wouldn't want to be without it.

Shoosh
MMMV (my mileage may vary) :D

I often refer to my "love/hate-- mostly hate" relationship to my iPad. But I should say, I really love my RMBP-- especially in comparison to the iPad.

That said, I do find it to be a kind of fascinating device with some surprising capabilities and a few wonderful apps. That score reading experience was pretty lame. I get that some people like it. I really hated it. (MMMV)
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Re: Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

Post by Shooshie »

You know, where I've bonded the most with my iPad is on the road. I've taken it on some really long distance road trips, and I don't even bother with maps anymore. I just tell Siri "Plot a course to.... " and tell her where I want to go. Doesn't matter if it's a Discount Tire Center for some new tires (which I did in Asheville, NC one year), "the nearest Starbucks" (which I do often on the road), or a city or hotel, it finds it and starts instantly telling me which way to go. I keep it with me, read email, post on forums or Facebook, take pictures or edit them and post them, play games, talk face-to-face with people, and dozens of other things all without much regard to whether there is wifi or not. It sits in the seat beside me with a map constantly moving to show where I am. I could go on, but it's just more of the same. I'm addicted to my iOS devices.

Even when I'm recording, I may be doing something else — related, perhaps — on the iPad or iPhone. Love these things!

Shooshie
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Re: Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

Post by Babz »

I was a late adopter of the iPad, jumping in with the original iPad Air in like Dec. of 2013. (It was my first iPad and I'm still using it today.) The platform was just beginning to take off at that point. The hardware had finally matured, and there was something of an explosion of biodiversity of new software species hitting the app store at during those years. Rapid evolution has continued ever since.

At this point, the iPad has basically replaced the desktop computer for me for everything except for serious pro audio/video and graphic design work. Email, texting, social media, watching videos, ordering pizza, whatever… I only sit down at the desktop when I need to type a longer message — like this!

My now nearly 4-year old iPad still serves me well for most things, but is beginning to reach the first stages of obsolescence. If I weren’t budget challenged, I would have already replaced it with one of the current models. I would imagine anything earlier than mine would indeed be frustrating and unworkable. So, no, they don't all "suck big time" But consider how much an early Mac would suck compared to today. And the pace of iOS evolution has been exponentially faster than it would have been in desktop years.

The current models have quadruple the RAM, several generations faster processors, larger storage capacity, retina display, better camera, etc., etc…

As for whether or not the device has evolved beyond “toy” status… I bought the iPad primarily thinking of it as an ebook reader. And it has become that (I can never go back to paper books -- I can't believe I'm saying that!), but I soon discovered its enormous potential as a serious music-making platform. As many of you may know, in the last few years I have started incorporating the iPad into just about every music project I do. I even adopted an alter ego “Lady App-titude” for any project that uses iPad apps — which is pretty much all projects nowadays. I still mix in DP and could never do serious work without many third party products that are only available on the desktop (UAD, Native Instruments, Izotope, to name a few…).

But the iOS platform has evolved in leaps and bounds and is getting more serious all the time. As a relatively new platform, it still has some limitations, but it is also exploding with innovation and cool new apps that seem to come out every day (though I perhaps not as during the 2014-2016 period, which is starting to look like golden age now). There are just so many cool apps, from inspiration powerhouses like Korg Gadget or UVI Beathawk to uniquely expressive touch screen experiences like Geosynth, TC-11, or Animoog. And just this week, the much anticipated Beatmaker 3 promises to be a new gamechanger.

If you want to see what the iPad can do, you can check out some of the projects I’ve been doing w/ DP and iPad apps at this link. I’ll let you be the judge on whether these are “toy” projects or not. :mrgreen:

https://soundcloud.com/lady-app-titude

Best,
Babz/Lady App-titude
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Re: Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

I use my original iPad to run picture in rehearsal as well as some sound generation. The new one for the more computeresque tasks and more recent sound apps. Love music handwriting recognition! $100 Apple pen is worth it for drawing apps.
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Re: Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

Post by Gravity Jim »

Yes, they all suck. And not just a little; they all suck big-time.

That's why the product has been such a dismal failure.
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Re: Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

Gravity Jim wrote:Yes, they all suck. And not just a little; they all suck big-time.

That's why the product has been such a dismal failure.
:lol:
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Re: Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

Post by stubbsonic »

Gravity Jim wrote:Yes, they all suck. And not just a little; they all suck big-time.

That's why the product has been such a dismal failure.
And never in the history of human civilization has something brilliant ever been ignored, nor has anything mediocre ever gotten disproportionate hype. :P
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Re: Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

stubbsonic wrote:...nor has anything mediocre ever gotten disproportionate hype. :P
Except for Pia Zadora...
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Re: Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

Post by James Steele »

I think the "suckage" just comes into play with older iPads and web browsing. I'm not blaming Apple. Those are just really old products. I still find uses for my iPad 2 but it seems slower and not nearly as useful to me today. I should probably upgrade to a newer one. Just not a big financial priority at the moment.
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Re: Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

For about 80% of what I want to do, the original iPad is fine. My main reasons to get the iPad Pro was to work on digital drawing and paInting (my next career phase), music handwriting recognition and iOS music apps for live shows. It's great having 13" screen and a neat camera and all that, but the original iPad is still very useful. It's a very capable machine.

BTW, I got the WiFi only version and create a hotspot on my iPhone 5s. Works great.
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Re: Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

Post by stubbsonic »

Continuing off-topic musings...

Looks like the Pro has at least improved the stereo speaker implementation by including 4 speakers and intelligently routing stereo based on orientation. They still aren't front facing, which is a little disappointing. I wonder if case developers ever work speaker reflection into their designs.
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Re: Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

Post by mikehalloran »

MIDI Life Crisis wrote: BTW, I got the WiFi only version and create a hotspot on my iPhone 5s. Works great.
Me, too, and it works great.

Some cell providers disable that functionality to force you to buy 'hot spot' hockey pucks. AT&T doesn't, one of the reasons I went with them from T-Mobile.
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Re: Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

Post by BobK »

I jumped in with the iPad 2, and am now on an iPad Air 2 (my second iPad).

I'm gonna start with the stuff I don't like to do with tablets: :D

Although I do read ebooks sometimes, mostly reference stuff, I generally don't like reading books on electronic devices. I often like to jump around, look up stuff in the index and table of contents, and read footnotes, and that's usually a PITA on e-readers. E-books are definitely convenient when traveling, but often I still bring a paperback.

I hate typing on touch-screens. I bought a cheap Bluetooth keyboard years ago but don't use it. Sometimes I use Apple's voice recognition for writing emails, but usually I spend so much time making corrections that it would've been faster to type from the start.

A couple of years ago, tech and productivity writer David Sparks included me in his "Home Screen" series, where I describe some of my favorite music-related apps. Nothing earth-shattering there, but I do use my iPad a lot.

https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2015/9/h ... -bob-karty

Couple of other cool apps: Sometimes I use "Drum School" to help my piano students understand what drummers do (or to learn patterns myself). The same developers also released "GuitAfrica", by the great guitarist Lionel Loueke, which has African popular music songs from different regions. You can play and mute the parts, and print out scores and parts.
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Re: Time for a new iPad, or do they ALL suck bigtime?

Post by Gravity Jim »

stubbsonic wrote:
Gravity Jim wrote:Yes, they all suck. And not just a little; they all suck big-time.

That's why the product has been such a dismal failure.
And never in the history of human civilization has something brilliant ever been ignored, nor has anything mediocre ever gotten disproportionate hype. :P
Nice try, stubbsonic, but that's illogical. What you've presented is called a "strawman." My little joke wasn't a claim that all successful things are good (i.e., McDonald's), or that good things never go undiscovered. I was simply making the point, albeit in a jocular way, that the OP's question, "... or do they ALL suck bigtime?" was an emotionally overblown reaction to a problem with an obsolete version of an iPad, and that the product's massive success, not just in sales but in literally creating a new product category, would tend to indicate that iPads do not suck, either bigtime or otherwise.

Also, as all of us in the advertising and marketing businesses know, "hype" will not create sustained success (despite widely held but incorrect opinion). All it can do is generate trial, but if trial reveals to consumers that the product is generally bad or useless, the initial success won't continue. "Great advertising just makes a bad product fail faster." - William Bernbach, founder of Dolye, Dane, Bernbach.

So, there ya go.
Jim Bordner

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