Like a capricious weather god, Apple has decreed that, for the second year in a row, its followers will have no spring. Or in any case, no spring eventwith this season’s new releases announced via an apologetic press release rather than the monumental stone tablets of a main presentation.
While this is disappointing (Apple events are hard work for the poor mistreated journalists who have to work hard to cover them, but the outburst is always fun), it’s also understandable. From what we’ve seen so far, the products just aren’t that exciting. It’s probably not worth having an entire meeting just to unveil a MacBook Air that looks exactly like the existing MacBook Air and, any day now, a few iPads.
There was a time when iPads looked like the future. Portable and productive, they represented the sacred principle of consolidation: just as several previously separate small gadgets – camera, pager, PDA, feature phone – had been combined into the smartphone, the tablet went further by combining the functions of the smartphone . smartphone and laptop. This was the final device. It was the one device to rule them all.
Things didn’t happen like that. Apple and other tablet makers took too long to develop the right software for the job, which meant people decided they didn’t want to give up their laptops. Smartphones, meanwhile, have gained momentum and cannibalized tablet sales in the other direction. And while iPads did find a role, it was as a niche product – the couch computer – that experts expected them to be phased out.
The iPad never really emerged as the post-PC device that Apple wanted it to be.
Eugene Wegman
(As a sidebar, the rise of the smartwatch and the coming era of the headset suggest that we are returning to multiple devices and that the days of the single device that does it all may be coming to an end, at least for a time. Let’s go back in 10 years when Vision Pro
The problem with couch computers, unfortunately for Apple, is that they don’t get upgraded very often. You don’t need a cutting-edge processor or better camera setup to read Wikipedia while watching The crown, and people I know have been using the same iPad for years. This doesn’t really represent a growing market, or even a recurring revenue stream worth talking about. It’s the kind of device you replace when you have to, not because the new one is faster or has a new color.
In this difficult context, Apple must try to generate enthusiasm for this year’s iPad releases. Rumors suggest it has a few tricks up its sleeve, namely a new, larger screen size for the iPad Air. While I think it’s a good idea in principle, as I’ve discussed at length in the past, it makes sense for Apple to decouple size and power, as it did with the iPhone 14 Plus in 2022, and allows customers to pick and choose upgrades rather than having to take them all in a package – this simply won’t get anyone excited, because for the unchallenging IT niche that there is, the 10.9-inch iPad is already more than enough since the end of the year. the last decade.
Advanced capitalism relies on dissatisfaction, and after that initial growth spurt when people were buying their first phones, the mobile industry depended on making the previous generation of phones look bad compared to the new models. The problem is that you can only do this for a limited period of time before reaching a point where all the low-hanging fruit has been picked, and the improvements are so iterative that they’re not worth the price of an upgrade. The smartphone and tablet arrive at this point around the same time. But that hurts the tablet even more, because its casual usage model is completely impervious to small upgrades. The average iPad owner would only upgrade if a new model with insane improvements came out. Or if the current strategy literally stopped working, which is not a strategy I would recommend.
As already mentioned, no one dazzles like Apple, and it’s entirely possible that it will defy expectations and find hype for its new iPads. (He might start by following my recipe for an exciting iPad reboot.) But the fact that he hasn’t bothered to organize a spring event suggests that he recognizes this one as a cause lost.
Just in case anyone cares, check out the potential new iPads here:
