Apple drops price of 10th Gen iPad from $399 to $349
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I expected the 9th to die, I didn't expect the price cut for the 10th.
I recently bought a 10th and despite it's awkward positioning in the lineup, it is a noticeably nicer bit of hardware than the 9th. The price cut removes that awkwardness and it's now really very good indeed.
Maybe I misjudge the Ars audience (mostly more wealthy than average Americans?) but I'm expecting most of the chatter on here to be about the higher models - but this to be the change that affects most people.
What's going to happen to a lot of POS, school and related hardware support is a really interesting thing. They'll probably drag out usage for as long as possible on the 9th and earlier ecosystem they have and then there'll be a surge for this I think?
I recently bought a 10th and despite it's awkward positioning in the lineup, it is a noticeably nicer bit of hardware than the 9th. The price cut removes that awkwardness and it's now really very good indeed.
Maybe I misjudge the Ars audience (mostly more wealthy than average Americans?) but I'm expecting most of the chatter on here to be about the higher models - but this to be the change that affects most people.
What's going to happen to a lot of POS, school and related hardware support is a really interesting thing. They'll probably drag out usage for as long as possible on the 9th and earlier ecosystem they have and then there'll be a surge for this I think?
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I've been debating buying an iPad but I absolutely did not want to invest in any more Lightning devices. I'll take $20 extra to get the USB-C port I guess.
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So does this use the pencil 2 or the USB-C pencil (and pencil 1 with dongle)? The picture makes it look like it has an attachment point for it on the side
edit: oops, this is just a price drop, no kind of refresh for the 10th gen
edit: oops, this is just a price drop, no kind of refresh for the 10th gen
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Looks like the 9th gen is likely EOL now. I was wondering how long they were going to keep the last lightning device in the lineup around.
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They killed the 9th on the 200th anniversary of it's release?
Apple what have you done!?
Late edit: to explain: it's the 200th anniversary of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony today. I thought this was a hilarious coincidence, but hey as they say comedy is like vivisection.
Apple what have you done!?
Late edit: to explain: it's the 200th anniversary of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony today. I thought this was a hilarious coincidence, but hey as they say comedy is like vivisection.
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My kids have older iPad models and will presumably eventually get newer ones, but how do you get back to the desktop without a home button? I've never really used one very much, but they seem to use the button pretty frequently.
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Yeah but now with the price cut by Apple maybe it'll go to ~$250 at Costco like the 9th Gen is now.
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My iPad Air 2 worked perfectly fine. The only reason why I replaced it with an Air 5 is because the battery finally died (and the screen was flaking out from being dropped one too many times). I feel iPad is a mature product, the Apple Pencil is fun --- what other reasons are there to upgrade? Gaming? I play a few boardgames on iPad, that's it. For anything else, use a proper computer.
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I really dislike the trend to remove bezels. Far too easy to inadvertently be touching a part of the screen.. so your intended inputs don't get recognized properly.
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You swipe up from bottom of screen, takes about an hour to get used to after that you don’t miss the home button anymore.
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My Air 2 is still alive and kicking. Knock on wood.
As is my 2013 Macbook pro (which I'm using right now..).
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The 10th Gen iPad is a great consumption/family device at $349 (or less, with 3rd party sales), but the A14 processor is a bit long in the tooth (debuting in 2020's iPhone 12). How long will it continue to get OS upgrades and how well will they run?
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My Air 2 entered retirement; it is now permanently stationed on my very obsolete Bose speaker dock. It continues streaming music just fine.
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Swipe up from the bottom of the screen. Takes half an hour to acclimatize to, and then it's like you've never done it any other way.
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I suspect other than a few people who have incredible amounts of disposable income, most people here would have an ipad or ipad mini and not airs/pros.
My 9th gen is a media consumption device only and it really suffers nothing under my ipad pro (that's used for work). Performance from a video consumption aspect is identical.
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Regarding the price:
The 9th gen iPad was introduced in September of 2021 for $329. The CPI Inflation Calculator says that's equal to $374.60 today.
It's a great deal, and if I wanted to replace any of the iPads my family uses now, that's the one I'd get.
Interestingly, the iPad mini, introduced alongside the 9th gen back in September of 2021, got no update today.
So the newest iPad mini you can buy is 31 months old!
The 9th gen iPad was introduced in September of 2021 for $329. The CPI Inflation Calculator says that's equal to $374.60 today.
It's a great deal, and if I wanted to replace any of the iPads my family uses now, that's the one I'd get.
Interestingly, the iPad mini, introduced alongside the 9th gen back in September of 2021, got no update today.
So the newest iPad mini you can buy is 31 months old!
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That makes more sense. I found it odd that the price difference between 9th and 10th was just $70. But if the actual difference was $120, that makes more sense.
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Yeah, one of my kiddos inherited my iPhone X, and I got the younger one a used XR off of Boost. Neither phones have a physical home button and neither kiddo had an issue figuring it out—they didn't even ask!
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I bought a 9th gen recently because my phone still has a lightning connector. One less cord to carry around.
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While the fashion-conscious may sneer that the G9 was two hundred years old in its design, I assure you it was only released in 2021 and that specific chassis size was from 2019.
How it works in theory: You swipe up from the bottom edge and it takes you back to the Home screen.
How it has worked for ME PERSONALLY every single day since I bought my Air in 2020:
(I know the majority of you don't care and have no empathy for what I write on this topic, so it's in a spoiler for you to merrily skip over.)
I PERSONALLY swipe up from the bottom and it ignores me 70% of the time. I swipe up 1-3x more and if I didn't swipe far enough, it takes me to the app switcher or the Dock.
For those of you who are not good at reading comprehension, I want to emphasise this is my personal everyday experience and what happens with your fingers on your devices has NO BEARING on what happens to me.
I have twenty-seven apps that I use every day on my iPad Air, which means I have to suffer with the unreliable app switching at least thirty times a day.
As you can imagine, I LOATHE using my iPad Air and have publicly vocalised here that the experience is so horrid that even though I am currently running five iPads at the same time (plus two computers), once the iPads die, I will be without any mobile devices because having no Home button is just that much of a hinderance for me.
It looks fantastic, but just as if someone produced an automobile with the doors intentionally welded shut, it's a usability hassle for those of us who are just unable to leap through the window thirty+ times a day.
To endear itself to me even further, there is a 40% chance that swiping to switch apps will then rotate the screen 90º. This happens even on my Home button-equipped iPads so I suppose I'm just "not swiping correctly."
After doing this 30x a day for 3.5 years, that's 38,325 times I've had to deal with app switching failing on me. If I was ever going to become acclimated to it, I imagine it would have happened by now. In that same time frame, the Home buttons on all of my other iPads have worked with roughly 100% accuracy.
As a reminder, this post is all about my 38,325 poor experiences and not anyone else's.
Perhaps most people don't have twenty-seven daily apps and don't mind swiping being hopelessly unreliable but I am often in a rush and there's nothing more enjoyable than dealing with balky gestures which were hastily tacked on because some executive thought iPad would "look cool" if it had no Home button.
There are also the issues that: 1) Since iPad Air is a virtually featureless slab, I somehow manage to pick it up wrong 75% of the time. I go to press the volume button and it's on the other side and I have to carefully rotate the (as Apple calls it) "sheet of glass" 180º or my thumb is over the camera or if I have the TouchID active, then I have to hunt around the edge for the Top button. Not to mention that while many apps are orientation-less, some popular well-maintained apps such as the hit app Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will only work in ONE orientation so there is only one way you can hold iPad, which is easy to do if you have the visual indication that a Home button offers. 2) Since there's no headphone jack, I must use a USB-C adapter because virtually no one makes over-ear noise cancelling headphones these days and in my experience, BT introduces a lag. This means I can't use headphones and charge simultaneously (maybe there's a third party adapter which I don't have but still, we didn't need to spend MORE money for this functionality before) and the adapter has a tendency to fall out. If a proper headphone plug falls out of a jack, you can push it back in and it'll work immediately. On the other hand, a USB-C to headphone jack adapter has a significant delay between when you insert it and when you can hear so this, as with Top button TouchID, is a clumsy replacement.
I do wish some company would make computing devices for the rest of us.
Edit: Since Apple removed the Home button, in order to get Home, they added the Home bar to the "bottom" of the screen. This is a translucent line that sometimes disappears but is usually visible.
If you take a screen shot, most of the time, the Home bar is branded onto your image. That makes me ever so thrilled they removed the Home button.
Also, there are times when iPadOS gets confused and thinks down is somewhere not down. (This just happened to me yet again with the latest iPadOS 17 version, hence this edit.) So, it'll draw the Home bar on one of the sides but when you try to swipe the Home bar, nothing happens. So you must test the other sides until you find where down really is.
Fantastic.
For those of you who are not good at reading comprehension, I want to emphasise this is my personal everyday experience and what happens with your fingers on your devices has NO BEARING on what happens to me.
I have twenty-seven apps that I use every day on my iPad Air, which means I have to suffer with the unreliable app switching at least thirty times a day.
As you can imagine, I LOATHE using my iPad Air and have publicly vocalised here that the experience is so horrid that even though I am currently running five iPads at the same time (plus two computers), once the iPads die, I will be without any mobile devices because having no Home button is just that much of a hinderance for me.
It looks fantastic, but just as if someone produced an automobile with the doors intentionally welded shut, it's a usability hassle for those of us who are just unable to leap through the window thirty+ times a day.
To endear itself to me even further, there is a 40% chance that swiping to switch apps will then rotate the screen 90º. This happens even on my Home button-equipped iPads so I suppose I'm just "not swiping correctly."
After doing this 30x a day for 3.5 years, that's 38,325 times I've had to deal with app switching failing on me. If I was ever going to become acclimated to it, I imagine it would have happened by now. In that same time frame, the Home buttons on all of my other iPads have worked with roughly 100% accuracy.
As a reminder, this post is all about my 38,325 poor experiences and not anyone else's.
Perhaps most people don't have twenty-seven daily apps and don't mind swiping being hopelessly unreliable but I am often in a rush and there's nothing more enjoyable than dealing with balky gestures which were hastily tacked on because some executive thought iPad would "look cool" if it had no Home button.
There are also the issues that: 1) Since iPad Air is a virtually featureless slab, I somehow manage to pick it up wrong 75% of the time. I go to press the volume button and it's on the other side and I have to carefully rotate the (as Apple calls it) "sheet of glass" 180º or my thumb is over the camera or if I have the TouchID active, then I have to hunt around the edge for the Top button. Not to mention that while many apps are orientation-less, some popular well-maintained apps such as the hit app Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will only work in ONE orientation so there is only one way you can hold iPad, which is easy to do if you have the visual indication that a Home button offers. 2) Since there's no headphone jack, I must use a USB-C adapter because virtually no one makes over-ear noise cancelling headphones these days and in my experience, BT introduces a lag. This means I can't use headphones and charge simultaneously (maybe there's a third party adapter which I don't have but still, we didn't need to spend MORE money for this functionality before) and the adapter has a tendency to fall out. If a proper headphone plug falls out of a jack, you can push it back in and it'll work immediately. On the other hand, a USB-C to headphone jack adapter has a significant delay between when you insert it and when you can hear so this, as with Top button TouchID, is a clumsy replacement.
I do wish some company would make computing devices for the rest of us.
Edit: Since Apple removed the Home button, in order to get Home, they added the Home bar to the "bottom" of the screen. This is a translucent line that sometimes disappears but is usually visible.
If you take a screen shot, most of the time, the Home bar is branded onto your image. That makes me ever so thrilled they removed the Home button.
Also, there are times when iPadOS gets confused and thinks down is somewhere not down. (This just happened to me yet again with the latest iPadOS 17 version, hence this edit.) So, it'll draw the Home bar on one of the sides but when you try to swipe the Home bar, nothing happens. So you must test the other sides until you find where down really is.
Fantastic.
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I keep refreshing my browser like every 5 minutes, waiting for word on the iPad mini.
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How long until the 10th gen has a $279 sale at BB/Target/etc.? Whenever that happens, its a screaming deal.
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Glad I picked up the 9th gen at Costco a couple months ago for the kids. $249 and works with our older Apple Pencil v1. Family sharing or whatever it is means they get to use my copy of Procreate.
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They will probably update it later this year, together with the Mini.
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I use the hell out of that button. 2 pushes for app switcher. 1 press to wake it up.
Ah well, I've had mine for 7 or 8 years now. Probably can squeeze a couple more out of it.
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So it will become near useless as a device used for as part of a sport. I use one for tactics and navigation on a racing sailboat but this will stop for the same reason I had to stop using an iPhone in a waterproof protector on racing dinghies. The screen is both too sensitive and it becomes impossible to do what is needed without the app being accidentally closed and the settings for the race needing to be re-input which takes too long to be feasible.
I used to use an iPhone for navigation while mountain biking but the problems were similar when the button disappeared, so I picked up a Garmin with dedicated buttons. Same will have to happen for sailing. Back to small laptops on boats. Buttons are important. See the move with vehicles to put everything on the center console screen and the end user hatred of the trend.
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Yeah. The 9th gen has pretty consistently been on sale at someplace or another for $250 quite a while. So while the MSRP bump might only be $20 the actual bump is going to be $100 unless we start seeing the 10th gen going on similar sales. Since the $350 is already a price drop I suspect we might not see much in the way of sales on it but that may depend on how sales volume does.
I recently picked up a 9th gen iPad and I have been happy with it. The only USB-C Apple device we have is a M1 Air so I don't mind the lightning port at all. It's been a very media consumption focused device but it has worked well for that.
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)It was the last iPad still wearing vestiges of the design language of the original iPad. Between that and being the last one with lightning it's the end of an entire era of devices
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The base model iPad frequently goes on sale, it was easy to find the $329 model selling for $250. I'm pretty sure that the new buttonless iPad will be selling for <$300 soon enough.
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My guess is that the 10th-gen iPad, as the new base model available, will be routinely (if not perpetually) available from Amazon for no more than $300, given that you could get the 9th generation for $250 every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
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