WEBVTT

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Looks like an iPad, right?

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Got the flat edge, the rounded liquid retina corners,

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smart connector, four sets of speaker grills.

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But it's not an iPad.

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It's a Samsung Galaxy Tab S8.

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On a Mac channel?

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Yes, because I've often long wondered

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why people buy Android tablets.

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Sure, there are many options available,

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especially at lower prices.

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But from what I've read in tech publications and reviews,

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Android is just nowhere near iPadOS in the tablet space.

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And yet, one of my best friends

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has been an Android tablet faithful for years.

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And real recently, my dad made me help him

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find a suitable Android tablet,

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despite my mother and I insisting on an iPad.

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They may not be many, but people are buying Android tablets.

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And I don't know, maybe I'm missing something.

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Maybe Android is worth some attention.

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So, let's get started.

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I used this one for 10 days to find out.

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Can I get a white mocha?

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At Google's latest I.O.,

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they announced an upcoming Pixel tablet.

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And that might actually bode well for this guy,

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because it means that Google's putting effort

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into making Android work for tablets.

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The thing is, they've tried this before,

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many times, in fact.

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Let me rewind.

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A year after the launch of the iPad,

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Google released Android version three, Honeycomb,

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made exclusively for Android.

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It featured a two-pane UI for email and contacts,

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browser Windows with tabs,

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and a larger keyboard for larger screens.

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The hope was that developers would write tablet apps

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like they were doing for iOS, but they didn't.

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So what we ended up getting is just very wide phone apps.

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The Nexus 7, released a year later, was more reasonable.

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Basically a big phone before phones got really big.

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The extra real estate made it nicer for watching and reading,

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but didn't push the capabilities.

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And because it was only $200,

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people didn't have huge expectations for it either.

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Apple dutifully and incrementally worked away

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at their iPad in that time,

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making it more useful through some multitasking,

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new features, and accessories.

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This evolution was a test of patience,

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but it's quite staggering how much more capable

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the iPad is than its predecessor or its competitors.

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Oh, right, the Samsung.

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Sales-wise, Samsung is the only game around

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in the Android tablet space.

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And this, their brand new Galaxy Tab S8,

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is the flagship model.

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It's available in three sizes and many prices.

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This is the smallest and provides the closest competitor

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to the recently updated iPad Air.

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I'll happily admit that it's a decent tablet.

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Performance is snappy,

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and the high refresh rate screen looks nice.

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It's a pleasant departure from the experience I had

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with the Samsung Galaxy A53.

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And it even has many compelling features

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that the iPad doesn't even offer.

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The webcam is in the correct place.

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On the long side, there's a fingerprint reader

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and face recognition.

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And perhaps the feature I'm most envious of

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is the micro SD card slot for expansion.

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Handy if you wanna back up photos taken

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with a non-mobile phone camera,

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or just expand storage without shelling out hundreds

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of dollars.

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This is what made the iPad a non-starter for my dad.

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So the Android tablet looks pretty compelling.

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They fixed it.

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Well, not quite.

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So yes, it has an SD card slot, but look at it.

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It's not centered.

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Neither is the USB-C port either.

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Okay, so this is pedantic hardware niggles.

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But take a look at this.

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If I have to continue to type on this on-screen keyboard,

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I'm going to pull a phalange.

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These wide buttons are just ridiculous.

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Apple, in their wisdom,

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kept their on-screen keyboard proportional.

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Samsung's isn't even that bad.

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Look at Google's.

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I swear their honeycomb keyboard was better.

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Unfortunately, there are some great tablet apps

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that I use regularly that aren't even available on Android.

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Craigslist is a great app.

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It's called Procreate, to name a few.

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And most of the ones that are available

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are just so much worse on Android.

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It's not even close.

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Here, take a look at this.

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On iPad, Twitter takes thoughtful advantage

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of portrait and landscape orientations,

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whereas on Android, it doesn't.

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Look at my tweets.

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They span the whole width.

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This is too big.

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Some apps like AutoTrader or Kijiji

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won't even rotate to landscape.

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Same with Instagram.

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Wait, what?

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You can get Instagram on a tablet?

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That's it. I'm buying Android.

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Figuring out multitasking has been a pain point

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on the iPad for a while now,

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but on the Galaxy, whoa, is it ever unintuitive.

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You wanna go into split screen?

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You have to tap on an app icon in the app switcher,

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but instead of that going next to the app

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you already have open,

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it asks what you wanna fill the other space with.

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The app I had open.

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Another option is to drag over this little nub,

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which conceals a dock from where you can drag apps out.

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And there's more.

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You can make apps free floating,

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a bit like slide over with some more flexibility

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at the cost of usability.

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And if you go back home,

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they become a little bobble that groups together

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if you have multiple floating Windows,

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which reminds me of Samsung's DeX feature,

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which turns your Android tablet into a desktop computer

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ready for a mouse and keyboard.

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It looks like a big Samsung phone.

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Some people got mad at Riley for ignoring DeX

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in his ShortCircuit Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra unboxing,

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but there's really nothing to see here.

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On a small screen like this, it's not a big deal.

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It's really more of a hassle to be managing

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and moving around all these Windows that are even smaller.

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If you think that this is going to be

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a suitable computer replacement, well, good luck to you.

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This is the opposite of how the iPad works.

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Since Apple assumes you probably have multiples

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of their devices, they've given us universal control.

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So instead of extending your tablet into a computer,

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the iPad becomes an extension of your Mac.

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But with iPad OS 16,

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Apple appears to be going in Samsung's direction,

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with Stage Manager.

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It allows for the sort of app windowing

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people have been pining for.

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This, however, is not a desktop.

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Windows can be grouped, resized, and moved,

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but not to anywhere on screen.

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And we're still in beta,

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so we'll have to find out how it works later on.

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Though this seems like the iPad is getting closer to DeX,

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Apple is taking the approach of trickling concepts

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from the desktop to the tablet in an intentional way,

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instead of just dragging it around.

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So this year, we've been working hard

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to make Android tablets amazing.

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With their tablet announcement,

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Google showed the progress they made

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on their tablet interface for Android 13,

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and they updated apps to take advantage

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of the larger screen.

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Sound familiar?

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I have the beta installed on this Lenovo,

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and yeah, there are some good ideas in here.

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They're so good, I swear I've used them before.

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Hmm.

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It's neat to see Android make sense in this new era.

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But it's not the case for Android 13.

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It's not the case for Android 14.

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I mean, they're not the same as Android.

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They're actually much better.

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There's some progress in this form factor.

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It's taken long enough.

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Though we might actually see some progress this time around,

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though they're going to have to act fast,

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because as folding phones become more viable,

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developers are going to want to make sure

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their apps work well on them.

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And folding phones are just small tablets.

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That's a long ways off.

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But what about now?

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Well, if you have an iPhone, then you should get an iPad.

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And if you have an Android phone,

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well, you should probably still get an iPad.

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I'm not even gonna save all that much.

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This starts at $700.

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This iPad Air is $100 less.

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Sure, it's missing half the Samsung storage,

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but the Samsung is missing so much more.

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I missed GarageBand.

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I missed Universal Control.

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I missed the snappy app switching.

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I missed the squarer, more flexible aspect ratio.

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I missed slide over.

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I missed all the tablet optimized apps.

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I always debate people from our sister channel,

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LTT, about the iPad.

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They don't really understand

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how a focused tablet-like device can be useful.

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Why am I paying for two devices

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when I can get one foldable laptop that does it all?

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Well, maybe this mindset is present at Google too.

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I mean, they still do sell Chrome OS tablets for some reason,

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but it's the form factor, stupid.

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And if you don't get it, you won't commit to it,

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which is why after 11 years,

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Google is starting all over again with Android.

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I wish them luck, and maybe in a decade,

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I'll give it another go.

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Thanks for tapping into this Mac Address.

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If you like the iPad more than Android,

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give this video a like.

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And if you have an Android tablet looking enviously at us

00:09:53.180 --> 00:09:55.300
with iPads, then you must subscribe.

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Now, when I wrote this script,

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I didn't know about Apple unveiling State Manager

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and the windowing mode in the iPad OS,

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so it sort of changes the perspective just a little bit

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from what I initially thought.

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But I'm curious how you feel about the iPad

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becoming a little bit more desktop-like.

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Does it make it even better than an Android tablet?

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Or a little bit more like an Android tablet?