Do iPads have ANY competition in 2022?
Mac Address
·Mac Address
·2023-05-05
·
1,761 words · ~8 min read
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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.
1:09
Can I get a white mocha?
1:13
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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3:49
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4:15
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.
9:47
If you like the iPad more than Android,
9:49
give this video a like.
9:50
And if you have an Android tablet looking enviously at us
9:53
with iPads, then you must subscribe.
9:55
Now, when I wrote this script,
9:57
I didn't know about Apple unveiling State Manager
10:00
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?