iPad sales shove Apple to top of mobile computing tree

You can see why Apple thinks the iPad is "magical" - the fondleslab has again mysteriously lifted the company's share of the mobile computer market above even HP and Dell. Add iPad shipments to those of MacBooks Air, Pro and standard, and Apple shipped 13.6m mobile computers in Q2 2011, market watcher DisplaySearch says. That …

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you really bought one of those!

iPad purchases are akin to buying a 4 wheel car with only 3 tyres.

No one would buy a laptop that lets you view only a small part of the internet!

Just what is the sales pitch? "Hey, buy this machine and people will think your cool. (but you can't view everything on the internet, and everyone else will think that you are a mug)"

iPad owners have just publicly declared "I'm technically illiterate!" and "I'm easily swayed by perception over function"

Well done!

Hardly A class personnel.

[LPF]

lol

the bitterness in your post is hilarious

[TuckerJJ]

Blimey!

I don't know if anyone's written a script to generate auto troll responses to iPad articles, but the above post certainly reads like one.

[Anonymous Coward]

How is he bitter?

He's stating a bald fact -- as far as I can see. If he was so bitter he'd simply just go and buy an iPad. I'm sure he can afford to -- without resorting to selling a kidney.

He's not *bitter* -- he's just astonished.

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, you just declared

that you're a barely literate, opinionated idiot.

[StChom]

Blind.

It's both sad and funny (humor being based on drama) to see how misguided are these bigot, insulting to a whole class of users comments.

Continue to think Apple users are stupid sheeps, you're blinding yourself with hatred.

[RichyS]

Bad analogy

More like buying a motorbike instead of a car. It has fewer use cases, but what it does, it does better. For example, I wouldn't want to take the family on holiday on a motorbike, but I'd far rather use it to get across London.

[Giles Jones]

LOL

Who on earth says a tablet is a laptop replacement?

Even Jobsie himself said it was to fill a gap between a smartphone and a laptop/desktop.

I have an iPad and I also have three Macs, one of them being a laptop. The iPad is great as a sat nav and mobile internet device, so long as you plump for the 3G version like I did.

[Robert Hill]

1981...

The year I bought my first OSI single board PC, which I programmed in 6502 assembler and MicroBasic. 8K static RAM, tape interface. Also programmed assembler on PDP-11s, VAXen of all sorts, Z-80s, and even IBM 3090s. As well as a whole raft of higher level languages (including exotics like Lisp and APL). I've hand-built scores of PCs for myself and others, including my current quad-core AMD water cooled rig that I am writing this on.

I f*£^ing LOVE my new iPad, loser.

[Dr Christian]

re: Wow, you really bought one of those! #

haha, no silly

We've just got more money than you, enjoy surfing the web from a hammocks, don't take computers too seriously (there are other things in life).

Cred: debian servers, mac book, windows 7 pro on intel i5.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are in the wrong place ...

This is supposedly a place for people who actually *do* take computers (perhaps sometimes) too seriously.

Taking something like computers seriously isn't an insult here. Just the way it is.

[Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware]

Re: You are in the wrong place ...

FWIW, I have a first-gen iPad and it travels with me pretty much everywhere. No physical keyboard, sure, but the battery life micturates on every netbook I have ever used, plus it's lighter, easier to carry and has a tiny, tiny AC adaptor.

It is perfect for entertainment on long flights, holidays, etc - or even just sitting on the train or in the living room. It has email and a good browser.

As such, it meets my personal mobile tech needs better than anything else. Personally, I do not need a zillion HDMI ports, but I would like USB for on-the-hoof data transfer.

Digital comics look pants on a laptop/netbook screen. Nothing beats auto-rotation when you're reading a book with a mix of portrait and landscape pages.

Other tablets have these, but I'm not pissed off with the few flaws sufficiently to try an sell this in order to buy an Eee Pad, say. Maybe next time, but that won't be for a while.

Point is, the only reasons not to buy an iPad are because you can't afford it/you think it overpriced, you desperately need an SD/HDMI/USB port and don't like using an adaptor, or because you have a philosophical issue with the walled garden.

I don't - I have to buy content from someone, so it may as well be Apple. And I do have choices: e-books from Amazon rather than iTunes; DVDs and CDs likewise. I have apps to play non-Apple media formats.

Like most of the folk here, I suspect, I have multiple machines for different jobs: big laptop for number crunching, little laptop for work away, tablet for everything else. Oh, and a desktop at work.

[cexcells]

iFad

There are just so many better devices available, these crapple users need to be ridiculed and mocked, how stupid or ignorant can they be?

[KroSha]

Really?

Name one that has as good a choice of software, that works easily out the box, with similar specs, for significantly less cash!

Remember that cheaper /= better and that we all have a criteria in mind when making purchase decisions.

I'd hardly call the market leader for 2 years a fad, and the fact that you need to mock people for their choices reveals much about your psyche.

Face it, people want to buy it and just because it doesn't fit *your* needs doesn't make it wrong for them. The vast majority of IT users (i.e. those who don't read el Reg) just want something that works and that they can understand, without getting down and dirty. You might as well berate Dell for selling Win instead for Tux!

[Jedit]

Choice of software, works from the box, similar specs and cheaper?

The Motorola Xoom or Asus Transformer would seem to fit that description.

[cloudgazer]

Xoom :)

The Xoom launched for $100 MORE than the iPad, it isn't the poster child for showing that the iPad is too expensive.

[Giles Jones]

Better?

Define better?

If these devices are so much better why are they not selling?

I'll give you a clue, the software on the competition largely sucks. I'm not talking about the OS, but the applications. For the most part there isn't anything worthwhile on the Android tablets yet there's 400,000 iPad applications.

Where's the equivalent of Garageband for Android?

[Goat Jam]

Ridiculed and mocked?

Perhaps you should just not buy an ipad if they hold no interest for you.

And maybe get out more too, just a thought.

[RichyS]

Such as?

As per title.

[Wibble]

Your mother was a hamster...

Whilst I mock you from this iPad I'm using on my boat (it's a horrid, rainy day...).

You just don't get it. The point is it is a lightweight, simple device that is excellent for consumption: instant on, long battery life and CHEAP software such as the excellent chart plotter and tide timetables. My laptop is such a pain to use in that case; heavy, large, no built-in 3G.

Oik.

[KroSha]

Apples and Oranges

Much as I hate to say it, this isn't a proper comparison. If you're looking at mobile sales, then you need to include iPod Touch and iPhone sales as well as iPads, seeing as they are all iOS devices. If you are looking at portable computing, then it's just MacBooks, Airs, and Pro's as they run Mac OS. Two similar but certainly distinct OS's.

It'd be more balanced to compare tablet Android vs iOS vs WebOS and laptop/netbook MacOS vs Win vs tux.

Seems to be a shill piece of research to include the best bits only...

[Anonymous Coward]

This used to be a tech forum for techies ...

... Who *like* fucking with hardware and shit.

So why has it recently been hijacked by a gaggle of passive-aggressive Apple fans lately?

They must be getting paid.

I'm always reminded of the Lou Reed song "Vicious".

[Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware]

Re: This used to be a tech forum for techies ...

Odd, I thought it had been hijacked by a gaggle of passive-aggressive Apple anti-fans.

[Alex Rose]

Re: Re: This used to be a tech forum for techies

Actually it's been hijacked by a gaggle of passive-aggressive fans and anti-fans of all varieties.

And so that there's absolutely NO mistaking where my loyalties lie I'd just like to say that my Commodore 64 beats the pants off your crappy Spectrum 48K.