Wozniak: Please, whatever you do, DON'T buy me an iPad Air If you're wondering what Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak wants for Christmas, here's a clue: anything except one of the latest iPads. The beardy boffin has slammed Cupertino's new iPad Air and the new Mini Retina, which is fitted with the hi-res screen which was once only used in larger models. Shockingly, Woz also admitted he …
No he's not talking sense - more storage either means a lot more cost if FLASH based or reliability issues if you use a rotational drive (surely not a good idea on a tablet which is moved around far more than a laptop typically is). You can get 128Gb on an iPad and that's quite a lot of media (perhaps 35-40 HD films at 3-4Gb each).
Plug you can get those wifi enabled hard drives - they use rotational drives (some are flash based) and are pretty cheap for a lot of storage.
That was a good 12 years ago! Do you honestly think that Hitachi could continue to produce seriously failure prone hard drives for over TEN YEARS without massive ramifications? Yes, certain models of Deathstars had issues, but the worst of these were ironed out by the 120GXP range, which is when they were still under IBM ownership. By the time Hitachi bought the business and the 120GXP and 180GXP drives were retired, the issue was pretty much history.
Ever since then, Hitachi drives have been no worse than Seagate or Western Digital drives.
There is no such a thing as a reputable HDD manufacturer anymore. None are particularly reliable. Sure, generally you won't have any problems using a HDD from any of them, but you can't actually trust either of them to not fail - just google "defective WD Elements", I know I had lots of fun scrambling to retrieve a friend's entire lot of holiday photos (for which they naturally had no backup) after one of those decided to just stop working (and it was the HDD, not the USB adapter in the enclosure...).
Indeed, I'd rather have same thickness but added storage and battery life.
Same goes for smartphones: there's a simple solution to the only-lasts-a-day problem of all current smartphones: stop trying to make them thinner. As a bonus, you could add a full-size USB port for mass storage so we don't need those OTG cables that we end up not having with us anyway.
Gotta agree with Wozzie on this. I own an ipad and was considering upgrading, then i saw the specs and the price for the new devices.
The new devices do not offer the storage i want, nor are they really offering anything new for the price point... sorry Apple, but if you want to keep charging premium prices, you need to give us premium hardware.
If they at least offered a microSD slot i would reconsider, but i just don't see that happening in Apple's world.
The new devices do not offer the storage i want, nor are they really offering anything new for the price point... sorry Apple, but if you want to keep charging premium prices, you need to give us premium hardware.
Depends if you consider an ipad to already be premium hardware. Making the full size ipad thinner and roughly a third lighter is a premium enhancement. Giving the mini a much higher resolution is a premium enhancement. Saying otherwise is sophistry.
"Making the full size ipad thinner and roughly a third lighter is a premium enhancement"
Other opinions are available. Making it 2 mm thicker to accommodate a bigger battery so I can go a weekend without charging and adding a memory card slot would, for me, have been premium enhancements and would have tempted me to buy one. Adding handwriting recognition in the OS (so all apps could use it) would have been a premium enhancement and I would have bought one instantly (even in its thin and virtually memory-less state). Making it thinner and lighter make no difference to me and I'm still managing to live without an iPad.
Micro SD is a joke - so you are really going to carry a tablet then a load of 32Gb micro SD cards around.
Essentially you CAN do all of this - iPad plus camera connection kit or iPad plus wifi enabled portable hard drive and think I saw a wifi enabled SD/micro SD reader. They typically let you either stream the data direct from the device or copy it to the device - so yes you would be limited to a certain amount ON the device but realistically unlimited if you are prepared to copy off external storage.
"Micro SD is a joke - so you are really going to carry a tablet then a load of 32Gb micro SD cards around."
Oh no - not 'a load of 32Gb [sic] micro SD cards' - there goes my luggage allowance....
"Essentially you CAN do all of this - iPad plus camera connection kit or iPad plus wifi enabled portable hard drive and think I saw a wifi enabled SD/micro SD reader."
...or, I dunno, maybe a SD slot ?
"Yeah so imagine carry 30 (or even 10) 32Gb SD cards - how are you going to know what is on each - keep swapping them until you get the right one?"
Woz would have needed about 4 for what he needed, even he if couldn't remember what's on each you can get tiny little plastic wallets that you can write on - fit in a wallet. I'm not thinking about transporting terabytes of data, we're talking about getting some TV shows or films on.
"Yes I realise you 'could' work around that issue but it's messy - think I'd just use an external wifi hard drive."
If you're needing to carry hundreds of gigabtyes/terabytes of data - i'd agree with you. That is not the use case for a lot of people - as mentioned above, a lot of folk just want to stuff some more films or shows on their device, e..g. when travelling. Apple (and others) seemingly don't want to add SD slots into the device so they can gouge you for over-priced flash, it's the only differentiator in some cases - it has sod all to do with slimness or aesthetics, although perhaps they would have you believe otherwise. It most certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with what the end-user wants. So the price of slimming down devices is carrying around more devices ? Not great, is it ?
You realise you can get 64GB MicroSD cards at not ridiculous prices? I've got one in my Galaxy SIII. Just two of those and you've got the 128GB storage expansion that he's asking for. And I'm pretty sure I could manage a way of tracking the contents on the two of them. Maybe A-M on one and N-Z on the other perhaps? Or is that too complicated for you?
>> Micro SD is a joke - so you are really going to carry a tablet then a load of 32Gb micro SD cards around.
Maybe some people do. I don't, but if we use to stash CD's, tapes, floppy's and vinyls, then simple SD card is the least of a hassle to have a collection of stuff on them. Why do you assume that if you don't have one, nobody has?
The problem is NEEDING an external device other than the cards themselves, I have Galaxy S4 mainly because it has removable battery and an SD slot, so I just slip a 64GB card in it, but I do also have a small credit card sized micros sd holder in my wallet, so I can have upto 8 cards in my wallet ready to swap out if needed..
So when I travel, I can usually fit all I need on the 64GB card, and anything else sits on the other cards in my wallet, including a full backup of all my photos, music & personal files...
I have looked into a wifi-drive as well, they look good, but they drain both its battery and your devices battery when using, so usefulness is limited if your somewhere with limited access to power..
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also, it's a 9.7 inch screen. you don't REALLY need to see a comedy sketch show about geeks in 1080p. downsample the videos (should take only a few seconds in Handbrake on a new MacPro) to divx size and then he'd easily be able to fit them all on the big iPad Air
or, watch a decent show like the IT Crowd. it's funnier, and has a lot less shows to worry about :)
I'm currently running on an Asus TF101 for my tablet, and a Galaxy S3 for my phone. Both have microSD slots. I want to update my tablet and I've been looking at either an iPad or a Nexus 2 10, and neither of those have storage expansions. The iPad goes to 128 at least, but ... iPad. Ugh. I don't want to*. I hope that when the Nexus 2 10 is announced, since Asus is rumored to be the manufacturer this time, there will be a microSD slot.
*Apple has great customer service in store, and their on screen keyboards are top-notch. I just don't like the brand, the lock-in, or value for my money.
No SD card in the nexus, but at least you can use a USB stick, or 20, or a USB microSD card reader if you like...
OK, they're not internal - but it works rather well - you can even plug in a TB or two of HDD without issue (will probably require power from either the desk or car...
This is mass market stuff - how many people are going to carry around a load of USB stocks or a multi Tb hard drive and power supply which is now larger than the device.
Solution - buy multiple 128Gb iPads Woz - I'm sure they would do you a discount or you have more money to really care.
"No SD card in the nexus, but at least you can use a USB stick, or 20, or a USB microSD card reader if you like..."
So, er, just like an iPad with the Camera Connection Kit then?
No, it doesn't have a MicroSD slot built in, but most users don't need it. Why compromise a product's design and usability* for the sake of a relatively tiny number of edge cases?
If you want a tablet with stacks of storage, buy a Windows 8 model instead. Some of those come with 256 (and even 512 GB) of storage.
* (removable storage is a royal pain in the arse from a UI perspective. There's a bloody good reason why Apple went with software-eject systems for their Mac floppy disk drives back in the day.)
I HATED the mac floppy eject system...
More than ones there were problems caused by it at my school...
More than once I commented to the teachers they should just dump them and buy Amiga's, but no budget so we were stuck with them! (and maybe if they had brought amigas amiga would not be the dead dodo it is today)
Face it whatever storage you put in it's never enough for some people and others would never accept external storage. So if they make a 1Tb iPad Woz would probably want a 2Tb one.
My iTunes library is getting on for 2Tb in size but I learn to take the stuff I need - just like when you go on holiday you don't pack ALL your clothes?
At a recent hotel stay in Southern Africa, I found I could download a maximum of one iPlayer programme per night on my iPad Mini (after I'd watched all the stuff I'd downloaded before travelling), over a VPN connection. When I woke up each morning, it was pot luck as to whether the download had worked. Thankfully, the hotel had one of the best selections of DSTV channels I've seen (in a hotel).
Bad internet is bad internet, however you spin it. At least Apple recognises this (and charges accordingly, if you want 128gb), unlike Google's cloud centric, Utopian view of the world. I think Woz's expectations are a little OTT.
Why, what what would you do on a business trip to the arse end of Africa? I usually go to these places to work, and there's not a great deal between the office and a little time to myself in the evening? Oh, I'm sorry, did you think I'd leave the office at 19:00 in the evening and go on a fucking game drive, or perhaps engage in a bit of shooting and fishing? Moron.
I don't get why these new products go to so much length to knock a millimetre off the thickness of the device. I'd rather pay less, or have more battery. A slightly thinner iPad in my bag isn't going to be noticed (I have mine in a sleeve anyway).
Its the same with laptops and phones. I have a nice Asus ultrabook... its pretty thin - I have no interest in having a thinner one. Then I have a Lumia 920, I love the wireless charging, but on the 925 they removed that to save a bit of weight and thickness. I don't see the point - I've never once thought "this phone is too heavy".
We seem to be getting to an age where innovation is largely about making something that is already amazingly thin even thinner, yet phones seem to be growing in other dimensions in any case for a larger screen, so whats the point of selling it to me on the basis of how thin it is?
As for the broadband: if I had Woz's money, my house would be well up in the mountains, where cable and phone fear to tread. It doesn't surprise me much that he would be able to get awesome boardband up there. I'd probably have a solution though, either microwave or run my own fiber.
Wifi disks: airplane travel renders those almost moot for this usage.
SD slots: meh. I'm more of a USB stick and cable to tablet fan. If I'm watching something on the tablet I'm not worried about being *that* mobile so it's not that big a deal. Of course, I tend to read on planes and whatnot rather than watch movies and my ereader can manage a *lot* of books.
C'mon, Big Bang Theory is simply dreadful. And just to prove I'm not biased against U.S sitcoms, The IT Crowd was just as humourless in my view (wow, IT geek wears glasses and is a pathetic loser, never seen that stereotype before), and I lurrrve Family Guy (well, the older series)
Please Apple fanbois. What ridiculousnes. Wanting more than 128GB of storage somehow requires dozens of sticks or SD, which are inconvenient to carry (even though 128GB of storage would use 4 32GB cards, and fewer larger cards)? But, somehow, carrying a bulky, kludgey, and slow wifi storage device is a perfectly fine solution at the same time (slow because the speed limit of wifi is lower than USB or SD)? Having closed, non-expandable devices is fine for a lot of people. For others it's not, and self-contradcitory fanboi-arguments won't change that.
On a side note... Woz doesn't have broadband at home? I'm pretty shocked honestly.
> On a side note... Woz doesn't have broadband at
> home? I'm pretty shocked honestly.
I'm not. I have a couple of friends in the US who're stuck with DSL because they live outside the city limits. No mobile broadband coverage either, unless they pay through their nose for a separate data plan AND a tethering plan.
"I don't get why these new products go to so much length to knock a millimetre off the thickness of the device. I'd rather pay less, or have more battery."
...
" A slightly thinner iPad"
...
"I have a nice Asus ultrabook... its pretty thin"
...
" Then I have a Lumia 920, I love the wireless charging, but on the 925 they removed that to save a bit of weight and thickness. I don't see the point - I've never once thought "this phone is too heavy"."
I don't see any point either. But, you are basically selecting a couple products where they decided thinness was the primary goal, then are making it out like everyone is doing this. They are not, if you look on the open market there's plenty of devices at whatever size you want.
"Making the full size ipad thinner and roughly a third lighter is a premium enhancement."
Not in my book, it cost you so much that the first thing most people do is stick it in a tacky looking thick protective case.
Get a grip lads, the man wants PORTABLE storage for hotel use not yet another power supply and more cables. Micro SD cards are cheap, portable and need no additional power supply or leads
Let's see. I'll buy a ten inch iPad and on screen keyboard, WiFi enabled hard drive, Wifi enabled SD card reader with five extra 128GB SD cards. That's fifteen hundred quid.
Or I can get a 15" notebook, 2TB HD, Wifi, Bluetooth, 8GB and built in SD card reader for three hundred and fifty. Hmmmmm....
Maybe it's because the market for people who want to carry their entire Audio/visual library with them on every holiday or business trip is very small? Realistically, even for the longest break most people would be happy with a couple of hundred hours of TV programmes and films, and a few thousand hours of audio books and radio shows. That doesn't even come close to filling a 128gb tablet.
I only wonder, how much longer will Apple be able to create so much buzz about every crap they produce.
Their next PR video will be a remake of their previous advert, where people go to places like Taj Mahal, the Pyramids of Giza or Machu Picchu only to have a stranger take a photo of them with the sight in the background so they can stare like morons at the supersharp reproduction of the real thing.
I wish I were still around when people come to their senses. It will be a great time for comedy once people realize how completely irrelevant things like iPads are to life. Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate technology and progress, but the last progress in handheld devices happened when the first iPhone came out. They've been milking the idea for more than it's worth ever since. I'm not just talking about Apple now either.
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