Yes, I ended up purchasing an iPad Air, for my wife. Okay, I won’t lie, I also wanted to have one to use for business purposes (testing apps, websites, getting to know the apple world to be better able to serve my clientele, …). I never thought I would, but I did.
Why?
After always being a PC guy and pushing Microsoft products to clients for over a decade, I made the decision to make the switch for her and below are a few of the reasons for this drastic switch:
- when I went into the store to check out tablets, none could do what I wanted at a reasonable price, at which point the associate then showed me low end notebooks (at about, or more than the iPad), so I (not the associate) brought up Apple’s offering. Once we went over the spec vs. cost and compared features, battery life, apps,… the decision was easy.
- but the biggest reason is simple, after MS dropped support for Windows XP, leaving all their clients in the lurch to purchase new computers in order to get a new OS (because let’s be realistic, that is basically what is involved here) I didn’t want to go through this again. So if effect, MS decision, has turned me away from MS and onto their competitor. Not only did they stop giving updates, …, but then they went and stopped Microsoft Security Essential (antivirus) on XP. At the end of the day, MS made my decision for me.
The Setup Process
I am a little annoyed! Unlike the ease with which you can start up a PC (a few simple clicks), Apple requires all sort of personal information (date of birth, address, …), you need to create an account, you need an e-mail address, and so on. All I want to is to use the iPad, Apple by no means needs my address or date of birth, this is very invasive and put all this information in the cloud for hackers to work at getting their hands on, but it’s not like you have a choice! At the end of the day, about 20 minutes later I was up and running.
Problems
The only problem I have encountered so far was trying to confirm the account’s backup e-mail address. Apple sends out a confirmation e-mail to validate the e-mail address you supplied for the account that you setup. One MAJOR problem that I came across is their site is incompatible with FireFox?! Seriously. The only solution was to switch and use IE for this task. Very disappointing.
I even tried getting support on the matter and that aspect of their site is also incompatible!
Very poorly designed site if it does support a major, fully compliant browser such as Firefox!!! I don’t care what excuse Apple can give, in 2014, this is inexcusable!
Impressions so Far
Now that it is finally functional, my wife and I are very happy. It is a light, sleek unit. It performs, so far (1 day in), very rapidly. I was able to install free software so she can still review Word documents (she sometimes get some in e-mails from friends and family beyond which I often work with them), access Facebook, get the News and Weather, etc… The Apple App Store is quick and easy. I have a feeling that Microsoft has lost another client due to their own doing! Another beautiful thing is no more worries about viruses and endless patches and updates! Another nice feature is that it boots instantaneously.
I will post back in a month or two with further impressions.
Update 2014-05-21 – More problems found!
Well, 2 more problems to add to the list :
- Printers! Both of my printers are incompatible with the iPad. Sadly, unlike Windows machines, it is not as simple as installing a driver. The only solution is to buy a special router (160$) or go out and buy a new printer! Not very impressed by this.
- No support for Flash. This is one element I just don’t get with Apple. This past week-end we wanted to use an educational website with our daughter and sadly it wasn’t possible.
To me, both of these issues are pretty major, but the Flash support is a monumental weakness for the iPad considering how widespread Flash is today: website, applications, etc.