Why People Aren't Buying iPads Anymore - Page 7

HarryT · 07-29-2014, 04:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rizla

I know people who will only buy iphone even though a comparable Android phone is much cheaper and quite possibly better. It's brand snobbery. They have to have the iphone to impress certain people, or so they they tell me.

I certainly don't have an iPhone to impress anyone; I have it because I plain like it. I've had my iPhone 4 for over four years, so even though I did pay quite a lot of money for it, its monthly cost is now pretty modest. I paid £560 for it, which works out at £11.20 a month over the 50 months I've now had it for.

Penforhire · 07-29-2014, 06:34 PM

I am slowly getting roped into continuing to buy Apple products. I have an iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air. My fiancée has an iPhone and iPad mini.

There is an obvious synergy I get from Apple's built-in services, from iCloud storage to automatic photo back-up to shared apps to same-iTunes-library-on-every-device to find-my-lost-device and more. You can argue these benefits can be reproduced with other services on other devices and I will agree. But this is no-brainer easy when sticking with Apple devices, much as I expect it is when sticking to Android devices (I wouldn't know, lol), or Windows devices.

The last announcements from Apple suggest even greater future benefits, moving more functions back and forth from OSX to iOS devices.

Shane R · 07-29-2014, 09:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

I certainly don't have an iPhone to impress anyone; I have it because I plain like it.

I as well. It's unlikely that any statistically significant number of iPhone buyers purchase it for that reason. We're talking millions and millions of units bought every year - even the number of people who stand in line for these things are statistically insignificant within that crowd.

Rizla · 07-29-2014, 09:21 PM

The Apple logo has a certain status attached to it. It's like Nike. People are very impressionable about these things, even more so when they know little about the technical aspects of the product. Plus it's more expensive. Many people are impressed by people with expensive things, and doubtless some people pay more for a brand because of that. That's not to say that I think everyone buys Apple products for that reason, but it's a factor.

meeera · 07-29-2014, 10:23 PM

Anecdata, anecdata... there's still an Original iPhone in use in this house. And we only very recently donated two original iPads to the local public primary school, where they are in heavy use.

Josieb1 · 07-30-2014, 02:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rizla

The Apple logo has a certain status attached to it. It's like Nike. People are very impressionable about these things, even more so when they know little about the technical aspects of the product. Plus it's more expensive. Many people are impressed by people with expensive things, and doubtless some people pay more for a brand because of that. That's not to say that I think everyone buys Apple products for that reason, but it's a factor.

Unfortunatly Rizia it's comments like yours that really infuriate me, it implies that most people who own an apple product are fools. You may not mean that but that is what your comment says to me.

This is getting so old fast

For the record
I LOVE MY IPAD AND MY IPHONE BECAUSE THEY WORK HOW I WANT THEM TO WORK

pwalker8 · 07-30-2014, 04:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Josieb1

Unfortunatly Rizia it's comments like yours that really infuriate me, it implies that most people who own an apple product are fools. You may not mean that but that is what your comment says to me.

This is getting so old fast

For the record
I LOVE MY IPAD AND MY IPHONE BECAUSE THEY WORK HOW I WANT THEM TO WORK

Some people totally buy into a particular choice, assume that everyone should buy into that choice and if you don't, you are an idiot. People choose phones for a lot of different reasons, some logical, some not. I look at it this way, if you like the phone you have then good for you! You made the right choice for you, whichever phone it is.

soulfuldog · 07-30-2014, 05:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Josieb1

I LOVE MY IPAD AND MY IPHONE BECAUSE THEY WORK HOW I WANT THEM TO WORK

That's obviously because you are a fool and need your phone and tablet to work perfectly because you don't have the intelligence to tweak them to suit your needs.

Seriously though, there IS a bit of brand snobbery, but it goes both ways. Those who buy Apple products can sometimes look down on those who use PC's, android etc, like the smug advert - "it just works"

. Then you get those who look at people who buy an iPhone and think they are just being suckered by the brand hype and are fools for paying out so much money.

Is either of them true? Possibly in some cases, but for the most part, nah!

Why worry, you make your choice and spend your money, and as long as you are happy with it, why worry what anyone else thinks?

ProfCrash · 07-30-2014, 07:23 AM

We bought an Apple laptop because of how much we like the IPads and because we want to do more with the Go Pro we have. I like the connectivity between the systems but I rarely use the lap top because the IPad does everything I need it to do.

I bought the IPad a few months before giving birth to my Little Man. I knew I wanted something to use during maternity leave that would be easy, light and would prevent me from walking down stairs to the computers. The apps I wanted were on the IPad so that is where I went. My Husband rolled his eyes but didn't say much. He did start borrowing it and playing with it and three months later, when his parents were in town and his Mom and I were using our IPads, he snuck out to buy his own IPad.

Part of the reason why I was hesitant to buy an IPad was because of the cult of Apple. I enjoy their products. I feel they are over priced but obviously not so much that I didn't buy one. They are too expensive for me to go out and buy a replacement until it is nearly dead.

Shane R · 07-30-2014, 08:56 AM

We paint each other with such broad strokes.

Josie (and others) here are saying that the factors in their Apple purchases were more complex than brand hype, brand snobbery, cachet, foolishness, idiocy, being impressive to other others and cultism -- but the reaction continues to be "OK, maybe not you, but the others..." I'd consider all those to be negative reasons for purchasing a device.

It's puzzling. Why can't it just be that they make good devices and some people prefer them (for a multitude of positive reasons) to the alternatives?

faithbw · 07-30-2014, 09:26 AM

Some people do buy Apple products because they're Apple products. Apple products do carry a certain brand prestige that Android just doesn't (maybe the Samsung Galaxy S line is the exception to this). That being said, I don't think most people would deny the quality of their products. Even my BIL, who hates all things Apple to the point where he wouldn't even buy his daughter an iPod, admits that they make good quality products. I'm so use to Android now that I don't see myself getting an iPhone anytime soon. I love the versatility of my Android devices and the latest Android versions are just as stable as iOS.

That being said, I loved my former iPod Touch. It really "just worked" and it was very good quality. I sold it because I finally got a Samsung Galaxy SII (T-Mobile didn't have the iPhone at the time) and my husband wasn't interested in using it. The screen on my Galaxy SII/4 are a lot bigger than the screen on the iTouch and they both do everything the iTouch did plus they make calls. So I didn't see a point in keeping the iTouch. That's the only reason I got rid of it.

ApK · 07-30-2014, 09:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shane R

Why can't it just be that they make good devices and some people prefer them (for a multitude of positive reasons) to the alternatives?

It can be. Then, on the other hand, some people will voluntarily post on a public discussion board their "reasons" and then when other people point out why some of those 'reasons' assume things that aren't true, or could be satisfied at a much lower cost, they get all defensive and resort to "well, I don't need to defend my choice, I just like it."
And then that raises the question of "why did you feel the need, then, to post "reasons" in the first place, and if "I just like it" is the real reason, we're curious as to what makes one "just like it." Apple spends A LOT of money on marketing and brand image. They do that for a reason. You seem be claiming it's irrelevant, or that we should assume all that marketing is not having an effect. We should assume the products are selling (or failing to sell) themselves. Apparently Apple disagrees, or they'd keep all that marketing money for other uses.

Yapyap · 07-30-2014, 09:39 AM

Brand snobbery is definitely a thing that exists. I can only speak about Apple fans' snobbery because that's the one I've got personal experience with, but I have no doubt that there are plenty of Windows, Linux and Android snobs around as well.

I have an iPad because when I wanted a tablet, that was the only one with a form factor I liked.

I have an Android phone (now three years old) because at the time the Samsung Galaxy S2 seemed like the absolute best option there was, with a bigger screen than the then-available iPhones (that was important since I struggle to use Internet as is on it - anything even a bit smaller would have been worse) and better hardware than other Android phones available to me at the time.

I have a Windows 7 desktop (and a backup Windows 7 laptop for crisis situations, i.e. if the desktop fails during the workday) because I work from home and I need Windows for work.

Sadly I've had a number of experiences in which the mere mention that I find Apple computers really beautiful but unfortunately useless for my purposes (and far too expensive for mere toys) has brought on a pile of comments from otherwise perfectly normal Apple fans who have been enraged by the idea that an Apple desktop or laptop is - for MY purposes - useless. They've kept telling me that there are "alternatives" for everything for Macs, and that you can do "everything", and they've simply refused to believe that isn't the case.

For work, I use more than a dozen proprietary, very specific programs. Usually it's programs custom-made by specific clients for their own files and work. We regularly need to use not only a particular program for a particular client, but also a specific build for a specific job (and some I still need to run in XP Mode because the client hasn't made a newer version and they won't work on Windows 7 natively). The only way I could do my work on a Mac is if I ran Windows on it, and ... well, I can just as well use a Windows PC to start with.

That said, if I didn't have very real work reasons - and if Macs weren't so enormously, prohibitively expensive - I certainly wouldn't turn down a Mac. They are very pretty, and, I'm sure, extremely useful for a lot of people's purposes.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that people have loads of reasons for choosing the devices they do, and it's not always brand snobbery or even brand preference - sometimes there really are software (or hardware) related reasons for preferring one or the other.

Shane R · 07-30-2014, 09:43 AM

ApK and Faith -- you'd agree that the 'some' you're talking about, though perhaps vocal, is a pretty insignificant minority, right? YapYaps enraged Apple fans too.

underscore · 07-30-2014, 09:43 AM

choice is made on raw features:
I have a macbook because i like the battery and the operating system (don't care/use itunes, but i DO use the terminal).

I have an onyx m92 because i want to read huge pdf without eyes stairs.
I don't have _also_ a tablet because i have a m92 :-)

and i do have an android phone because apple don't do dual sims :-)

07-29-2014, 09:21 PM	#94
Rizla Member Retired Posts: 3,183 Karma: 11721895 Join Date: Nov 2010 Device: Nook STR (rooted) & Sony T2	The Apple logo has a certain status attached to it. It's like Nike. People are very impressionable about these things, even more so when they know little about the technical aspects of the product. Plus it's more expensive. Many people are impressed by people with expensive things, and doubtless some people pay more for a brand because of that. That's not to say that I think everyone buys Apple products for that reason, but it's a factor. Last edited by Rizla; 07-29-2014 at 11:19 PM.

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07-29-2014, 06:34 PM	#92
Penforhire Wizard Posts: 2,230 Karma: 7145404 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Southern California Device: Kindle Voyage & iPhone 7+	I am slowly getting roped into continuing to buy Apple products. I have an iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air. My fiancée has an iPhone and iPad mini. There is an obvious synergy I get from Apple's built-in services, from iCloud storage to automatic photo back-up to shared apps to same-iTunes-library-on-every-device to find-my-lost-device and more. You can argue these benefits can be reproduced with other services on other devices and I will agree. But this is no-brainer easy when sticking with Apple devices, much as I expect it is when sticking to Android devices (I wouldn't know, lol), or Windows devices. The last announcements from Apple suggest even greater future benefits, moving more functions back and forth from OSX to iOS devices.

07-29-2014, 10:23 PM	#95
meeera Grand Sorcerer Posts: 5,817 Karma: 68407974 Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Libra 2, iPadMini4, iPad4, MBP; support other Kobo/Kindles	Anecdata, anecdata... there's still an Original iPhone in use in this house. And we only very recently donated two original iPads to the local public primary school, where they are in heavy use.

07-30-2014, 07:23 AM	#99
ProfCrash Tea Enthusiast Posts: 8,554 Karma: 75384937 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Somewhere in the USA Device: Kindle1, Kindle DX Graphite, K3 3G, IPad 3, PW2	We bought an Apple laptop because of how much we like the IPads and because we want to do more with the Go Pro we have. I like the connectivity between the systems but I rarely use the lap top because the IPad does everything I need it to do. I bought the IPad a few months before giving birth to my Little Man. I knew I wanted something to use during maternity leave that would be easy, light and would prevent me from walking down stairs to the computers. The apps I wanted were on the IPad so that is where I went. My Husband rolled his eyes but didn't say much. He did start borrowing it and playing with it and three months later, when his parents were in town and his Mom and I were using our IPads, he snuck out to buy his own IPad. Part of the reason why I was hesitant to buy an IPad was because of the cult of Apple. I enjoy their products. I feel they are over priced but obviously not so much that I didn't buy one. They are too expensive for me to go out and buy a replacement until it is nearly dead.

07-30-2014, 08:56 AM	#100
Shane R Fanatic Posts: 518 Karma: 4274548 Join Date: Nov 2013 Device: None	We paint each other with such broad strokes. Josie (and others) here are saying that the factors in their Apple purchases were more complex than brand hype, brand snobbery, cachet, foolishness, idiocy, being impressive to other others and cultism -- but the reaction continues to be "OK, maybe not you, but the others..." I'd consider all those to be negative reasons for purchasing a device. It's puzzling. Why can't it just be that they make good devices and some people prefer them (for a multitude of positive reasons) to the alternatives?

07-30-2014, 09:26 AM	#101
faithbw Guru Posts: 618 Karma: 1526148 Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: A place where the sun always shines Device: Kindle Oasis, iPad Mini 2	Some people do buy Apple products because they're Apple products. Apple products do carry a certain brand prestige that Android just doesn't (maybe the Samsung Galaxy S line is the exception to this). That being said, I don't think most people would deny the quality of their products. Even my BIL, who hates all things Apple to the point where he wouldn't even buy his daughter an iPod, admits that they make good quality products. I'm so use to Android now that I don't see myself getting an iPhone anytime soon. I love the versatility of my Android devices and the latest Android versions are just as stable as iOS. That being said, I loved my former iPod Touch. It really "just worked" and it was very good quality. I sold it because I finally got a Samsung Galaxy SII (T-Mobile didn't have the iPhone at the time) and my husband wasn't interested in using it. The screen on my Galaxy SII/4 are a lot bigger than the screen on the iTouch and they both do everything the iTouch did plus they make calls. So I didn't see a point in keeping the iTouch. That's the only reason I got rid of it.

07-30-2014, 09:39 AM	#103
Yapyap Guru Posts: 861 Karma: 3543721 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Estonia Device: Kindle Paperwhite, iPad 3, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge	Brand snobbery is definitely a thing that exists. I can only speak about Apple fans' snobbery because that's the one I've got personal experience with, but I have no doubt that there are plenty of Windows, Linux and Android snobs around as well. I have an iPad because when I wanted a tablet, that was the only one with a form factor I liked. I have an Android phone (now three years old) because at the time the Samsung Galaxy S2 seemed like the absolute best option there was, with a bigger screen than the then-available iPhones (that was important since I struggle to use Internet as is on it - anything even a bit smaller would have been worse) and better hardware than other Android phones available to me at the time. I have a Windows 7 desktop (and a backup Windows 7 laptop for crisis situations, i.e. if the desktop fails during the workday) because I work from home and I need Windows for work. Sadly I've had a number of experiences in which the mere mention that I find Apple computers really beautiful but unfortunately useless for my purposes (and far too expensive for mere toys) has brought on a pile of comments from otherwise perfectly normal Apple fans who have been enraged by the idea that an Apple desktop or laptop is - for MY purposes - useless. They've kept telling me that there are "alternatives" for everything for Macs, and that you can do "everything", and they've simply refused to believe that isn't the case. For work, I use more than a dozen proprietary, very specific programs. Usually it's programs custom-made by specific clients for their own files and work. We regularly need to use not only a particular program for a particular client, but also a specific build for a specific job (and some I still need to run in XP Mode because the client hasn't made a newer version and they won't work on Windows 7 natively). The only way I could do my work on a Mac is if I ran Windows on it, and ... well, I can just as well use a Windows PC to start with. That said, if I didn't have very real work reasons - and if Macs weren't so enormously, prohibitively expensive - I certainly wouldn't turn down a Mac. They are very pretty, and, I'm sure, extremely useful for a lot of people's purposes. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that people have loads of reasons for choosing the devices they do, and it's not always brand snobbery or even brand preference - sometimes there really are software (or hardware) related reasons for preferring one or the other.

07-30-2014, 09:43 AM	#104
Shane R Fanatic Posts: 518 Karma: 4274548 Join Date: Nov 2013 Device: None	ApK and Faith -- you'd agree that the 'some' you're talking about, though perhaps vocal, is a pretty insignificant minority, right? YapYaps enraged Apple fans too.

07-30-2014, 09:43 AM	#105
underscore Addict Posts: 314 Karma: 1093858 Join Date: Mar 2013 Location: Romania (but i'm italian) Device: Onyx Boox Nova 2, Kingrow K1 (former N96 ML/i86ML Plus/M92)	choice is made on raw features: I have a macbook because i like the battery and the operating system (don't care/use itunes, but i DO use the terminal). I have an onyx m92 because i want to read huge pdf without eyes stairs. I don't have _also_ a tablet because i have a m92 :-) and i do have an android phone because apple don't do dual sims :-)