iPad Apple Releases new IPad Air and iPad Mini with Apple Pencil Support

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

I know the yearly upgrade seems like too much but we're on a 4-person family plan so my 1-year old phones got handed down to other lines in the same plan.

That make sense when you get one new phone each year and retire one of the other three. I live alone except for my two cats. I don't trust them with a phone though. I'm pretty sure they would order a lot of cat nip and kitty treats and charge it to my account!

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by OtinG

That make sense when you get one new phone each year and retire one of the other three.

When everyone eventually switched to a smartphone (2013), we were swapping upgrade eligibility so two people got the latest model, the other two got the 1-year old iPhones and two phones were retired. Sometimes, the wait for those on the 1+ year old device became excruciating (battery getting fully discharged after one phone call, etc).

Gotta say, despite the pain in the wallet, upgrading iPhones (and even Android to a certain extent) is so much easier than upgrading feature phones. My mom had 500 contacts on her cellphones and given SIM cards were limited to like 100 contacts or something, getting those transferred in batches (or via manual entry) to her new phone was a major pain. Of course, being the resident techie, I'm the one tasked with that job.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

When everyone eventually switched to a smartphone (2013), we were swapping upgrade eligibility so two people got the latest model, the other two got the 1-year old iPhones and two phones were retired. Sometimes, the wait for those on the 1+ year old device became excruciating (battery getting fully discharged after one phone call, etc).

Gotta say, despite the pain in the wallet, upgrading iPhones (and even Android to a certain extent) is so much easier than upgrading feature phones. My mom had 500 contacts on her cellphones and given SIM cards were limited to like 100 contacts or something, getting those transferred in batches (or via manual entry) to her new phone was a major pain. Of course, being the resident techie, I'm the one tasked with that job.

I still remember the days before smartphones when nearly every cellular phone brand used its own proprietary OS, almost no phones could be connected to computers for programming, and you had to manually input the contacts and other data. When you got a new phone it took several hours to enter contacts using a numbered keypad. The stuff of nightmares these days!

ETA: And almost all of the charger/power cables were proprietary too!

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by OtinG

I still remember the days before smartphones when nearly every cellular phone brand used its own proprietary OS, almost no phones could be connected to computers for programming, and you had to manually input the contacts and other data. When you got a new phone it took several hours to enter contacts using a numbered keypad. The stuff of nightmares these days!

ETA: And almost all of the charger/power cables were proprietary too!

Yep. Not gonna lie, that was one of the reasons I switched my parents to smartphones. I actually gave them Android at first (I was considering switching myself) but they hated their Androids.

[OtinG]

In an astrophotography forum this morning they were talking about the first generation of personal computers that were popular back in the early 1980s. It made me think about my first real computer, the Apple II Plus with a whopping 48 KB of RAM (as in kilobytes, not megabytes, and darn sure not gigabytes), and two add-on external 5.25" floppy drives with 160KB (kilobytes) capacity each. Hard-drives in those days cost more than the computers, were finicky, failed quite often, and only had about 5 to 10 MB. I couldn't afford a HDD. But DOS didn't require a lot to run. And as low spec as my Apple II Plus was by today's standards, it was way more powerful than the computer inside the Apollo spacecraft that flew to the Moon and back. As far as that goes, a 1970s Texas Instruments pocket calculator had more computing power than the computer inside the Apollo spacecraft! And yet I ran the engineering operations of a manufacturing plant with a similar spec computer to the Apple II Plus back in the early 1980s. We've come a long way in computing power since those early days of PCs. But the earliest electronic computers had vacuum tubes rather than transistors and required large buildings to house, so the PCs were quite an accomplishment in the evolution of computers.

Sorry for the off topic jog down memory lane, but sometimes it is good to remember just how good we have it these days as far as technology goes, and it makes the new iPads and Macs look pretty awesome by comparison!

[Deskisamess]

Our first computer had a 540mb hard drive, 2 mb of ram, weighed as much or more than a child, and cost $3,200. I remember the friend who helped us saying "This is all the computer you'll ever need."

I ran Harvard Graphic on that dinosaur. Rendering a slide after changes were made took 4-5 minutes. We added a cartridge style cd rom, and I had my first experience with using a modem to send slides to a local shop. I had no understanding of what was actually happening. I just followed the steps.

[leebase]

ooh! I can plan "old man" too. The first computer I actually bought myself was a Gateway 486-33mhz, with 4mb ram, and a 110mb hard drive....dual floppies! It ran DOS as Windows wasn't out yet. Check the "m" instead of "g" in those numbers. mega-hertz not giga-hertz. Mega-bytes not Giga-bytes and for SURE not terabytes.

In high school I lusted after an Osborne 1, then a Kaypro. I taught myself to program on our school's lone Apple IIe that was in a corner of the "typing room".

I did manage to miss the era of the punch card.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by leebase

ooh! I can plan "old man" too. The first computer I actually bought myself was a Gateway 486-33mhz, with 4mb ram, and a 110mb hard drive....dual floppies! It ran DOS as Windows wasn't out yet. Check the "m" instead of "g" in those numbers. mega-hertz not giga-hertz. Mega-bytes not Giga-bytes and for SURE not terabytes.

Lol, that looks like the specs of my first computer. I'm a 90s child.

Goodness, those floppies (5.25" and 3.5") failed quite frequently and were so very slow to write. Had to make sure you're very consistent about backups (also multiple backups). Lol, webpages nowadays wouldn't even fit on a single floppy.

[The Old Man]

I probably have you all beat. My first was an Apple][. 16KB Ram. Only upper case keys. Only integer math. No floppy drive, save your BASIC programs on cassette tape. My TV was the monitor. Serial number 1500 something. I loved it!

BTW your can "date" a movie by the type of phone they use.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by The Old Man

BTW your can "date" a movie by the type of phone they use.

Lol, Zack Morris phone.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by leebase

I did manage to miss the era of the punch card.

Oh geez I had successfully blocked punch cards from my memory until now. I'll probably have nightmares tonight. I took a fortran programming class from a junior college back in the late 1970s and we had to use the punch cards. With punch cards one tiny mistake means throwing away that card. You can not edit them. Since I'm a terrible typists, there were lots of do overs! And one time I spent a long time writing a program but hadn't learned why you numbered the cards, then I accidentally dropped the shoebox containing them. Humpty Dumpty would have been easier to put back together. Not long after that I dropped the class and didn't try programming again until I got my Apple ][ Plus and taught myself BASIC. I'll probably be haunted by punch cards in my sleep tonight!

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by The Old Man

I probably have you all beat. My first was an Apple][. 16KB Ram. Only upper case keys. Only integer math. No floppy drive, save your BASIC programs on cassette tape. My TV was the monitor. Serial number 1500 something. I loved it!

BTW your can "date" a movie by the type of phone they use.

Ha, I bought a first year Commodore PET in '77. It had 4K of memory which I updated to 8K by buying the chips a putting them in the available sockets. My daughter's first word that she knew how to spell was RUN. Great machine, I still have it but I upgraded memory, added disk drives and printer and patched in a full size keyboard.

Dale

[Deskisamess]

Our oldest son used that dinosaur computer to access a local BBS, long after the hardware was pretty worthless for anything serious.

If I remember correctly, that computer came with a Compuserve floppy, and maybe Prodigy as well. I had no idea what they were all about.

[pwalker8]

Checked the Apple Store this morning and saw they had the model I wanted (iPad mini 5 with 256 GB), so I went ahead and got one. I was able to sync my Calbre library with Calibre Companion on the new iPad Mini much, much faster.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Checked the Apple Store this morning and saw they had the model I wanted (iPad mini 5 with 256 GB), so I went ahead and got one. I was able to sync my Calbre library with Calibre Companion on the new iPad Mini much, much faster.

Excellent! What reading app are you using?