A few sentences to straighten me out...

[-FlyingDucks-]

Returning to Apple after decades away (1992...yeah, long time). The landscape changed and going to buy a iPad Retina, but here's what I don't understand.

Apple wants about $100 for 16GB. Why doesn't everyone buy the 16GB machine and use a Lightning to SD reader? This must be a bad idea. Why?

 

[natasftw]

Honestly, I haven't tried it. But your question is along the lines of "Skittles cost $0.70 at Walmart and $1.50 at the gas station around the corner from Walmart. Why aren't people boycotting the gas station's prices?"

There's a bit of convenience, assuming the reader would work as you expect. I'm not sure how nicely the native apps get along with music/movies/etc on the sd card. The cost of your solution is ~$40. In order to get the full use of your iPad, you'll be carrying around the cord rather than just the iPad. It's a little less sleek that way. A lot of people buy the Apple products for the pretty factor.

Before you buy, you should talk to someone in the Apple store to see how viable your solution is. That'll do more for you than anyone here guessing =/ I've never seen someone try, so I'm not sure you'll find much luck asking.

 

[-FlyingDucks-]

Got it, natasftw. Funny analogy. I wouldn't want to carry around an iPad with a tail. There's always various cloud solutions available for data files, so most people must be doing that. Still I cannot imagine running an application from the cloud. It may be workable, however, to store movies on an SD and run them from there.

A better question I should have asked is: How many GB are iPad users using for vital applications?

Guessing most iPads are about 50 GB on average with heavy music/movie users approaching double that. Your recommendation on talking with Apple store people is a good one. Thanks. I will ask the better question.

 

[kch50428]

Because that Apple Accessory isn't a generic SD Card reader - it's a "Camera Card/camera connection kit". iOS and apps other than the camera and image processing apps are not written to make use of external storage. It's not a bug... it's a feature.