Android user venturing into IOS world...Air 2 or wait for Air 3?

SquireSCA

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Well, if they only allow you to work remote with the iPad, then that is a huge check in the iPad column.

Why don't they allow other platforms? I mean, don't they issue Windows laptops, or do you just have an IT manager that is an Apple fan and that's all he allows?

Just trying to get some context.

In the end, if all they allow are Apple devices and you want to take advantage of being able to work remotely, then that's your best bet.

I would look to the iPad Pro, rather than the year old iPad Air 2 though... It is modeled after the Microsoft Surface tablets, so it is geared more towards work tasks, with the keyboard, larger screen, etc... It will still have most of the limitations of iOS though.

I wish that Apple have made the iPad Pro with regular MacOS on it, not the watered down mobile version... But I think their fear was that it would cannibalize their MacBook Air sales... so they once again took stellar hardware, and crippled it with iOS. Just my opinion, but I would have bought an iPad Pro in a heartbeat if it had a real OS on it...
 

sparksd

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A lot of pluses and minuses already noted so I'll just comment on my experience having bought an Air 2 earlier this year after years of using Android on multiple devices, including rooting, loading custom ROMs, etc. The Air 2 has turned out to be a wonderful device for me, the most-used tablet I have owned. It has been rock solid and has outstanding performance. I thought I might regret buying it but it has turned out to be an excellent purchase - I hardly touch my Android devices other than my phone, a Galaxy Note 4. My old Xoom, Galaxy Tab, Kindle Fire, 2012 & 2013 Nexus 7's, and Asus TF700T sit mainly unused now. It definitely had a learning curve but I've found ways to do virtually everything I want to accomplish.
 

SquireSCA

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A lot of pluses and minuses already noted so I'll just comment on my experience having bought an Air 2 earlier this year after years of using Android on multiple devices, including rooting, loading custom ROMs, etc. The Air 2 has turned out to be a wonderful device for me, the most-used tablet I have owned. It has been rock solid and has outstanding performance. I thought I might regret buying it but it has turned out to be an excellent purchase - I hardly touch my Android devices other than my phone, a Galaxy Note 4. My old Xoom, Galaxy Tab, Kindle Fire, 2012 & 2013 Nexus 7's, and Asus TF700T sit mainly unused now. It definitely had a learning curve but I've found ways to do virtually everything I want to accomplish.

What have you found the iPad able to to that the Android tablets could not, and vise versa?

Also, some of those tablets are older, so take that into account... Just curious...

I really want the next generation NVidia Shield tablet with the Tegra X1 processor in it. Finally, true desktop gaming performance in a tablet.
 

jessmags

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They do allow Windows, which is why I said I was going to spend some time with the Surface this week and see if I prefer that to IOS :) Yes, I was looking into the Pro...any experience with it? Prob will check it out as well this week!
 

SquireSCA

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If it were me, I would go with a Surface. The reason being, if I use a Windows machine for work and at home, it makes more sense to have 100% compatibility with my tablet. The Surface is a great tablet, it is what the iPad Pro wants to be, but falls short.

The Pro is very nice, but it is just a bigger faster iPad Air. It doesn't do much different.

The Surface bridges the gap between having a real work laptop, that runs full blown Office, Photoshop, Illustrator, actual games over mobile games, etc... but in the same size and format as an iPad. It's the best of both worlds, honestly.

I would take that over both Apple or Android, if work was it's primary function. Windows 10 is great, and I haven't seen a blue screen of death on my Windows machine in I don't know how many years... And mine are up 24/7/365... Well I did have one issue 3 years ago, but that was when lightning hit the house, so I can't fault the PC for the fried motherboard and power supply... haha

Try both, see what you like, but I have a feeling that you will find the Surface tablet more suited towards work, as that was what they designed it for...

Just make sure that if you get a Surface, make sure it is not one of the lower end models that uses Windows RT... make sure it is actual Windows, that part is critical...
 

sparksd

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What have you found the iPad able to to that the Android tablets could not, and vise versa?

Also, some of those tablets are older, so take that into account... Just curious...

I really want the next generation NVidia Shield tablet with the Tegra X1 processor in it. Finally, true desktop gaming performance in a tablet.

I use my Air 2 primarily as a consumption device. What I have really liked about it is subjective user experience, the really big things being performance (no lag) and stability (no app crashes, restarts, etc.) - it is entirely dependable. I'm a retired s/w engineer with over 40 years experience so I have the time and knowledge to be able to fiddle with my devices to improve performance - rooting, loading custom ROMs - but I really don't want to anymore. I just want a device that is "snappy" and always works. I've used the newer Samsung tablets but I don't care so much for the AMOLED displays and their color rendering.

What can't I do on my Air 2 that I can on Android? I do my photo work on travel using my Asus TF700T 10" tablet with clamshell keyboard. I put my camera's SD card in the keyboard's SD card slot, use a file browser to select all (usually many dozens each day) of the RAW files at once and copy them to an internal memory folder of choice (or to the internal microSD card), use Photo Mate R2 to edit them from that location and export JPEG to another folder, use QuickPic to view those JPEGs, and then copy the files to a backup portable HDD plugged into the keyboard's USB port. Try doing this workflow on an iPad, particularly when you have poor or no Internet connectivity. This gets back to some of the shortcomings in iOS that others have discussed.
 

SquireSCA

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I use my Air 2 primarily as a consumption device. What I have really liked about it is subjective user experience, the really big things being performance (no lag) and stability (no app crashes, restarts, etc.) - it is entirely dependable. I'm a retired s/w engineer with over 40 years experience so I have the time and knowledge to be able to fiddle with my devices to improve performance - rooting, loading custom ROMs - but I really don't want to anymore. I just want a device that is "snappy" and always works. I've used the newer Samsung tablets but I don't care so much for the AMOLED displays and their color rendering.

What can't I do on my Air 2 that I can on Android? I do my photo work on travel using my Asus TF700T 10" tablet with clamshell keyboard. I put my camera's SD card in the keyboard's SD card slot, use a file browser to select all (usually many dozens each day) of the RAW files at once and copy them to an internal memory folder of choice (or to the internal microSD card), use Photo Mate R2 to edit them from that location and export JPEG to another folder, use QuickPic to view those JPEGs, and then copy the files to a backup portable HDD plugged into the keyboard's USB port. Try doing this workflow on an iPad, particularly when you have poor or no Internet connectivity. This gets back to some of the shortcomings in iOS that others have discussed.

That all makes sense. As for no lag, I cannot make the same claim with my Air 2... I see lag in Safari constantly... It's better than it was on the iPad Mini 2 Retina, but it is still there at time. if I reboot or manually close down the background apps it is better, but to be honest, I can have 15 background apps on my Nexus 6 and not see a fraction of the lag.

I have tried hard resets, wiping it, trying out the public beta's, etc... It is certainly usable, but it is there...
 

sparksd

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That all makes sense. As for no lag, I cannot make the same claim with my Air 2... I see lag in Safari constantly... It's better than it was on the iPad Mini 2 Retina, but it is still there at time. if I reboot or manually close down the background apps it is better, but to be honest, I can have 15 background apps on my Nexus 6 and not see a fraction of the lag.

I have tried hard resets, wiping it, trying out the public beta's, etc... It is certainly usable, but it is there...

I've been using Chrome and Puffin most of the time. Have you tried any of the iOS 9 ad blockers? Lag is really irritating - I don't know how many times I've wiped my Android devices, cleared cache partitions, etc. Knock on wood for my Air 2 ...
 

tech_fan

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I went from the Samsung and Nexus to Apple. Actually, I started out with the early DROIDs and then switched to the iPhone 4 and 5. Then I switched to the Note 3, Edge and Nexus before going back to Apple.

Overall I like Apple better and think I will remain with Apple for awhile. I also had the Galaxy Gear series and Android Wear. I now have the Apple watch and like that much better than the Samsung and Android Wear.
 

SquireSCA

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I've been using Chrome and Puffin most of the time. Have you tried any of the iOS 9 ad blockers? Lag is really irritating - I don't know how many times I've wiped my Android devices, cleared cache partitions, etc. Knock on wood for my Air 2 ...

The problem is that I hate clicking on a link and having to copy and paste it from Safari into Chrome.

That might be the single most infuriating aspect of iOS... their refusal to let you use whatever app you want... Especially when their app sucks...
 

Evilguppy

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The Air 2 is going to be around for at least another year since they released the Pro this year instead of the Air 3, so I'd go with the Air 2, it will be supported for quite a while longer.
 

heberman

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My iPad Air 2 is far more than a "consumption device" or an "entertainment device". I'm a trial lawyer and I use mine for work stuff. Trial presentation, evidence preparation, deposition review and notations, Word documents, emails, etc.

If you want to treat it like a Windows computer, of course it won't perform the same. It's a different device with a different kind of workflow. I don't drag files from thumb drives or zip files. I use Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive for my files. All of my documents are available to me - all the time. Who uses physical media anymore?

When I need to put together a pdf document by converting a Word doc to pdf and then add pages from other pdf documents - the iPad works faster than my full-blown Adobe Acrobat on the desktop. When I walk into a courtroom with 10,000 pages of reference files on my iPad, I can access any document I need quicker on the iPad than on any laptop.

It's all about workflow. If you try to replicate your Windows workflow on the iPad it doesn't work. If, however, you use the iPad with a workflow that takes advantage of its strengths, it can be better than a laptop or desktop experience. The Air 2 is a beast, performance-wise. I say don't wait. If the new iPad Air 3 is released in the spring and it blows away the Air 2, you will be able to unload your Air 2 for a decent price and upgrade. iPads hold their value very well.
 

SquireSCA

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My iPad Air 2 is far more than a "consumption device" or an "entertainment device". I'm a trial lawyer and I use mine for work stuff. Trial presentation, evidence preparation, deposition review and notations, Word documents, emails, etc.

If you want to treat it like a Windows computer, of course it won't perform the same. It's a different device with a different kind of workflow. I don't drag files from thumb drives or zip files. I use Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive for my files. All of my documents are available to me - all the time. Who uses physical media anymore?

When I need to put together a pdf document by converting a Word doc to pdf and then add pages from other pdf documents - the iPad works faster than my full-blown Adobe Acrobat on the desktop. When I walk into a courtroom with 10,000 pages of reference files on my iPad, I can access any document I need quicker on the iPad than on any laptop.

It's all about workflow. If you try to replicate your Windows workflow on the iPad it doesn't work. If, however, you use the iPad with a workflow that takes advantage of its strengths, it can be better than a laptop or desktop experience. The Air 2 is a beast, performance-wise. I say don't wait. If the new iPad Air 3 is released in the spring and it blows away the Air 2, you will be able to unload your Air 2 for a decent price and upgrade. iPads hold their value very well.

If it works for you, great, although there isn't a single thing you listed that cannot be done equally well on any other platform.

Who uses physical media? Those that don't have an LTE chip with unlimited data or constant access to wifi. Those that travel frequently and want to have to pay for wifi on the plane when they want to work on files or watch movies...

It's nice to be able to pick up a cheap 64gb MicroSD card for $20 shipped on Amazon, rather than pay an extra $100 or more to get that much on a larger iPad. It is also nice to have the ability to just swap out memory cards when you need to. Maybe they are not even files for consumption on the device, maybe just using your tablet or phone AS a thumb drive, rather than having to carry around multiple devices.

It's nice to use my GoPro and take my video from the racetrack and just drop the card into the tablet. With the iPad, it isn't that simple. I bought the Camera reader dongle and could never get it to work right. On an Android phone, tablet or Windows tablet, just slap the MicroSD card in, access it like you would any hard drive and start editing and uploading to YouTube, etc... To get it on the iPad, I had to bring a laptop, put the card in that, push it to the cloud and then back down... When each file is 4GB, it chews up a ton of time and data...

The iPad is just a larger iphone but without the phone. It doesn't do anything that the phone doesn't already do, it just does it on a larger screen.

My friend is a mac fanatic and we were at dinner one night and he had half the table filled up with all his crap... He had his hotspot because for some reason his iPhone wouldn't act as one at the time, he had his laptop for actual work stuff, then he had his iPad... It was funny seeing how he had to have half a table of devices in order to cover all bases.

When a Surface and any phone would do everything you could need.

Anyway, if it works for you, great, but when people ask what the difference in platforms is, everyone should expect to hear both sides, otherwise it doesn't even make sense to bother responding to the OP if we aren't going to give her valid pros and cons of each...
 

heberman

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The iPad is just a larger iphone but without the phone. It doesn't do anything that the phone doesn't already do, it just does it on a larger screen.

...

When a Surface and any phone would do everything you could need.

.

Really? Fanboyism at its finest. Have fun with your Surface.
 

SquireSCA

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Really? Fanboyism at its finest. Have fun with your Surface.

Well, I don't have a surface, I have an iPad Air 2, so there goes your poorly constructed and predicable fanboy argument when you don't like someone's post but don't have a factual way to refute it. Nice try, better luck next time.

Your comment about workflow makes sense, even if all you are really saying is, "if you can change your work habits to conform to the limitations of the iPad, it works fine"...

A most salient and accurate point, that.
 

muchospanish

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It's all about workflow. If you try to replicate your Windows workflow on the iPad it doesn't work. If, however, you use the iPad with a workflow that takes advantage of its strengths, it can be better than a laptop or desktop experience.
That's it exactly. That's how I feel about my iPad at work.
 

harrykatsaros

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Almost everything you said here was wrong.

1. " Screen aspect ratio, as the other guy mentioned. Most HD format is widescreen, so Android lets you use the entire screen for watching video, without cropping. If you watch a lot of movies, this could be a factor."

This is right but also very wrong. Motion pictures are not shot in 16:9 let alone 16:10. The huge huge majority of movies are shot in either 1.85:1 or 2.39:1. No matter what device you use those black letterbox bars will always be there. Even when watching a movie on a widescreen HD TV those bars are unavoidable. If we are talking TV shows then yes, those are almost all she in 16:9.

2. "The iPad Air 2 gets insane battery life. I charge it like twice a week and I use it daily. It is that good, and I don't know of anything on the Android side of the tablet world that can touch it.
. Stock Android has no split screen apps for realtime multitasking, no picture in picture for video content."


This is true but there is a reason for this which I will get to later because you actually listed it as a disadvantage.

3. "The iPad will have a lot less options than Android. The OS is not much different than it was in 2007. There is no real desktop environment, no widgets or real time data... just an old slab of icons that you can't really customize, that you can manually launch one at a time... If you care about widgets and live email, message, RSS feeds, weather, music, etc... iOS will leave you wanting. It requires you to determine what you want, go find the appropriate app and manually launch them one at a time."

Saying that iOS is not much different than it was in 2007 is ridiculous. As far as having a desktop environment, this paradigm is completely illogical in mobile and is a key reason for iOS's Today screen implementation of widgets.

Android widgets are only useful from the launcher. The whole point of the device is to get stuff done and not spend all your time looking at the launcher. iOS is designed to get you in and out of apps, Apple didn't want the launcher to be a destination because you can't actually do anything from the launcher apart from launch stuff. Its kind of the point. This is the reason that iOS accounts for 25-35% of all mobile devices but 80-90% of mobile web traffic, you're not sitting on your launcher staring at app icons, you're busy doing stuff.

iOS widgets DO in fact include all of your live email, message, RSS feeds, weather, music, etc information and are 10 x more useful for quick glance information since you can invoke the today screen from not only the app grid launcher but also from the lock screen and from within apps.

The widgets in iOS also serve a functional purpose as all widgets are tied to apps that you own and have installed on your device. Android widgets are often random web snippets masquerading as functional spaces when they don't in fact lead to any coinciding app or website where you can achieve anything or dive into a deeper resource of relevant information. ALL iOS widgets are windows into an app that actually does something.

iOS also offers all the same third party keyboards you can find on Android, has an almost identical app switcher for multitasking, a universal quick reply function for responding to texts from any app from anywhere in the system that Android can't touch, individualised app permissions (which Google is copying in Android M), dynamic wi-fi identification keys and discreet query in Safari so that wi-fi networks and Google can't track all of your app usage and browsing history, and control centre for access to quick settings toggles.

iOS on iPad now also offers full split view apps for true side by side multitasking and picture in picture for video content. Stock Android is yet to feature any such functionality. Not to mention the fact that developer support for the iPad blows away dev support for Android with apps that are designed specifically for the iPad, as opposed to the vast majority of Android tablet apps which are merely jumbo-sized phone apps with giant fonts and big empty wasted spaces that don't do anything. To call the iPad Air a glorified e-reader while declaring Android tablets tools for real work is absolute nonsense. Android tablets are for browsing Facebook and watching YouTube videos. iPads are in fact work tools. There is a reason why they account for 80-90% of corporate tablet deployments in the Fortune 500.

The only thing I can't do on my iOS devices, thankfully, is set Comic-Sans as a system wide font.

4. "There is no user file system. Each app has it's own sandbox. If you want a file to be opened in more than one app, you need more than one copy of that file, one for each app."

This is perhaps the most wrong thing you mentioned in your piece. Since iOS 8 the iOS file system is independent of any app. You DO NOT need multiple copies of the same file for different apps and despite being sandboxed all apps can speak to each other. I can edit photos using the toolkit of any photo editing app installed on my device without ever leaving my stock Photos app. All edits are non destructive, which means I never lose my original file and all apps that handle photos have access to that file and all of its delta edits.

Furthermore, as of iOS 9 you now also have an iCloud app where you can organise your files in a traditional file system hierarchy.

5. "No simple drag and drop USB functionality. An Advantage of Android is that it is universal, just plug it into a Windows, Linux or MacOS device and it pops up like a thumb drive. Drag and drop all day long, doesn't matter what type of file, no iTunes telling you that you can't transfer that file format, etc..."

It is true that you need to use iTunes to move files onto your iOS device via USB but iTunes does not limit what types of files you can move to your device. Also, I don't know anyone that actually does this anymore. I sometimes move my .mkv's into Infuse using USB because I'm dealing with 4-5GB files but apart from that I never have a need for the function, everything is in the cloud now. Pictures, videos, music, movies, etc... all automatic, all in the cloud.

6. "No expanded storage with Apple. You either couple up $100 more for an extra 32GB that cost apple less than $2 to include, or up your data plan and use cloud storage... Many Android devices have MicroSD slots which can be VERY useful for transporting large files, or housing an extensive multimedia library, installing extra apps, etc... Heck, with a $5 OTG cable I can just plug my 3TB external HD in to my phone or tablet and access it just like a PC would..."

You got this absolutely right. If you really want to, you can buy attachments to add an SD slot to your iPhone/iPad via the Lightning charger port but thats a bit fiddly. And I know that this isn't the case for everyone but I have an extensive library of movies and TV shows on my 3TB drive that I've never actually gone back to watch. Eventually you've downloaded so much crap that you just forget all about it and suddenly that 3TB drive that you needed so desperately sits in a drawer collecting dust.

I mostly download, watch, delete. And for almost all intents and purposes, Netflix is my library. I think this is a way overplayed Android advantage that doesn't actually get used anywhere near as much as people like to claim, which is why a lot of Android OEM's are no longer providing expandable storage.

7. "More customization with Android, if that matters to you. There is NONE on Apple devices."

Beating a dead horse here. Refer back to point 3. If Comic-Sans is your thing than by all means.

8. "Apple puts the absolute minimum amount of RAM into their devices as part of their "planned obsolescence" marketing strategy... I had an iPad Mini 2 Retina and had to return it, the 1GB of RAM, not seen in Android in several years, was completely inadequate. Sluggish, constant page reloads when browsing, it just didn't have enough RAM, and as a result the newer features like split screen and multitasking, wouldn't work on it... so that is how they get you to upgrade..."


Apple's A series SoC's are miles ahead of any other ARM based chipsets. The latest A series SoC's on 2GB RAM have been demonstrated to outperform competing SoC's running on 3-4GB RAM. But I will concede that page reloads were a major pain in the a$$ before the most recent upgrades to 2GB RAM. But the low RAM inclusions were not planned obsolescence that Apple conspiracy theorists like to talk about. My 24 inch iMac is 8 years old and still runs smooth as the day I bought it, not exactly a sound obsolescence strategy.

The low RAM inclusions, made possible by the A series SoC, are actually part of a huge competitive advantage over competing devices. You mentioned it yourself earlier. Battery life. There is a reason Android can't keep up with iPads in battery life, and it all boils down to the A series SoC's and iOS's low RAM demands.

But as these devices have become more powerful, the RAM demands have increased. This is why Apple no longer does its famous "extra battery life in the latest release" plug at launch events, its now just able to get enough extra juice to cater for the extra RAM in newer releases. Advances in battery tech are lagging.

Also, you complain about not being able to do side by side multitasking on the old iPad Mini. As I stated earlier, stock Android doesn't offer ANY side by side multitasking whatsoever. I know Samsung has included some multitasking functionality in there tablets, but just as with almost all TouchWiz based feature extensions its unreliable and its implementation is pretty clunky

I can't think of a single feature that current Android has over current iOS apart from customisation of control centre toggles. Seriously, that's it. You can't change system fonts, create empty spaces between app icons or customise app icons but I'm not a 13 year old kid who needs to turn my device into a Hello Kitty collage. I was an iPhone 4 user who switched to Android 4.0 and the Galaxy Nexus when I grew sick of the limitations of iOS several years ago. I switched back to iOS last year with the iPhone 6 Plus and was happy to find that iOS was a completely different OS to the one that I abandoned in 2011. Feature-wise, the two OS's are very close. But, and this is the reason I went back to iOS to begin with, security wise, Android is a horrible horrible platform.
 

harrykatsaros

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That all makes sense. As for no lag, I cannot make the same claim with my Air 2... I see lag in Safari constantly... It's better than it was on the iPad Mini 2 Retina, but it is still there at time. if I reboot or manually close down the background apps it is better, but to be honest, I can have 15 background apps on my Nexus 6 and not see a fraction of the lag.

I have tried hard resets, wiping it, trying out the public beta's, etc... It is certainly usable, but it is there...

That doesn't make sense. Closing the apps in the background doesn't actually do anything. Background apps in iOS are not actually open and not using up any CPU power. I'm sure you experience lag as you're saying but it should make no difference if you close background apps or just leave them there. The only apps that continue to use any background processes at all are apps with active audio playback.