Jim Dalrymple
From the minute I picked up the iPad Air at Apple's event in San Francisco last week, I knew it was going to be different. Apple set expectations very high by simply using the "Air" moniker for the new iPad, giving users thoughts of a lightweight, powerful, professional device, similar to how they think of the MacBook Air.
The good news is the iPad Air lives up to all of those expectations and more.
Harry McCracken
It's not Apple's six newly-free apps that make the iPad Air special, or even the ones which are preinstalled, like the Safari browser and Siri. It isn't even the new hardware, impressive though it is.
No, the iPad Air's best feature is the 475,000 third-party offerings tailored for it in the App Store, still by far the most bountiful collection of tablet software in quantity, quality and sheer diversity, from entertainment to Web tools to education to mundane business stuff. No competing model has anything like it, which is the single biggest reason why no other full-sized model has made much of an impact on the market.
Designwise, this iPad is so much svelter that it almost feels like a new class of Apple tablet, but it remains an iPad — and for now, at least, that continues to be the most important bragging right that any tablet can claim.
Walt Mossberg
One reason for the phenomenal success of the iPad has been Apple's ability to pack speed and versatility into a thin, light body with long battery life. It doesn't do everything a laptop does, but for many common scenarios, it has replaced the laptop as its owners' go-to device. That's why the company has sold 170 million iPads in just 3½ years.
Now, Apple is raising the bar.
Bottom line: If you can afford it, the new iPad Air is the tablet I recommend, hands down.
John Gruber
There are so many millions of iPad users that no simple explanation can cover all use cases. But my take, since last year, has been that the full-size iPad is best seen as an alternative to a laptop, and the iPad Mini as a supplement to a laptop.
But the tremendous weight reduction in the iPad Air complicates this equation.
For me, personally, with my primary uses of the iPad being reading web pages, Twitter, email, and books, the larger display of the Air doesn't have as much appeal. I think I'm going to hold out and buy a new iPad Mini for myself. But it's a damn close call.
Bard Molen
Remember "thinnovation"? That was Apple's tagline when it first introduced theMacBook Air, a laptop so skinny it could fit in a manila envelope. Six years later, the company did something similar with its tablet lineup by introducing the iPad Air. As its name suggests, the Air comes with a revamped design that sheds almost half a pound of weight, along with a couple millimeters of thickness and a significant amount of bezel area. At the same time, it maintains the same 9.7-inch Retina display that defined the last two iPads. While that's impressive enough in its own right, Apple also managed to make the device more powerful, thanks to the same A7 chip that already powers the iPhone 5s.
If you thought you had a tough choice last year, the iPad Air faces even tougher competition in 2013 -- and it's likely to get yet more fierce over the coming year. Though the Air will continue to be a solid option thanks to its size, weight, performance and battery life, the Nexus 10 offers a great experience at a lower price (although its lack of cellular connectivity is a potential con). And if you want the absolute best components, you might be just as happy with other flagship tablets.
Additionally, the Air may lose a few potential buyers to the iPad mini with Retina display, which will essentially be the Air in a smaller size. The features, specs and performance should be roughly the same, so if you've been holding out for a more petite iOS tablet with a great screen, you'll want to hang tight a bit longer. We don't envy the decision you have to make, but it's hard to go wrong with the Air if you're in need of as much screen space as possible.
Darrell Etherington
The iPad Air is a huge improvement over the iPad 4th-gen, or the iPad 2, pictured in the gallery. Its form factor is the best currently available for a 10-inch tablet, and it provides a great blend of portability and usability that leans towards the media device end of the spectrum.
When Apple introduced the iPad mini, I feel in love and felt that I'd never be swayed back to the other side. The iPad Air makes the argument anew that there's still room for big tablets in people's lives, and it might just help usher in an era of computing where households own more than one kind of iPad, and PCs are harder and harder to find.
(Former New York Times)
No longer alone in the marketplace, no longer the only right choice, no breakthrough new features. But it's smaller, lighter, and faster than ever, with a much bigger catalog of apps—and much better ones—than the competition. If you want a big tablet, this is the one that will make you happiest.
Put another way, there really is something in the Air.
No comments:
Post a Comment