The timing of this article should be considered suspect. It means that I’m quite prescient or mildly out of touch with Apple’s direction, or just a good guesser.
What I want in an iPad should be taken with a proverbial grain of salt, but I suspect that many others want the same things.
An iPad without a Retina-caliber display is a loser product, easily overshadowed by less expensive tablets. Apple charging $100 for an additional 16GB of storage is a ripoff of scandalous proportions, too. $200 more for an additional 48GB is highway robbery.
What I want from Apple is prices that compete, not gouge. I don’t mind paying a premium for quality hardware, but I’m not the only one who feels that Apple takes advantage of customer loyalty by obviously overinflated prices.
I can be enticed to accept Apple’s prices if the value is somewhat competitive. For example, an iPad with a built-in keyboard screen protector would be a plus. So would an iPad with built-in 4G LTE wireless capability (instead of an extra $130), and iPhone 5S caliber camera. Even if I didn’t use the 4G LTE plans, the iPad would be worth more at resale time, which helps to reduce TOC (total cost of ownership).
Tablets, like smartphones, are reaching a more mature stage. More storage, 4G LTE built-in, Retina caliber displays, better cameras, more high quality applications, and so on. Apple seems content to compete in the premium product segment, as usual, and iPads tend to perform better than less expensive knock off models (not to mention the disparity in the application library of the App Store), but even die-hard Apple loyalists have to be impressed with competing tablets at half the price of an iPad. Amazon’s new Kindle Fire HDX comes with onscreen video help– from a live person (the TV commercials are enticing).
What I want is simple. iPad mini with Retina display. 4G LTE. A minimum of 32GB storage. Higher quality camera (front and back). Touch ID fingerprint sensor. Screen cover with keyboard. Should that dream iPad cost over $600?