Ditch Your Mac And Live With Just an iPad? – Weak Notebook Demand Expected In 2013

The Mac Observer’s John Martellaro says that as the iPad has evolved and grown more capable, ditching your Mac (or PC) and living solely with an iPad becomes thinkable.

However, John cautions that the first thing to think about is what you may have been doing on a Mac (or PC) that isn’t yet supported on an iPad, although that’s a moving target with the iPad slowly evolving from being a primarily content consumption device to a much more capable content creation and management device.

In the meantime, John notes that some high end types of activities will need careful consideration and research as to whether an iPad can do the job, and there may well be technical requirements that professionals have that only allows them to supplement their work with an iPad and not completely abandon, say, a MacBook Pro.

Certainly, as a production-oriented user, I don’t perceive the iPad as being anywhere remotely close to being able to completely replace my OS X laptops. I am using it a lot for things it can do satisfactorily, but I would estimate that my usage ratio is still maybe 60/40 favoring the Mac. I could do more on the iPad, I suppose, but the lack of real muktitasking, no user access to the file system, full-screen hegemony, and the cumbersome clumsiness and the imprecision of touch-based selection/cut/copy/paste kneecaps the iPad’s potential as a serious and satisfactory production platform, and I don’t anticiplate it evolving out those shortcomings any time soon.

But if the iPad can supports everything you want to do: check email, listen to music, watch movies, browse the Internet, shop, conduct FaceTime sessions with friends and relatives, Tweet, read news, read a book and play games, John contends that an immediate move to living full-time in an iPad is very doable, albeit with one more important consideration, even for the casual consumer – namely data storage capacity – especially if one is not comfortable with relying on Cloud data storage on Dropbox, Microsoft’s SkyDrive, Apple’s iCloud, Amazon’s cloud services, or other Cloud solutions. He notes that moving all your legacy data to Cloud storage entails some security risk and the likelihood that you’ll have to pay to access your own data.

However, he maintains that with the iPad ecosystem rapidly evolving, except for a very few, developers and publishing houses, to name a few, (and some lovable curmudgeons) the era of the iPad-only existence is a distinct, looming reality.

For John’s full commentary click here.

Weak Notebook Demand Expected To Continue In 1Q13

As one of John’s “lovable” (hopefully) curmudgeons, I concede that I’m a member of a shrinking minority. As evidenced by Digitimes’ Monica Chen and Joseph Tsai reporting that as sales of Windows 8 notebooks have fallen short of expectations, and with competition from the iPad and Android tablets increasing, the global market for all types of notebooks is expected to be stagnant during the first quarter of 2013, according to unnamed insiders at Taiwan-based laptop vendors and OEM suppliers.

Chen and Tsai note that Windows 7 notebook inventory levels are still high, with most vendors aggressively offering price cuts, and some Core i5-based notebooks now priced below US$599, and some first-tier brand notebook vendors even dropping prices for models with Intel’s entry-level dual-core processors to below US$399.

However, the sources report that with Windows Vista/XP-based notebooks already able to satisfy most usage demands, more consumers are prioritizing their hardware budgets to purchase smartphones or tablets, and delaying their PC replacement needs.

For the full report visit here:
http://goo.gl/vhvxX