This was my problem when I was looking to replace my iMac. Knowing I couldn’t get a 27” good one, I started looking at Mac minis, and the storage is just abysmal. I got so disheartened by the silliness of the options that I ended up with a base mini with a USB solid-state drive for local storage and some extra ports, and a NAS for backup. I get that they’re trying to push everyone to use iCloud, and that makes sense for something like a highly mobile laptop which is often in danger of loss or damage, but I’m just not that guy.
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I mentioned in here a couple months ago, that I just replaced my 27" iMac with a PC…first time in 20 years to run windows at home. I needed it for Diablo 4 though 
I am actually typing this on my 27" iMac, but this machine has just become web browsing and music streaming machine now.
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What Apple has successfully done for me is create an infrastructure that makes it difficult to contemplate changing brands. Everything in my life is well-integrated to the Apple infrastructure - my watch, my headphones, my lights, my thermostat, my garage door, my speakers, my car, etc., etc. On top of that I’ve got a decade or more of App Store purchases. It wouldn’t be impossible to change, but it would take time and money.
That said, price aside I’ve been happy with Apple. The phones have always been solid and I have had little reason to complain outside of some bugs here and there that come around as part of their yearly upgrade. That said, I don’t have other smartphone experience to compare my phone to - I’ve been on an iPhone since I switched from some old Nokia flip thingy many years ago.
As for upgrading, I tend to do it if there is some sort of trade-in deal or special sale on a newer model. What I mostly look for is camera improvement. I used to enjoy photography as a (very amateur) hobby and would lug around a bag with my DSLR and a variety of lenses whenever I would travel. The phone can’t replicate that, but with kids (and a sometimes impatient wife) it has become more and more difficult to carry all that gear and the phone is simply more practical. With cameras and processing continually improving, it takes the sting out of not having my gear. It will never replace my good telephotos and wide angles but for the vast majority of the pictures I take these days it is acceptable.
I always go for the highest storage options even if I never use them. Im already paying a boatload for apple products so I go ahead and pay a little more, I suppose. I’ve never needed the full storage, but in the past I’ve had limited storage on some of my devices like a 16 Gb iPad that did fill up quickly and it was quite annoying.
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Yeah, moving away from Apple was a difficult choice for desktop - I am still Apple for everything else. But…the nice thing about Steam is that for just pure gaming, the Mac/PC issue was moot. Steam cloud saves worked fine for just about everything that mattered.
I can live with the deep integration (if not as severe as you, only iPhone, iPad, and Airpods, however several iterations over the past 2 decades) but I really detest those Storage scummy tactics. I felt pressured for going to the biggest storage version with my last iPhone (however it was an iPhone 6+ that little bugger is still chugging along fine and it is from 2014(!)
10 years later and I know where my priorities lie…I want an iPhone for giga-monstrous hands and I actually don’t need much storage at all on that thing.
80% of storage goes to music, if I had no music on there I could probably run with the internal storage my original C64 had all those years ago.
So if (when) my iPhone 6+ dinosaur finally kicks the bucket I hope they still sell iPhone SE, since I like the old fingerprint sensor button more than the newer “full screen” design starting with the iPhone X (also SE is way cheaper too).
I however dread the day my iPad Pro (2nd gen from 2017) kicks the bucket…some apps on there are no longer sold and cannot be downloaded anymore as well as above mentioned storage woes with the now 3 way-pronged approach Apple has with their iPads (low-tier iPad, mid-tier iPad Air and top-tier iPad Pro) where only the (did you rob a bank recently?) Pro models have enough storage for me…
I know…I know…pointless stuff but I am still angry…
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I’ve not tried this so I’m not completely sure about this as a solution. You might be able to backup and restore an old iPad with iMazing. Restoring to a new iPad may allow you to keep old apps that are no longer sold.
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I think I bought the cheapest piece of hardware we’ve discussed yet but it may be a game changer…
I’ve never given much thought to remote play but the upcoming PlayStation Portal piqued my interest. Since I’m both cheap and impatient I bought a $12 clip to attack my phone to my DualSense and I now don’t know why I’ve never done it before (or even bothered to use a controller with my phone at all). Not only can I play my iOS games much easier now, but I can stream my PS5, which includes my PS4 library.
All this is to say that for $12 I’m laying out back in my hammock playing Fallout 4. It’s pretty cool.
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Considering giving my 7 year-old son a tablet for Christmas and have only ever used ipads myself, and that’s too high-end for him. Or, more accurately, too pricey for his dropping it or slamming it around by accident. His main usage will be for watching streaming channels (he’s just not much into games) and listening to audio books (we use the Libby app, which goes through public libraries).
Would like it to be about the same size as a standard ipad and have a good video resolution without being adult-level expensive. Any thoughts and suggestions are much-appreciated : )
I know you said no iPad, but fwiw I did the low end models for my daughters - the $329 models I think. I wanted to stay in the Apple ecosystem and I’m a fan of the parental controls.
They also use them pretty exclusively for streaming, music, some games, and Zooms when needed.
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Amazon Fire HD. Cheap as chips, decently robust, and you can either fiddle with it to use the Andoid Play store or whatever it’s called this week, or use it via Amazon’s ecosystem. I mainly use mine for books and lazy streaming.
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I wonder how much old ipads are going for in pawn shops if theyre selling new ones for $300.
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I have bought used ipads for myself on ebay, and there are nice deals to be found. The issue is that apple makes old models obsolete so quickly via the ios updates. They stop supporting the old models as quickly as they can. It’s quite a “business model”.
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And the corollary is that if you want to sell your apple gadgets you can’t hang on to them long or they aren’t worth much at all.
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That seems like a high standard. Apple released a security update for iPadOS 12 this year, if I’m reading right. The devices that can run that are a decade old.
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I think I’m not explaining it well–the ios updates don’t necessarily make the actual device unusable, they make the apps have to update and become incompatible with the hardware (unless the app-maker wants to maintain several iterations) (which most don’t, and I can’t blame them).
Also, a security update is not the same as an operating system update. If all apple did was offer security updates and left their os alone, you really could happily use 10 year-old devices. I have devices 5 to 10 years old, and they will not run several streaming services and/or crash when they try. Upon trying to launch it, the app will tell you that you need to update the app in order to run it, then you go to the app store to do so, and they tell you there isn’t a compatible version for your system/device. So the device works, but you increasingly can’t use more and more apps with it.
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Yeah. The oldest Apple device I’ve got left is a 2012 mac mini. It’s stuck on macOS 10.15.7 because later releases desupported it — but that version was released in 2022, ten years later. And they still occasionally put out security updates for that branch. I don’t think there’s a lot of room to complain about that.
Also, before dissing Apple on this point, look into the update policies of whatever other tablet maker you’re thinking of. You’re definitely not going to see years of software support from cheap brands.
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I see. Totally fair.
And I’m still grumpy about the 32-bit reset (I miss my Arkham Horror 2nd edition assistant and Battle for Hill 218).
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Oh, I’m grumpy about that too — I miss the app with all the Infocom text adventures. (At least FFG updated Elder Sign … I still play that regularly) But in the end that’s not Apple’s fault, it’s that some app makers decided not to update their old apps. Again, I doubt you’ll get better support elsewhere.
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It’s a very minor bit of hardware but I’ve been given m Apple Pencil to Christmas to go will ny pad pro. This post is beenjwetter wit scribble and it strugglers cott my hardierting, apparently. Correcting the typos does not seem to be intuitive either. Hopefully it will learn to read whatever it is I’m writing…
To be fair, this probably says more about my penmanship after decades of typing than I’d like.
’
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I am impressed you are writing in Norse code….
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