When the first iPad came out I wondered wtf was the point of a tablet, and I’m still wondering
As a current university student, I see a lot of iPads and Surface tablets in my classes. They have essentially replaced traditional laptops in any specialties that isn’t computer science adjacent.
You can handwrite notes straight your textbooks/slides or type with an external keyboard without having to carry around a textbook+notebook+laptop. It’s very convenient.
The only 2 reason I can think of is price and size. Even if someone needs to draw something that can’t be easily done with kbm, there are touchscreen laptops that can take care of that. But those do cost more than a cheap tablet and if you don’t need any other features that needs more power then tablet would be a cheaper alternative. I don’t get your second point of carrying textbook, notebook and a laptop tho, a laptop can already do all of that just like a tablet or even better. The only time someone asked me for tablet recommendations was when they needed something small to read on bed.
A touchscreen laptop is no where near the fidelity you get with the Apple pencil or a Samsung s-pen.
Lenovo has a stylus that’s about as good as those, plus Samsung sells laptops that work with the s-pen and there’s the Surface Laptop as well.
If you’re a digital artist or someone looking to get into digital art, an IPad Air with an Apple Pencil is the cheapest entry-point that doesn’t require a computer and doesn’t absolutely suck.
Heh, reminds me of this ancient meme from when the iPad first came out
With a 6,6" phone I don’t need a tablet for everyday carry because the screen is just big enough. Back in the day of 5" screens I always had a need for a tablet. Nevertheless, tablets are great for certain professional tasks.
Like taking inventories, putting together orders and other warehouse tasks where I need to work with spreadsheets on the go but a laptop is just too unwieldy.
Tablets are also absolutely great for live mixing with digital boards—you can walk around in the audience and adjust the sound on the spot. Same for adjusting the system settings while doing installations. And for small gigs, the mixing board can be tucked away in a stage corner and not clutter the floor.
Pilots use tablets as digital kneeboards for checklists and other necessities.
Tablets also make great POS devices and there are many specialised models for just that task.
Tablets are simply fantastic for wallmounted or desktop control panels for smarthomes. You can even use the front camera for motion detection so the screen comes automagically on when you approach it. I use WallPanel, but Fully Kiosk Browser is also very popular.
A 6.6" 20:9 screen isnt’t that big. You’re just getting the top and bottom bezels of the older 5.5" 16:9 phone basically. So a tablet will still have a bigger screen.
Agree with your other points about use cases for tablets. They’re pretty versatile, I don’t know why this community likes to poo-poo them.
If Google can’t be bothered to create decent tablet apps for their own apps, why are any other devs going to do it?
clearly you’ve never met a non-programmer with an app idea. so many random people have billion dollar ideas they’re willing to give you for free, and how dare you shrug that idea off as not worth your time, they’re giving you a lottery ticket they can’t turn in because they don’t “get” computers, but you do, so with just your skills and effort, and their genius idea you never could have thought of because you’re not an “idea person”, YOU could be a billionaire.
