Apple's "Sad" Comment about 5 year old PCs - Joke or Reality
During this weeks Apple announcement around the iPhone SE and new iPad Pro models - Phil Schiller of Apple repeated a statement made earlier by Samsung that there are some 600M PCs out there that are 5 years old+ and that this was sad.
The inference being that the owners of those 600M PCs should be looking to iPad as their replacement devices and that many new iPad users have mentioned that they were "coming from" a Windows PC.
So obviously this was a shameless plug for the iPad to be viewed as a valid PC replacement. Various observer blogs out there made light of the comment and some even showed reaction from some Apple execs - who seemed a little embarrassed by Mr Schiller's comments.
The question is - was Mr Schiller that far off ?
It really depends on how you look at it.
I'll use my own home as an example. In my home today - we have 5 Windows based devices - 1 x traditional tower, 1 x Small Form Factor (SFF) PC, 1 x All-in-one touch screen PC, traditional laptop and an 8" tablet. All are running Windows 10.
Three of the devices meet that 5 year old+ benchmark. In fact my primary PC is an HP Pavilion e9280t I purchased back in 2009 and my wife uses an even older HP Touchsmart IQ527 purchased in 2008. The laptop is an HP Pavilion dv6t purchased in 2011.
With all of the devices I did make SSD upgrades - from Intel or Samsung and with my e9280t I did need to upgrade the video card to support Windows 10 - which I did for $69 using an AMD Radeon R7-240. These upgrades definitely improved not only the performance of each device but I believe have extended the life of the devices for at least 3 - 5 more years.
We also have a couple of iPads - an older iPad 2 I bought in 2011 and an iPad Mini - bought in 2012. Both are running the latest iOS 9.3 release.
So the question is - could I or would I replace the PCs with iPads ?
I'll use myself as an example. Like many folks I spend the bulk of my day in a browser (in my case Chrome) and maybe apps like news, weather, finance or sports. I also use Word, Excel, PowerPoint via an Office365 subscription and then play Music or Video or view Photos.
Outside of that core group I have a few very specialized apps like Handbrake for creating H.264 video and a Logitech Harmony app for programming some multi-device remotes that require USB connectivity.
I rarely push my current Core i7-970 utilization or my 8GB of RAM. So would an Apple A9X CPU actually support my use case - the answer is absolutely.
And outside of the few exceptions I mentioned - I can use all of the same apps I do on my PC including most if not all of the MS apps I use today on my PC including Office. I would also have access to thousands of apps that I don't have access to with Windows 10. And finally I would have a level of portability that I just can't get with a PC.
Could I use an iPad as my primary device ? - the answer actually is yes.
In many ways iPad is a compelling device. You can easily mirror the iPad display using Apple's Digital Video Adapter to an existing VGA or HDMI Monitor and use an Apple or 3rd party bluetooth keyboard/mouse. Additionally using AirPlay and Apple TV would could mirror the iPad display to a TV as well as stream iPad content.
But there are some issues I would have to address...
The first is storage. My primary PC uses an SSD for OS along with an internal 3TB HDD for local content and a USB 3.0 4TB HDD for backup. While one could make the argument that I could store that content in the cloud or on a NAS device and make it available - both would introduce new costs.
The next is port connectivity. One of the challenges of the iPad is the single lightning connector. While I mentioned above that you can connect an iPad to an external display using the adapter - you then have to connect your power supply to that adapter to also keep the unit charged. If you want to connect something else - you now have to disconnect the video adapter to connect the new device - loosing your external display and power.
And yes while there are some lightning "hubs" out there - the challenge is that lightning is a daisy chain protocol versus a hub protocol like USB. Bottom line here is that if you get into more complex external connectivity use cases iPad can become challenging.
Finally there is some usability issues. While iOS does support cut/paste and other cross app capabilities - some iOS apps don't do that great a job. Similarly some iOS apps are not as powerful or as feature capable as their Windows or Mac equivalents.
Now let's talk price.
Using the middle of the road 128Gb 9.7" iPad Pro as a comparative model - that unit is $749 for the WiFi only version. Add the video adapter cable - $49 and keyboard/mouse - $178 and you're at $976.
Even changing to the 32GB model which is $599 for Wifi Only and again you'll approach $830 all-in for a similar config.
If you were to add an Apple 27" Monitor @ $999 you're suddenly looking at somewhere in the $1800 - $2000 range all in.
For the PC side of this comparison I'll use the Intel NUC - which if I were buying today would be my PC replacement.
A new NUC6 edition running a Core i5-6260U with Iris 540 graphics is $396. Let's add to that 8Gb of DDR4 RAM for $35, 128GB M.2 PCIe SSD for $100 and a Logitech Wireless KB/Mouse for $46 for a total of $577. So some $400 less.
The NUC also has multiple USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports as well as HDMI, displayport and 1GB NIC as well as 802.11ac Wireless and Bluetooth. All this is 4" x 4" footprint.
You can add in a 32" HP Bang and Olufsen Media Display for $450 to the above and be around $1030. Again almost half the cost of an iPad solution.
Also by comparison - a Surface Pro 4 with Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage is $899 - add a $129 type cover and your at $1030.
The point here being - from a hardware standpoint - you can purchase a modern PC in some cases for much less than an iPad and get a lot more CPU power, ram, storage, and connectivity options.
With that said, when you add the portability and access to the broad range of apps available for iPad - it can be a very compelling argument. For many use cases an iPad could replace a PC and in fact provide more capability.
So was Mr Schiller joking - not really.
The inference being that the owners of those 600M PCs should be looking to iPad as their replacement devices and that many new iPad users have mentioned that they were "coming from" a Windows PC.
So obviously this was a shameless plug for the iPad to be viewed as a valid PC replacement. Various observer blogs out there made light of the comment and some even showed reaction from some Apple execs - who seemed a little embarrassed by Mr Schiller's comments.
The question is - was Mr Schiller that far off ?
It really depends on how you look at it.
I'll use my own home as an example. In my home today - we have 5 Windows based devices - 1 x traditional tower, 1 x Small Form Factor (SFF) PC, 1 x All-in-one touch screen PC, traditional laptop and an 8" tablet. All are running Windows 10.
Three of the devices meet that 5 year old+ benchmark. In fact my primary PC is an HP Pavilion e9280t I purchased back in 2009 and my wife uses an even older HP Touchsmart IQ527 purchased in 2008. The laptop is an HP Pavilion dv6t purchased in 2011.
With all of the devices I did make SSD upgrades - from Intel or Samsung and with my e9280t I did need to upgrade the video card to support Windows 10 - which I did for $69 using an AMD Radeon R7-240. These upgrades definitely improved not only the performance of each device but I believe have extended the life of the devices for at least 3 - 5 more years.
We also have a couple of iPads - an older iPad 2 I bought in 2011 and an iPad Mini - bought in 2012. Both are running the latest iOS 9.3 release.
So the question is - could I or would I replace the PCs with iPads ?
I'll use myself as an example. Like many folks I spend the bulk of my day in a browser (in my case Chrome) and maybe apps like news, weather, finance or sports. I also use Word, Excel, PowerPoint via an Office365 subscription and then play Music or Video or view Photos.
Outside of that core group I have a few very specialized apps like Handbrake for creating H.264 video and a Logitech Harmony app for programming some multi-device remotes that require USB connectivity.
I rarely push my current Core i7-970 utilization or my 8GB of RAM. So would an Apple A9X CPU actually support my use case - the answer is absolutely.
And outside of the few exceptions I mentioned - I can use all of the same apps I do on my PC including most if not all of the MS apps I use today on my PC including Office. I would also have access to thousands of apps that I don't have access to with Windows 10. And finally I would have a level of portability that I just can't get with a PC.
In many ways iPad is a compelling device. You can easily mirror the iPad display using Apple's Digital Video Adapter to an existing VGA or HDMI Monitor and use an Apple or 3rd party bluetooth keyboard/mouse. Additionally using AirPlay and Apple TV would could mirror the iPad display to a TV as well as stream iPad content.
The first is storage. My primary PC uses an SSD for OS along with an internal 3TB HDD for local content and a USB 3.0 4TB HDD for backup. While one could make the argument that I could store that content in the cloud or on a NAS device and make it available - both would introduce new costs.
The next is port connectivity. One of the challenges of the iPad is the single lightning connector. While I mentioned above that you can connect an iPad to an external display using the adapter - you then have to connect your power supply to that adapter to also keep the unit charged. If you want to connect something else - you now have to disconnect the video adapter to connect the new device - loosing your external display and power.
And yes while there are some lightning "hubs" out there - the challenge is that lightning is a daisy chain protocol versus a hub protocol like USB. Bottom line here is that if you get into more complex external connectivity use cases iPad can become challenging.
Finally there is some usability issues. While iOS does support cut/paste and other cross app capabilities - some iOS apps don't do that great a job. Similarly some iOS apps are not as powerful or as feature capable as their Windows or Mac equivalents.
Now let's talk price.
Using the middle of the road 128Gb 9.7" iPad Pro as a comparative model - that unit is $749 for the WiFi only version. Add the video adapter cable - $49 and keyboard/mouse - $178 and you're at $976.
Even changing to the 32GB model which is $599 for Wifi Only and again you'll approach $830 all-in for a similar config.
If you were to add an Apple 27" Monitor @ $999 you're suddenly looking at somewhere in the $1800 - $2000 range all in.
For the PC side of this comparison I'll use the Intel NUC - which if I were buying today would be my PC replacement.
A new NUC6 edition running a Core i5-6260U with Iris 540 graphics is $396. Let's add to that 8Gb of DDR4 RAM for $35, 128GB M.2 PCIe SSD for $100 and a Logitech Wireless KB/Mouse for $46 for a total of $577. So some $400 less.
The NUC also has multiple USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports as well as HDMI, displayport and 1GB NIC as well as 802.11ac Wireless and Bluetooth. All this is 4" x 4" footprint.
You can add in a 32" HP Bang and Olufsen Media Display for $450 to the above and be around $1030. Again almost half the cost of an iPad solution.
Also by comparison - a Surface Pro 4 with Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage is $899 - add a $129 type cover and your at $1030.
With that said, when you add the portability and access to the broad range of apps available for iPad - it can be a very compelling argument. For many use cases an iPad could replace a PC and in fact provide more capability.
So was Mr Schiller joking - not really.
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