{"id":1914,"date":"2011-07-13T00:01:44","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T04:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.red-sweater.com\/blog\/?p=1914"},"modified":"2011-07-13T00:09:54","modified_gmt":"2011-07-13T04:09:54","slug":"the-ipad-category","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/1914\/the-ipad-category","title":{"rendered":"The iPad Category"},"content":{"rendered":"

I, like most, have been perplexed by the persistent rumors that Apple is gearing up to release a third<\/em> iPad this fall. For those of you who don’t follow the product lineup closely, the iPad 2 was released just earlier this year, so Apple releasing a successor to that product so soon after would be a deviation from their more usual approach of shipping major updates to a product every 1 or 2 years.<\/p>\n

I like\u00a0Manton Reece’s take<\/a> on recent speculation<\/a> that it won’t be an iPad 3 so much as an iPad Pro:<\/p>\n

\n

This isn’t a replacement for the current iPad; it’s another layer to the product lineup. And like the awkwardly-named iPod Photo from 2004, I bet the iPad Pro is meant to be temporary.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But I disagree about the temporary nature of such a high-end counterpart to the iPad. Apple likes to segment the market and then keep it that way. There are four completely different classes<\/em> of iPod for sale in the Apple Store, and iPhones that range in price from $49 (with a contract) to $649.00 (unlocked). \u00a0Mac Minis currently start at $699 while the beefiest Mac Pro starts at $4,999.<\/p>\n

Apple’s segmentation seems to achieve the classic goal of taking a little or a lot of the customer’s money, depending on how much they have to spend. But many folks are inspired to buy in at several price-points for a single product line. I own a Mac Mini and a MacBook Pro. An iPod Nano and an iPod touch. An iPhone 4, and, well, my wife takes good care of my iPhone 3G.\u00a0I also own an iPad. Will I buy an iPad Pro if it comes out this fall? If it puts my iPad 1 to shame (which the iPad 2, frankly, did not), then yes, I’ll probably buy one of those too.<\/p>\n

I’ll be surprised if Apple doesn’t <\/em>take the same approach with iPad that they usually do: the low-end unit is always surprising powerful for the price, but outdone by some whiz-bang innovations at the high end. No, they don’t apply this strategy to all<\/em> of their products, but this\u00a0isn’t some hobby<\/em> for them. As Jony Ive says in a recent commercial<\/a>, the iPad “defines an entire category.” Let’s see how Apple intends to fill that category out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I, like most, have been perplexed by the persistent rumors that Apple is gearing up to release a third iPad this fall. For those of you who don’t follow the product lineup closely, the iPad 2 was released just earlier this year, so Apple releasing a successor to that product so soon after would be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,30,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-business","category-ipad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1914"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1923,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914\/revisions\/1923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}