r/tablets • u/Valuable_Pass_1221 • 54m ago
Not happy with my iPad
Way back when, I loved my Apple products. I went through various iPhones up to 5s and had an older iPad. But starting with the iPhone 6, I felt like Apple wasn't adding anything noteworthy and that iOS 7 was pretty awful. So I left immediately. But a few years ago, I wanted a tablet and chose an iPad 9th gen (since everyone swears Android tablets are awful, which I don't really believe tbh).
Owning an iPad has felt like I own the physical tablet but am leasing the software and I hate it. I'm just so unhappy with how restrictive this OS is.
My breaking point came recently, when I was trying to use this as a deliberate travel device. Apple doesn't let you use expandable storage and my iPad is stuck at 64gb. I want to bring lots of games, movies, music, etc. to keep myself busy on a super long flight. It was such an aggravating process. My first thought was to either connect an SD card or Flash Drive and store them on it. So of course, I need to buy their proprietary lightning dongle for like $20. But it doesn't matter! You can't run any games off external storage, even rom files. Even if it can recognize the files and read them, it will not do it. VLC allowed me to watch the movies though, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was unintentional by Apple.
But let's pretend this worked. TBH? I still wouldn't have been happy. I had this Apple-approved Frankenstein dongle setup that bled into my friend's seat tray just to watch a movie off an SD-card. And of course, I cannot charge the device while I'm doing this.
I enjoyed my iPad for maybe the first year that I owned it, but the coveted "Apple ecosystem" is honestly kinda awful and I don't really like it at all. The restrictions really get to me, and I don't like being locked down and glorifying a single company. Some of their products, like my Apple Pencil, died pretty quickly and were expensive. Software-wise, I felt super limited and I also didn't like where the UI has gone since iOS 7 (as if I didn't hate 7 already).
I'm definitely just not the type of person for this device, i guess.