5 ms·

In the past I've been adamant on buying the LTE+Wifi iPads (because more options right?). In hindsight however, the cellular feature was barely used. Have you

by wamatt 9y ago

In the past I've been adamant on buying the LTE+Wifi iPads (because more options right?). In hindsight however, the cellular feature was barely used. Have you considered an LTE mobile hotspot? It can be left charged (but off) in your laptop bag for days/weeks and only used for travel or as needed. I found it to be super useful and not much hassle at all. Also multiple devices can connect rather simply. Lastly, a benefit of this sort of decoupling, is it allows for using a different network carrier to the mobile phone, thus effectively increasing one's LTE coverage.

dmix 9y ago
It still must be nice to be able to pull out your tablet-esque tablet and be connected to the internet anywhere you go. Especially as CAT-6 LTE is being rolled out in my city (Toronto) with comparable speeds as my home interest in recent years. This will definitely become a must-have feature in future machines for me. I would no longer have to worry whether or not my local coffeeshop's internet is running slow or takes 5 minutes to properly connect to some random public wifi at a new place. Public WIFI is prevelant but still very hit/miss. A consitent fast LTE connection would be quite the luxury. It'd also totally kill SMS and telephone plans which I'm looking forward to the most. Encrypted E2E crypto for both voice/text will be a great incentive for this too.
- killjoywashere 9y ago
  The LTE is faster because your ISP is a douche. It is insane to ever, ever think transmission over airwaves can rival same-day wired capacity. They're just assholes.
  - snewk 9y ago
    I'm not sure what you're trying to say here
ChuckMcM 9y ago
I try a lot of stuff. I'm on my fourth iPad, second Surface Pro, my third Macbook Pro, my fourth ThinkPad. I have also had a Newton, Palm Pilot (various), Handspring, Nook (ebook), and Android tablets (most interesting being a 13" one from Lenovo with a built in projector) I use the Verizon LTE network on my iPad pro all the time. When I'm on the train, when I'm travelling hither and yon. I don't browse/read/search on my phone (which I use for actually calling and texting people). Not saying that I represent a typical consumer but I certainly represent at least a cohort of 1 consumers :-). I had a MiFi for a while (company purchased), but found it consistently had lower performance then the native networking of my iPad and it was easy to lose if I wasn't paying attention. Twice I encountered times when it wasn't charged when I needed it. On analyzing it overall I found that because it wasn't forced to be charged when I charged my laptop/tablet, it suffered from sometimes being missed when it needed to be charged. That the radio is by definition charged when the iPad is charged avoids that failure mode for me. When travelling with my SPro4 I would sometimes 'hot spot' it to my tablet. Awkward but it works. In the inversion that I still marvel about the software availability on the iPad has always been better than the availability of software on the SPro4. The SPro4 has a better (to my taste) drawing experience than the iPad Pro does. And both the iPad Pro and SPro4 are way better than previous stylus attempts on capacitive screens. The iPad has a much better 'tablet only' experience for me, and a much worse 'docked' experience. SPro4 with a Surface Dock and a couple of UHD monitors is literally indistinguishable from the NUC i7 box I use as a desktop. There is nothing (yet) that I can attach to my iPad Pro to make it work like a Macbook Pro (I know I know, different OS, processor etc.) As a result I create more in general on my SPro4, consume more on my iPad Pro. I travel with my iPad in my hand and my SPro in my backpack. Clearly I have been unable to leave one behind and just use the other so there is some more convergence to go :-)
- JustFYI 9y ago
  Wow, makes me think the problem is not your gadgets. PEBKAC.
- sqldba 9y ago
  What are your LTE costs per GB? It hasn't caught on in Australia; you pay about $30AUD a month for about 5GB of total data traffic. If you have 5 devices you usually can't share it either so you either have to swap a lot of SIMs or that's $150 a month one for each.
JohnTHaller 9y ago
Use your mobile phone as a hotspot. In the US, T-Mobile includes 10GB of hotspot in the unlimited mobile plans, so it was a no-brainer for me to go that route.
freshyill 9y ago
I don't understand why people don't just tether to their phones. It just works, and you don't pay any extra for another device on your account. Biggest downside I can see would be draining your phone's battery a bit.
- kartickv 9y ago
  I did that once, and I wished that I could plug my phone in to my iPad to charge it. That didn't work because the iPad uses Apple's proprietary Lightning connector rather than the standard USB-C. If my iPad had USB-C, I could have plugged my Google Pixel into it with the USB-C to USB-C cable Google gave me. This is another limitation of the iPad — like a computer, but with arbitrary limitations like non-standard ports.
- mmargerum 9y ago
  The problem for me is it doesn't just work. Inexplicably , my iPad jut will not connect to my phone. Usually when I need it most.

by wamatt 9y ago

dmix 9y ago

It still must be nice to be able to pull out your tablet-esque tablet and be connected to the internet anywhere you go. Especially as CAT-6 LTE is being rolled out in my city (Toronto) with comparable speeds as my home interest in recent years. This will definitely become a must-have feature in future machines for me. I would no longer have to worry whether or not my local coffeeshop's internet is running slow or takes 5 minutes to properly connect to some random public wifi at a new place. Public WIFI is prevelant but still very hit/miss. A consitent fast LTE connection would be quite the luxury. It'd also totally kill SMS and telephone plans which I'm looking forward to the most. Encrypted E2E crypto for both voice/text will be a great incentive for this too.

killjoywashere 9y ago
The LTE is faster because your ISP is a douche. It is insane to ever, ever think transmission over airwaves can rival same-day wired capacity. They're just assholes.
- snewk 9y ago
  I'm not sure what you're trying to say here

ChuckMcM 9y ago

I try a lot of stuff. I'm on my fourth iPad, second Surface Pro, my third Macbook Pro, my fourth ThinkPad. I have also had a Newton, Palm Pilot (various), Handspring, Nook (ebook), and Android tablets (most interesting being a 13" one from Lenovo with a built in projector) I use the Verizon LTE network on my iPad pro all the time. When I'm on the train, when I'm travelling hither and yon. I don't browse/read/search on my phone (which I use for actually calling and texting people). Not saying that I represent a typical consumer but I certainly represent at least a cohort of 1 consumers :-). I had a MiFi for a while (company purchased), but found it consistently had lower performance then the native networking of my iPad and it was easy to lose if I wasn't paying attention. Twice I encountered times when it wasn't charged when I needed it. On analyzing it overall I found that because it wasn't forced to be charged when I charged my laptop/tablet, it suffered from sometimes being missed when it needed to be charged. That the radio is by definition charged when the iPad is charged avoids that failure mode for me. When travelling with my SPro4 I would sometimes 'hot spot' it to my tablet. Awkward but it works. In the inversion that I still marvel about the software availability on the iPad has always been better than the availability of software on the SPro4. The SPro4 has a better (to my taste) drawing experience than the iPad Pro does. And both the iPad Pro and SPro4 are way better than previous stylus attempts on capacitive screens. The iPad has a much better 'tablet only' experience for me, and a much worse 'docked' experience. SPro4 with a Surface Dock and a couple of UHD monitors is literally indistinguishable from the NUC i7 box I use as a desktop. There is nothing (yet) that I can attach to my iPad Pro to make it work like a Macbook Pro (I know I know, different OS, processor etc.) As a result I create more in general on my SPro4, consume more on my iPad Pro. I travel with my iPad in my hand and my SPro in my backpack. Clearly I have been unable to leave one behind and just use the other so there is some more convergence to go :-)

JustFYI 9y ago
Wow, makes me think the problem is not your gadgets. PEBKAC.
sqldba 9y ago
What are your LTE costs per GB? It hasn't caught on in Australia; you pay about $30AUD a month for about 5GB of total data traffic. If you have 5 devices you usually can't share it either so you either have to swap a lot of SIMs or that's $150 a month one for each.

JohnTHaller 9y ago

Use your mobile phone as a hotspot. In the US, T-Mobile includes 10GB of hotspot in the unlimited mobile plans, so it was a no-brainer for me to go that route.

freshyill 9y ago

I don't understand why people don't just tether to their phones. It just works, and you don't pay any extra for another device on your account. Biggest downside I can see would be draining your phone's battery a bit.

kartickv 9y ago
I did that once, and I wished that I could plug my phone in to my iPad to charge it. That didn't work because the iPad uses Apple's proprietary Lightning connector rather than the standard USB-C. If my iPad had USB-C, I could have plugged my Google Pixel into it with the USB-C to USB-C cable Google gave me. This is another limitation of the iPad — like a computer, but with arbitrary limitations like non-standard ports.
mmargerum 9y ago
The problem for me is it doesn't just work. Inexplicably , my iPad jut will not connect to my phone. Usually when I need it most.