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On the contrary. Mail, games, social networking and search are 90+% of what most normal people do with a computer. So people are buying iPads instead of compute

by swombat 14y ago

On the contrary. Mail, games, social networking and search are 90+% of what most normal people do with a computer. So people are buying iPads instead of computers because they work better for the most common use cases.

WayneDB 14y ago
Do you have a citation for that? According to Nielsen, Americans spend about 35% on "Other", so I'd like to know where your 90% figure comes from. Page 3 here - http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/social/ http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/social/ Older numbers from 2010 - http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-americans-do-online-social-media-and-games-dominate-activity/ http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-ameri... At the very least, I think the meme is inaccurate.
- nmcfarl 14y ago
  Not commenting on anything else here, anecdotally the meme is very accurate. All of my relatives in their 50's and older (and their friends) bought cheap netbooks 5 years ago, and every last one of them is replacing them with iPads as they break, etc. This is I think, oddly, the majority of the iPad owners I know (the rest are young(ish) geeks, like me, for whom the iPad is a 3rd or 5th device.) From my perspective this meme is dead on.
jiggy2011 14y ago
Not sure how well that logic holds. When I buy a computer (or anything really) I don't look for something that does 90% of what I want to do or what my old device could do. I want something that can do everything that I currently do as well as some stuff that I think I might like to do in the future. For example with my car. I'd say I do about 50% of my driving with only me in the car, about another 40% of it with 1 other passenger and maybe only 10% with 2 or more passengers. I also drive most of the time with an almost empty boot. So in that case I should just buy a 2 seater car with a small boot, since a 2 seater car would probably be either cooler or more economical. But of course I drive a 5 seater car with a reasonable size boot because I don't want the inconvenience of not being able to do that 10% use case. On the other hand, if I was going to buy a second car in addition then it would make perfect sense to get a smaller 2 seater car.

by swombat 14y ago

WayneDB 14y ago

Do you have a citation for that? According to Nielsen, Americans spend about 35% on "Other", so I'd like to know where your 90% figure comes from. Page 3 here - http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/social/ http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/social/ Older numbers from 2010 - http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-americans-do-online-social-media-and-games-dominate-activity/ http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-ameri... At the very least, I think the meme is inaccurate.

nmcfarl 14y ago
Not commenting on anything else here, anecdotally the meme is very accurate. All of my relatives in their 50's and older (and their friends) bought cheap netbooks 5 years ago, and every last one of them is replacing them with iPads as they break, etc. This is I think, oddly, the majority of the iPad owners I know (the rest are young(ish) geeks, like me, for whom the iPad is a 3rd or 5th device.) From my perspective this meme is dead on.

jiggy2011 14y ago

Not sure how well that logic holds. When I buy a computer (or anything really) I don't look for something that does 90% of what I want to do or what my old device could do. I want something that can do everything that I currently do as well as some stuff that I think I might like to do in the future. For example with my car. I'd say I do about 50% of my driving with only me in the car, about another 40% of it with 1 other passenger and maybe only 10% with 2 or more passengers. I also drive most of the time with an almost empty boot. So in that case I should just buy a 2 seater car with a small boot, since a 2 seater car would probably be either cooler or more economical. But of course I drive a 5 seater car with a reasonable size boot because I don't want the inconvenience of not being able to do that 10% use case. On the other hand, if I was going to buy a second car in addition then it would make perfect sense to get a smaller 2 seater car.