Also, where's the innovation? I want better battery life, more memory, cellular data, a memory card slot.
My existing tablet is "good enough" but I'd upgrade for something that is better, otherwise I'll wait until it dies and buy something at a similar price point.
Unfortunately, "better battery life" isn't compatible with thinner, better screen, or faster. Of course there is progress being made in CPUs/GPUs that improve battery life without sacrificing speed, but it so far hasn't been revolutionary. The iPad 2 still has specs that work for most people.
As for memory, I assume you meant of the storage (rather than RAM) variety. That's intentionally not expandable, because they want some way to make your old device obsolete.
Cellular data has been available in tablets almost since the iPad came out, so I'm not sure what you mean there...
> "That's intentionally not expandable, because they want some way to make your old device obsolete."
This only makes sense if they were increasing storage capacity year over year - but this hasn't been the case for a while.
We've been on the 16/32/64GB system for a preeeetty long time now.
Storage isn't being expanded because the demand for local storage is decreasing for most users - where someone used to sling around gigs of music it's now streamed on-demand. Ditto videos.
Expandability isn't prioritized because most users who bought the old expandable devices never used it, and it creates user confusion when they use it without knowing what they're doing - the lack of an explicit file system in tablet UX means that users don't keep tabs on where their apps/data actually live and then get confused when they eject the memory card.
Expandable storage sadly has always been a niche, power-user feature.
Planned obsolescence is sometimes a thing, but in this case it seems reaching.
>Storage isn't being expanded because the demand for local storage is decreasing for most users - where someone used to sling around gigs of music it's now streamed on-demand. Ditto videos.
Is this a feature that the users want? Or a feature that iTunes, Google, Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify want? It's interesting to me that the "drive for bigger drives" stopped the exact moment monetization of cloud services came on the scene.
Me, I'd LOVE to have my entire MP3 connection on my tablet. I'd also like to have enough space to put a half-dozen movies on my tablet for long car/airplane trips. Hell, give me a 1 TB drive and I can store most of my entire video collection in my tablet.
But they're not making tablets that big. Coincidence?
You're probably right, I don't "need" expandability. I _do_ need more built-in memory.
My existing tablet is "good enough" but I'd upgrade for something that is better, otherwise I'll wait until it dies and buy something at a similar price point.