Oh Yes. Yes I did. And I feel a little dirty for doing it.
I know you're all thinking that I'm a lunatic .... but here's why.
Our ERP vendor provides an app to customers for sales analysis that I have to support. It's iPad only. Only management has access to this so it's not a heavy use item, but when the company president and general manager keep coming to me with problems or questions, I have to guess, or borrow an iPad and work it out for them. I've requested a company owned device on numerous occasions but the answer is it's not that important to bother about (even though, given their obsession with sales figures, it is.)
So, for the last year or so, I've been pretty happy with my Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014) for full size tablet needs. Lately, though, I've been getting frustrated with Samsung's support (or lack thereof) for what was a flagship product. Still no Lollipop and not much development on in the custom rom universe for this thing. The blogosphere has reports of "coming soon" since April? Of course Samsung's position is it's being worked on and you should have it shortly. Define "should" and "shortly". I should also receive shortly the title to that beachfront property I bought in Oklahoma.
I decided it was time to see how the other half lives. I picked up a 16 GB iPad Air (1st gen) on the cheap.
Setup was like everything else these days. Enter your account (or set one up if you don't) and accept the 426 page license agreement. Allow the NSA, Interpol and Tim Cook's gardener's cousin to track your every movement and away you go. Three screens of inane tutorial-like nonsense later you've on the grid ... literally. That iOS icon grid on the big screen is sooooo ... well, it just is. I looked at my Note and tried to give the iPad the same or similar app setups. After a few days of use, i can honestly say that iOS apps just work (about the same as Android ). I don't see any big advantage either way.
I will say that iOS appears more "fluid" because of all the bouncy zoomy effects, but not because it's faster or more *shudder* "elegant". I think more than anything the screen effects distract the user from the time it takes to launch, connect, refresh or do whatever the app is supposed to be doing.
The thing came out of the box with iOS 8.something and wanted to update as soon as it was plugged into iTunes. Mind you, i only have iTunes for my iPod nano (3rd generation from 2008) so i tend not to keep it current. So I updated the iPad and got iOS 8.4.2 (i think). Used it for a few days, and found out that iOS 9 was released a couple days ago. So I plugged it back into iTunes ... nothing. Updated iTunes to the current release and there was iOS 9. Okay, click install ... download 1.8 gb ... get to 100% ... wait ... wait some more ... get coffee ... wait ... error. Can't complete the download (even though it was at 100% for several minutes) ... try again later. Okay, i try again later. Same thing. So I did a little searching and found that this was more of a problem for people trying to download the update directly to their iPads without iTunes and if it failed that way the fix was to use iTunes. Naturally i tried to update directly on the iPad, which of course ... failed again. The fix for me was to update directly on the iPad while connected to iTunes.
Overall, it's a decent device and does what it is supposed to do, but if this is a typical new user experience, I'm not tasting the kool-aid.
I know you're all thinking that I'm a lunatic .... but here's why.
Our ERP vendor provides an app to customers for sales analysis that I have to support. It's iPad only. Only management has access to this so it's not a heavy use item, but when the company president and general manager keep coming to me with problems or questions, I have to guess, or borrow an iPad and work it out for them. I've requested a company owned device on numerous occasions but the answer is it's not that important to bother about (even though, given their obsession with sales figures, it is.)
So, for the last year or so, I've been pretty happy with my Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014) for full size tablet needs. Lately, though, I've been getting frustrated with Samsung's support (or lack thereof) for what was a flagship product. Still no Lollipop and not much development on in the custom rom universe for this thing. The blogosphere has reports of "coming soon" since April? Of course Samsung's position is it's being worked on and you should have it shortly. Define "should" and "shortly". I should also receive shortly the title to that beachfront property I bought in Oklahoma.
I decided it was time to see how the other half lives. I picked up a 16 GB iPad Air (1st gen) on the cheap.
Setup was like everything else these days. Enter your account (or set one up if you don't) and accept the 426 page license agreement. Allow the NSA, Interpol and Tim Cook's gardener's cousin to track your every movement and away you go. Three screens of inane tutorial-like nonsense later you've on the grid ... literally. That iOS icon grid on the big screen is sooooo ... well, it just is. I looked at my Note and tried to give the iPad the same or similar app setups. After a few days of use, i can honestly say that iOS apps just work (about the same as Android ). I don't see any big advantage either way.
I will say that iOS appears more "fluid" because of all the bouncy zoomy effects, but not because it's faster or more *shudder* "elegant". I think more than anything the screen effects distract the user from the time it takes to launch, connect, refresh or do whatever the app is supposed to be doing.
The thing came out of the box with iOS 8.something and wanted to update as soon as it was plugged into iTunes. Mind you, i only have iTunes for my iPod nano (3rd generation from 2008) so i tend not to keep it current. So I updated the iPad and got iOS 8.4.2 (i think). Used it for a few days, and found out that iOS 9 was released a couple days ago. So I plugged it back into iTunes ... nothing. Updated iTunes to the current release and there was iOS 9. Okay, click install ... download 1.8 gb ... get to 100% ... wait ... wait some more ... get coffee ... wait ... error. Can't complete the download (even though it was at 100% for several minutes) ... try again later. Okay, i try again later. Same thing. So I did a little searching and found that this was more of a problem for people trying to download the update directly to their iPads without iTunes and if it failed that way the fix was to use iTunes. Naturally i tried to update directly on the iPad, which of course ... failed again. The fix for me was to update directly on the iPad while connected to iTunes.
Overall, it's a decent device and does what it is supposed to do, but if this is a typical new user experience, I'm not tasting the kool-aid.