I skimmed through the article but didn’t find mention of one glaring deficiency in iPadOS — it still doesn’t support multiple users and multiuser switching, even though the hardware is capable of it (and exceeds the capacity of many Macs before it). I decided several years ago that I’m not buying another iPad until this is sorted out by iPadOS.
I think of iPhones as personal devices, where each person may have their own. But iPads are more likely to be shared for personal use in families. The fact that each person using it cannot have their own user profiles, app data, etc., is a huge drawback. Apple has supported this for a long time (though probably not in the best way) for education, but it’s not available to others. Even tvOS supports switching between user profiles quickly.
Apple enforcing the idea that iPad (with iPadOS) should also be a personal device — one device per person — makes the user experience quite poor.
Like you mentioned, they already have implement support for multiple users on an iPad. But they require that you use mobile device management (MDM) and Managed Apple IDs.
https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv...
So basically only schools or businesses can use the feature. It’s really galling that the feature is already implemented but they won’t give it to us because of an obvious attempt at a money grab.
A lot of people are saying they do it just to sell more iPads, but I'm skeptical. I bet they have research telling them only a small percentage of customers want multi-user sharing.
Indeed I have no interest in multi-user iPad. I have one, my wife has one, my daughter has one. Sharing them just wouldn’t get us anything.
Would some people want it, sure, but features aren’t free to add or maintain.
iPhone mini showed how much vocal Internet commenters (don’t) represent the actual user base. Commenters said they wanted a smaller iPhone. Then it sold poorly. And I say this as I write this on an iPhone 13 mini.
I suspect the multi-user iOS, right along with the people complaining that iOS is underpowered generally, is the same phenomenon at work.
The iPhone mini was so crippled it was a waste of money. When I say I want a smaller phone, I mean I want a smaller version of the same phone. Not one with shitty components and artificially disabled hardware.
The 13 mini is perfectly capable, even today, for 90% of users.
yes, today. When it came out, it was missing some features that were enabled in the bigger models. I don't remember specifics, so I can't be more helpful here.
I'm fairly sure you're conflating the mini with the base model, and comparing it to the Pro. The Pro always has features which the base model lacks.
I don't remember there being any features, ever, which the mini was missing and the base model iPhone had. Might have missed it, but I'm going to need to see a link.
I'm going to keep using mine for as long as I can, and just hope that Apple releases another one by the time I need a new phone.
"shitty components and artificially disabled hardware" is one way to look at it. I think "significantly smaller battery and scaled accordingly" is more accurate, personally.
I'm an undemanding phone user. I take pictures, catch rides, use the map, take calls, listen to stuff. I don't hang out on my phone. So I want a phone that's as small as it reasonably can be, it fits more places and I notice it less.
However, I also want the battery to last a full day. The only way I'm going to get that is if the phone is somewhat less powerful than a phone running the same OS and apps with a rather larger battery. This is a tradeoff I am comfortable with, and was able to figure out from first principles when getting the 12 mini (and now the 13).
It's fine to want a phone which is small like the mini, as powerful as the base model, and which lasts just as long on a charge. But I don't see how any company could deliver that phone.
Isn't the iPhone SE, which is now on its third generation, selling pretty well? That kind of made the mini redundant, no?
It still has the home button, which makes the screen smaller. No FaceID. And the camera is inferior.
I have one (original SE, makes the Mini -which I also have, and use daily- look like a slab).
It's my low-end test device, but tops out at iOS15, so it's almost useless.
And Apple wants all families to behave like yours, to grab more money.
You've just described capitalism. Consume accordingly.
Edit: It seems people are offended. I didn't mean to. Let me rephrase: Apple's fiduciary responsibility is to make money for its shareholders. If you are not in favor of this, pick different products (slowly migrating back to Linux, in my case.)
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2019/08/24/stakeholder-gover...
1. Fiduciary duty has a specific legal meaning that is not really applicable here.
2. Corporations are not responsible solely to their shareholders.
I know that iPads aren't a necessity of life, but your post reads as "I have enough money to buy 3 iPads, so I don't care about families that want to share a single one to save money"
Or they can buy 3 cheaper Android tablets. Or they can buy 1 Android tablet, seeing as Android supports multiple users. So no, I really don’t care about families that would rather whine about Apple than exercise some agency and buy other products that already have the features they claim they want.
Sure, but don't Android tablets suck -- especially the ones with 11-inch displays rather than 7-inch displays?
The argument is that is is free because the feature already exists and is being maintained. You just aren't allowed to have it.
At a previous company, we rotated secondary (more portable) devices around the oncall rotation. I think we used a macbook air, and some fancy portable Windows netbook. Now that iPads exist, and they're super portable, I can imagine that they'd be great for oncall. That being said, I wouldn't want my settings, say in the terminal for example, to affect mine. Although MDM is a solution, at the scale of the ~50 person company, we didn't have anything as the such, nor the capabilities, time, or money to figure it out.
I think the question isn't so much whether Apple users want multiuser support. Rather the question is whether Apple wants customers who can't afford to buy one of each sort of device for each family member.
No, but Apple already built this feature and maintain it. So why only restrict it to large organisations?
But they already put the effort in to build it. So why not let everyone use it?
Complexity that comes with it. Both from an implementation point of view but also from a user experience point of view.
Think about storage, notifications, app management, etc.
As the poster before you said, they have already built it. They have already solved those issues. They only offer the solution to schools and big organisations that use their management software to control lots of devices.
Use cases in family context is different from that of schools and businesses, both in terms of account management and in terms of user journeys.
So I’m not sure the infra for those edu and commercial use cases would work elegantly “as is” for a family setup.
Yes, android has had all this working for years, on phones and tablets alike.
It's not trivial but I'm not going to give a trillion dollar company reprieve for a feature standardized in all of its competition.
I’d have to agree. I see the use case for wanting to share with your small child. It sure seems to me like buying the cheapest iPad is the solution most people go for. Like the gateway drug before a parent feels the kid can handle a phone.
That sort of begs the question, and what of it?
Usually when that's invoked with Apple, it's a misapplication of the general principle of simplicity, used to create a blanket ban against features desired by a superminority.
Even just given TFA, we can see that's not how Apple operates in practice, and in context, TFA describes in detail of how Apple says it wants to flesh out more of these type of features for years on iPad, and it hasn't.
Most damning: _the feature exists_. But obscured. It ain't about simplicity.
Jamf Now is free for 3 devices. I've been using it with my family for several years.
https://www.jamf.com/products/jamf-now/
Yes, but you can’t do multi user without Managed Apple IDs, which requires a DUNS number last I checked. And that’s painful to do if you aren’t really a business.
My memory of doing this is rusty, but I believe you can do this as a "civilian" with the Classroom app and without Managed Apple IDs. Somebody correct me with a citation if I am wrong.
https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv...
Just buy more iPads, obviously!
I wonder if somebody had to justify that in an internal meeting at some point? "Most TVs have multiple HDMI ports, wouldn't it be only fair to expect families to buy one Apple TV per–"...
I think it’s a big unaddressed problem for Apple that they have an Apple TV device, an Apple TV app, an Apple TV service, and an Apple TV Plus service.
To be fair, the app is just called "TV", and Apple TV is only the device, i.e. I'm not aware of any service called that.
As an occasional Chromecast (with Google TV) (4K) (running Android TV) user, I think Google wins this round of botched branding.
Edit: Of course it makes sense to clarify the app's name as "Apple TV", similarly to "Apple Podcasts" or "Apple Calendar", but that doesn't mean that's its official name.
Sure, Apple could have named it something memorable and unambigous like "CouchPotato" or "Bingetime" or whatnot, but that sounds more like early 2000s Apple from a branding point of view.
I just fired up my AppleTV4k, navigated to my Apple TV app, so that I could view my AppleTV+ service.
I'm not really sure what you're on about, but all of the names you boldly claimed are not named what you say they are named. Right there on the app is the apple logo in front of the letters TV, aka AppleTV. Launching that app in the left hand menu, it clearly states Apple TV+ as an option. The logo on the device is the same as the logo on the app. So if you're stipulating it is read as Apple TV for the device, why would it also not be read the same way for the app using the exact same logo?
Simpler than them being "on about": I'm guessing the app label on iPhone is TV. Dunno though and cant confirm.
To be fair, they're blatantly wrong about the Google branding. They went ahead and did the Apple thing, it's all Google TV as far as consumer branding.
The complaint about branding is Google has Chromecast, Google TV, Android TV, YouTube TV and it’s really not obvious which does what from the names. IMO if they swapped YouTube TV for YouTube Cable TV then suddenly it’s more obvious what’s going on even if the name’s dumb.
Similarly Chrome is their web browser so why call the physical device Chromecast? It kind of works because on of its less popular features also uses Chrome so that reinforces the name for anyone who uses it this way, but that’s a real stretch now days.
Related to that: The protocol that these (and many third-party devices) speak is called "Google Cast", yet Google refers to third-party devices speaking that protocol as "Chromecast built-in"...
I suppose it originally made sense, given that the physical Chromecast device only worked with Google Chrome, and in its early days even was used for tab mirroring (until most video sites started integrating the protocol natively). Wanting to benefit from the (at the time quite positive) brand perception of "Google Chrome" probably plays an even bigger part.
But at this point it seems like a weird historical leftover.
Cool, where do I buy a "Google TV" then?
It's still called "Chromecast with Google TV" as of today: https://store.google.com/us/product/chromecast_google_tv
Google TV is an app/portal/service (with somewhat ill-defined boundaries, but I generally like it on my Chromecast, as it's able to pull in recommendations from basically all available sources, unlike Apple TV, which seems to have some feud with at least Netflix); the Chromecast with Google TV is the physical device I can plug into my TV to make it display Google TV.
The streaming protocol is currently called "Google Cast", as far as I can tell.
The logo of WhatsApp is a chat bubble containing a phone handset, yet it's not called "Chat bubble containing a phone handset WhatsApp".
Of course it can make sense to call the app "Apple TV", to disambiguate it from e.g. the Netflix app on an iPhone. I'm just saying that I don't think that that is its official name, and I also don't think this is very confusing in practice.
Netflix is also both an app and a company! Just say "Apple TV app" or "Apple TV device" if you want to disambiguate them?
I never claimed that there was no service called "Apple TV+".
"I'm not aware of any service called that."
You are now aware. That's all I was doing. I never said you never said blah blah blah
I was referring to Apple TV, not Apple TV+, specifically in response to:
There's at least one too many "Apple TV x"s in that list, is my point. Apple TV is a device; (Apple) TV is also an app. The streaming service is called Apple TV+.
What? I've been using Apple TV+ for years. Of course they're promoting their own streaming content service in their own app!
Even if you were correct (you aren’t), it couldn’t be called just “TV”. That’s patently absurd. How would a trademark like that ever be enforceable.
I just checked on my Mac: It's really called "TV" (both in the dock and in the "about" window inside the app), or "TV.app" in the file system.
And why would they need to trademark it?
Who said it's trademarked? Apple has apps on macOS named "Photos" and "Calendar." There's apps on iOS named "Camera" and "Notes." It's not at all crazy to have one called "TV."
Sure, and if I say the "TV app", people will know what I mean. /s
There are TVs that have the Apple TV app on the TV.
Apple TV video service is definitely called Apple TV.
Apple's goal is to confuse people into staying in their garden. The "TV" app is only available on iOS devices.
I definitely also say "Apple TV app", but I'm just not convinced there officially is such a service! (Not sure if that's more a statement about me or Apple's marketing/branding department.)
There used to be iTunes, where you could buy and rent movies. Then Apple split that app into its components "Music" (including purchased music as well as the subscription service called Apple Music), "TV" (including movie rentals, purchases, and the subscription service "Apple TV+") and "Podcasts".
Since these three things are quite generically named, of course it makes sense to practically refer to them as "Apple Podcasts" etc., and Apple's marketing department should have seen that need coming, but in-ecosystem, it does align somewhat nicely with other apps called Calendar, Mail etc, and when it's not clear from context, just add "Apple" in front (and maybe "app" at the end), and everybody will know what you're talking about.
Why? What issues do you have with it?
Having a piece of hardware called an Apple TV, with a TV app, and a "premium" plus service doesn't strike me as a problem. Except perhaps that the Apple TV isn't a TV, which is kind of funny, but I can't think of a better product name and it's not something of real concern to me.
Exactly: It's an app you watch TV in, similarly to how the Camera app is an app you take photos with, despite the app not physically containing a camera obscura :)
What is the linguistic equivalent to skeuomorphism? Anachronism?
Apple using "TV" all over the place is like plastering their apps with 3.5" floppy or 120mm optical disks, or prepending anything user-specific with "My ".
At least to me, TV is a service/abstract concept as much as a device (but then again, I didn't grow up speaking English, and my native language has a different word for the service and the device).
So if there's a thing that can show me a bunch of TV serials and movies, why not call that TV?
I suppose you could be nitpicky and say "TV means linear broadcast or cable TV, not VOD"; it should be called (Apple) VCR" – but now we're really talking outdated technologies :)
It's a UI/UX thing - Apple decided that iPads are single-user devices and login switching is too complicated. That's apple for you. Also, you still can't install runtime environments, making the iPad Pro a poor laptop substitute for developers - again, for no good reason. That's Apple for you.
Perfectly good reason. They don’t want to cannibalize existing products. You never want the customer thinking there is no real difference between a MacBook and iPad. You want them to truly believe in the uniqueness of the product.
Iwatch was a master class in that bullshit. Took long enough but people did eventually realize it’s a shittier smaller phone lol (but we’re talking genuine levels of shittier).
Complete nonsense.
I love my Apple Watch. I can leave my house, make payments be fully contactable, access useful information about weather, stonks, work pager messages etc. while weaving a heavy clunky device at home and no distractions like social media. It’s also a fitness tracker and saved people I know who have heart conditions lives. I have the ultra abs the battery life is wonderful too.
Like, a device that can literally save your life is shit ?
And yet the watch still requires you to pair it with a phone. They could sell standalone watches without a phone and will cellular service. They won’t though and Apple’s statements about environmentalism are b.s. for this an other reasons.
Not sure if you own an Apple Watch but there is almost zero doubt in my mind they’d sell less watches, especially to boomer generations and above without the phone setup experience. Originally the phone needed the watch for cellular so the UX has grown out of that.
You’re a hacker news reader so more like an “elite” user of technology. Most people aren’t and won’t do things like read the Apple Watch EULAs on the watch, setup payment cards on the watch alone. I don’t think it’s even possible to setup the eSIM and number syncing without the phone yet. It seems tied to your phones IMEI.
Maybe Apple would make a UX for the small minority of people like yourself, but they already have a lot of stuff going on and I guess it’s not financially viable to satisfy everyone in all situations.
I don’t believe there is any legitimate reason to not allow the watch to be a standalone device with cellular ability and a phone number or have cellular capability and to be able to use something like a Google Voice number.
They couldn’t sell less watches if they allowed what I suggest becuase they could always allow the option of tying it to a phone. Instead of having stupid things like an app keep track of how often you are on your phone how about give people an option of not having a phone? Let people have the connectivity they want in case of emergencies and to communicate without needing a phone.
Who's to say in the future they won't sell the watch independently? Personally, I just don't really like the conspiracy thinking. I have an iPhone and an Apply watch and currently. I understand why the app is important for managing the watch easily and I can also imagine a time in the future when the voice assitance or the UX has improved to the point where the app can go.
I don’t think in conspiracies normally but in this case I think it’s apt. I think an independent Apple Watch would cannibalize iPhone sales. Just like a fully capable iPad Pro would cannibalize Mac sales.
It’s roughly a smaller phone. I get it, I swear I do. But that’s part of the salesmanship. Your phone can do all this shit.
How does your phone work as a fitness tracker with HRM ?
If you actually want good heart rate monitoring you get one of those straps that go around your chest anyhow.
I have that too, nothing beats the convenience of the watch for daily runs / hikes / lifting.
Anyway you need something to record the data from the chest strap, again the watch is best for this. Running with the phone sucks.
Yeah I think they’ve drawn a bright line and people keep insisting this device should be more capable, but Apple _does not want it to be more capable_. They just don’t. They don’t see it as a productivity device (though they often advertise it as one for some reason). It’s like… productivity-lite. A device for unserious people to do unserious things.
Well, there are definitely serious third party apps for serious users to create music, draw etc. It's just the OS and Apple's apps that are holding it back...
The iPad Pro is pulling double duty as both a professional workstation and a CEO laptop.
Tim Cook has bragged about being able to do most of his work on an iPad, and I believe him, because executives spend most of their time reading and replying to e-mail. The iPad does that well because it inherited the Mail app from iPhones, which was already pretty good and just needed to be blown up to a larger size. And iPads make your organization look futuristic, at least to all the other executives you're talking to.
The only reason why people are complaining about iPadOS' limitations is because Apple made the mistake of making it useful for creative professionals. They wanted to ship the Apple Pencil and wound up making it an iPad accessory rather than its own thing. So now people who want to draw with the Pencil - which is an amazing drawing experience - are saddled with the limitations of an iPad.
Trying to use an iPad to develop software (or do anything productive really) is always going to be a bad experience even if you can install runtimes. It's just not fit for that use case, and you're always going to be better off with an actual computer.
I program on a 13 inch laptop all the time. I would love to be able to use the 13 inch iPad Pro for that.
Only because Apple hasn't enabled the use case through their OS. It's not an inherent limitation of the hardware anymore.
Would be nice to have, but I don't even use this functionality on my MacBook or iMac(s) at home. For me computers (and iPads) have always just been "personal" for as long as I've used them.
It's pretty common though for people to let kids use the iPad and not their personal-work-everything-MacBook. iPads don't even have a guest mode, so you are essentially limited to deciding whether the whole device is personal or for sharing.
Honestly for this use case it’s easier to just buy a cheap second hand iPad for your kids. At least that way when they smash it, it’s only $200 to replace instead of whatever the latest pro costs now.
In my case, the only iPad is the cheap secondhand one. It would still be nice if I could "borrow" it for the weekend without having to sign in to every service that is already tied to my Apple ID.
I don't disagree with you in general and it is what I recommend to others with the same issue... but the issue is completely unnecessary since (however many generations ago iPad hardware stopped struggling).
This is exactly what I did. I got 2 refurbished iPads for about $100 bucks a piece almost 3 years ago. Works great, and the kids don’t fight over who’s turn it is.
Nice if you can afford it! With Apple's current prices, most of us don't have that luxury.
Then afford what can be gotten with other vendors rather than wishing for something outside a price range with different featires
I do. But Apple has a problem if their position is the same as yours.
Complete the opposite for me here. The iPad is shared, and we use the Focus feature for different users
At a minimum I would like a guest mode so I can hand the device to someone without them being able to read all my emails and go through my photos.
You could employ Face ID for that no?
The implication of "I wish I could hand my iPad to..." is that the person receiving the iPad would be able to use it, not just physically hold onto it.
I think that's too granular and is dependent on the apps offering Face ID as a secondary-layer authentication flow -- I think OP is suggesting an entirely different user profile that doesn't even have the same applications that the original (save for the default iPadOS apps, and even those should be logged out from your Apple ID). The cognitive overhead of "did I make sure to enable Face ID on x,y,z apps so that I can pass around my iPad without worrying about any personal data being accessible" is too high for spontaneous + casual device sharing.
Example: "Hey uncle ping00, can I use your iPad real quick to watch something?" "Sure nephew, <switches profile to Guest ,and hands it over> go nuts"
Is that "Guided Access"? https://support.apple.com/en-afri/guide/ipad/ipada16d1374/ip...
Yes and no, you can limit people to one app but I would say it's too clunky to initiate and not flexible enough to really let someone borrow your tablet for a few minutes.
Guided access is for restricting access to one app. Not great for a multiuser experience. The AppleTV gets it right in a lot of ways but an iPad with faceID and/or fingerprint sensor could instantly recognize a given user and have their profile ready
I ended up basically disabling all of my chat app notifications— there's enough sensitive stuff in there and I don't want some spicy meme popping up when my kid is looking over my shoulder or using my phone to play a game, or worse it's being Carplay-mirrored.
Guided access covers some of that, but I really don't think it's the whole story. Rather than locking everything to a single app, I'd rather something more like a guest session that sees all the apps, just all of them in a logged-out state... no messages, no emails, no calendar, no banking info, no history for Google Maps or open tabs/autocomplete in the browser, none of it.
But perhaps that feature is really just a subset of the broader users/profiles request that is being made here, because then I could have separate users for "primary" and "family" on my phone, and the "family" user would still enjoy continuity from session to session (game progress, previously visited YouTube videos, whatever) but in a separate universe from the continuity of the primary user.
For me, the 12” MacBook ended up being superior to the iPadOS experience.
It’s the lightest laptop ever made I could find at the time and a similar form factor and weight to an iPad with keyboard.
If Apple ever released a 12” MacBook again with Apple silicon I’d go pick one up immediately, and likely use it more than my MacBook Pro.
Having a super light full desktop experience without the time required to tap extra gestures was much better.
iPad also was a pretend computer for a long time until it got mouse support, then specifically built in to the keyboard.
I loved my old 11" MB Air. That was the perfect form factor for my lighter workloads, and was perfect for manager life.
I have a friend still using his 9 years later.
He is non-technical and it took some bullying to get him to max out the ram and cpu but he never imagined an 11" wouldn't be availbale in the future and assumed he'd upgrade.
The 11" was excellent. If there was a newer version, the bezels would be much smaller, and maybe a different kind of 12" could fit in it.
There is not much that is interesting after so many new devices, but an 11" or 12" would be something I'd want quickly enough to line up for it.
Love that as well. Even M1 12" would be a better device.
Since Apple is known to be the most prolific iterator of building working hardware during design.. that and more probably exists :(
That was a very important step forward. Now, it is a pretend computer with mouse support.
Haha. That's true.
Apple's resistance to a mouse continued with the resistance to having a mouse pointer.
A Surface Pro running MacOS would be the real game changer.
Being touch-first is much more inefficient than using a mouse and keyboard.
The pageantry of taps and swipes needed add up to a lot of time, and knowing the difference, it can be difficult to justify the effort. Maybe I'm missing a detail.
Apple is excellent at introducing technology to beginners (just use your finger), it doesn't mean it's the most productive or effective.
was just thinking the other day due to the latest iPad release.. I dont know how people stand to use an iPad when you can get a 13" Macbook air or in your case the 12" and just use that. Just the fact that the screen is held to the correct angle for 90% of use cases is huge. Sitting.. lounging.. I can't even really think of a regular use case I have where the iPad ergonomics are better.
Good luck. People would then just buy one iPad and share it in the household. Apple is struggling to be profitable, I see no reason they should not try to make every penny they can.
Genuinely curious, how does one come to the necessary conclusions that then lead to making statements like this?
What supports the notion that Apple is struggling to be profitable?
It’s a “hallucination”. Human Intelligences are currently quite prone to them. Many times they just make up plausible sounding sentences that aren’t true because they’re just fancy autocomplete.
It's called sarcasm.
<sarcasm>
If $23b of earnings last quarter[1] is struggling, I would love to struggle as much as they do.
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/fy2024-q2/FY24_Q2_Consol...
<sarcasm>
Nah. I suspect that if Apple enabled multiple accounts, it would be a feature used by a very small minority of iPad users. It wouldn't make a dent in their sales.
The status quo benefits Apple’s bottom line. After all, if you can’t share your iPad, Apple can sell each member of your household one.
Might work for some, but I am in the same boat as GP. I’m either buying one to share, or none at all.
I have a large(ish) family. We have a LOT of iPads. No way around it. Definitely a feature not a bug designed to sell more iPads.
Does tvOS user switching do anything at all? I tried recently, and all the third party app data was shared across users.
It basically just switches over Apple app accounts, such as Music and Photos. Everything else---all third party apps and the home screen layout and BT devices---are exactly the same.
It's laughably bad, since Photos doesn't even support more than one iCloud photo library per TV, so switching just makes the Photos app not work.
Mainly it makes the Apple TV+ app understand your watching history (“up next”) better.
Apple has an API so that third party apps can tie profiles to appletv user ids (iCloud ids) but I haven’t seen a single 3P app that uses it. Apple could make it mandatory at some point I suppose but the UX for connecting the two in each app would likely be tedious.
Also there is no password protection with changing user ids so kids can accidentally screw up your watch history / preferences. And without any passwords you don’t want to connect photos or anything like that to the tv.
It’s pretty much a botch, just like the cases described in this article.
iPad sharing is a massive no go. That product is mostly for the education industry and you better convince the school board every kid needs their own iPad (an AI powered one soon enough). Basically becomes a government mandated device, good business.
Except they allow schools to run device sharing.
My guess is that in addition to Apple just not caring, they have market research telling them that most users don't want this feature. I imagine that the average HN commenter is probably as far as possible from the average iPad buyer. The main usecase is for families, and it's introducing a lot of complexity for basically no return.
Yeah, and people having families is pretty rare: no more than a few percent of their market :eyeroll:. The issue isn't that people don't want it: almost everyone wants it! The issue is that the alternatives to the iPad for its use cases are almost precisely zilch, and so implementing this feature mostly serves to cause people to spend less money on redundant iPads.
While I agree multi-user would be nice, I don't necessarily agree it's a good thing for families. A shared device should be treated as such. Don't install or login to apps that you're not okay with the rest of the family accessing.
I'd even argue that children that aren't old enough to have their own device (IMO before high school) don't need a personal profile. And on that tangent, kids shouldn't even use phones/tablets device unless they can responsibly use them.
But Shareholder Value..
AppleTV has multi-user support but it’s not NEARLY good enough. I would really appreciate more capability there. I want cleaner boundaries around the standard and child experiences, as well as more individualization.
Mostly I’m annoyed that all the individual streaming apps have profiles, but they don’t have any link to the Apple ID you’re using. If I’m the active user on the AppleTV, I should see the apps I care about and my profile in those apps.
TL;DR stop letting my family ruin my recommendations.
Android supports this but as usual with Android, it's shoddy and broken.
For example, if you log out of a secondary profile and log back in, all your widgets will be gone. I don't have the bug link handy but IIRC, it's been open since 2021.
the 1 person per ipad is 100% a product decision to get people to buy more ipads.
if they made ipad's multiuser capable (it's is perfectly easy to do it technically) ipad sales would tank.
they will never do that to their sales figures.
the single user nature of the ipad is not a deficiency but a feature.
Now I understand a little bit better why AppleTV (or whatever the streaming service is called) doesn't support multiple profiles either.
Preface: I fully agree with you and wont buy an iPad weithout user switching.
However, user switching seems to be a features more on lower priced budget devices for world markets where individual people cant afford their own devices. When you are rich enough to live in the western world and buy Apple products, you dont share them!
Not just schools, businesses too. They’re gatekeeping the feature solely to make more cash and it infuriates me.