Remember yesterday when an iPad user watched hours of video and was surprised when his data allotment ran out? Today, I bring you another tale of woe.
USA Today writer Ed Baig (he’s the one that complained the iPad still doesn’t have Adobe Flash) said he burned through his 2GB data allotment in less than 24 hours. Baig said he used up his 2GB data plan “downloading a number of the apps that I had already purchased.”
With a 50MB download limit set by Apple for data connections, Ed would have to download 41 apps at 50MB each to reach his limit. I looked through some of the more popular iPad apps on the App Store and it seems like 20MB would be a decent average app size. That means you would have to download more than 80 apps to hit the limit.
That’s certainly possible, I guess. But there’s one thing to consider here. You know you have a data allotment, so if you use it up downloading apps or video, why is that Apple’s fault? Let’s look at the math.
2GB data – 2GB video downloads = no data left
2GB data – 2GB app downloads = no data left
To simplify:
2GB data – 2GB downloading anything = no data left
Like the Wall Street Journal yesterday, USA Today’s headline blazed “New iPad’s speedy 4G can use up data allotment in a flash,” but it’s not the iPad. Any device using 4G is going to be the same.
Any user with a 2GB data plan that downloads 2GB of data is going to run out.
The new iPad sells news, others 4G devices no. That’s the problem.
And why exactly didn’t he just sync to a computer to get his apps back? No data used, problem solved.
or wifi…
but anyone can see this Ed Baig has no brain at all, so its hard to make things right.
Every time Apple launches the latest version of whatever device, there’s always some collection of dumbass journalists / bloggers who insist on doing stupid or obvious shit and then somehow turning it into Apple’s fault.
Last time I checked, any device with a data plan has the ability to max out the plan. It’s hardly an “iPad problem”.
However, as the Internet reminds us all on a daily basis, you can’t fix stupid.
But would he have still complained if it was 2 GB of Adobe Flash movies that drained his data plan?
I see nowhere in this article where USA today said “this is iPad’s fault.” Am I missing something? I don’t even see an implication of that. All I see is a fact that a 2 or 3 GB limit is woefully too little.
Are you looking for an expansive discussion on why it’s too little and who’s to blame and what needs to be done? I’m afraid that’s a little too much thought for the average USA today reader.
this all seems in line with the average IQ of your typical “lemming” apple-device user.
It’s inferred in the title and throughout the article as the only device he mentions is the new iPad. To an uneducated reader, they will likely come away with the belief that somehow the new iPad uses data too quickly while the reality is that it doesn’t matter which LTE device you use to burn through your cap faster than you would on 3G.
50% of the people who breathe air in the United States have below average IQ. It is fruitless to try and change that.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are stupider than that.” The always-appropriate Carlin quote….
I see your point, but considering that the iPad makes it so easy to surf and download content compared to say an Android tablet, perhaps such a statement is entirely true. Retina display apps have larger graphical elements, the iPad retina display begs for HD content, and that finally combined with LTE means you can do more than on an iPad 2. The USA today guy is doing exactly what a bunch of average users are going to do, burn thru 2 GB like paper.
And Apple touts the iPad as a “magical device.” burning thru 2 GB is not a magical experience to me.
I don’t personally blame Apple for this, but I would turn to Apple and ask “what could you do to help fix this problem? Can you talk to AT&T and Verizon to fix this? It’s making your device less magical.” It’s a far more effective way to deal with the situation than mounting a defense for Apple by calling the USA today writer stupid.
I was just about to go and sue Toyota and Exxon because after driving my car for 300+ miles it stopped running because it ran out of gas. That’s unacceptable!
You have LTE/3G to use data on-the-go. Its generally understood that if you’re standing in the middle of a cornfield, you really can wait until you get back to civilization and WiFi to download that HD copy of the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy and shouldn’t be wasting your allotted bandwidth.
Guess what: if I talk on my phone for 9 hours straight I burn through all my cell phone minutes and get charged. Or if I know I am going to be on a long call, I can switch to a landline or Skype.
The POINT of this is that THIS IS NOT NEWS. Its merely this “cautionary tale” of how if you run out and get a new iPad (specifically) and sign up for LTE service, you’re going to end up paying all this money because you WILL go over your usage *BECAUSE ITS SO FAST*.
As distinguished from lemming-like users of other-brand devices?
Is it generally understood? That’s part of the problem. This post calls people stupid for understanding the full impact of LTE on their usage. You and I know this, but not the average USA today user.
Yes if you burn thru minutes on a phone call and you can switch to skype. How many nontechie users know this? How many just want a phone that works without having to fiddle with skype? How many people don’t want to have to teach their grandmothers who barely are able to understand using a cordless home phone with more than ten buttons?
I thought a cautionary tale was news? It is for those who don’t know it. Your reply gets back to the “stupid people” track and says nothing to address the underlying problem that such severe data caps are a problem and are not customer friendly.
The problem isn’t the stupid people. The problem is the stupid journalists. He was shocked, SHOCKED I say that just downloading all these apps pushed his plan to the limit. As several have pointed out…a USB Sync or a Wifi connection, and you have no story.
And plenty of non-techie users understand the concept of limited wireless units (be it minutes or megabytes). Many have been dealing with it for almost a decade now, its not news.
Actually there does seem to be a problem with default iPad behavior on an LTE connection. After seeing the WSJ article I checked my usage and was shocked to see that it was 48.8mb of uploads and 780mb of downloads after just 5 days of usage without any video, app downloads, or other obvious bandwidth hogging. I think I’ve tracked it down to the default behavior of the Mail app. I reconfigured Mail to use Fetch behavior with manual updates. Two days later I’m only up to 50.4mb up and 801mb down. It seems to me that on my iPhone, mail is not automatically downloading the enormous attachments that people in my company send around, but on the iPad with LTE it looks like the attachments were coming down automatically.
OH MY GOD YOU CALLED APPLE FANS MINDLESS DRONES. AREN’T YOU ORIGINAL?!!
I completely disagree that full understanding of wireless caps and how the affect you is common knowledge among ALL or even MOST iPad buyers. People are told that their caps are 2 GB, but do they regularly hear messages of how many songs that is? How many minutes on youtube? How many movies or TV shows? Your assuming that everyone who buys an iPad is a techie, and it’s simply not true. The sheer volume shows that the device is reaching out to people who aren’t as techie who just want a simple device to read, watch TV/movies and play a few games.
Looking at it from that angle, this becomes more educational for people who don’t have a good concept of how much data streaming a song or a movie impacts them.
I don’t personally blame Apple for this, but I would turn to Apple and ask “what could you do to help fix this problem?
How about “nothing”. Data plans are up to the carriers to provide and the consumer to pay for. This is in no way shape or form a “problem” for Apple.
This post calls people stupid for understanding the full impact of LTE on their usage.
No. This post calls news outlets stupid for making a “water is wet” commentary into a news story.
Your comment seems in line with the average IQ of someone who is annoyed that Apple survived the 90s.
I’m sorry, and don’t mean to be snarky, but did you really just describe the normal performance of a standard function on the iPad as a “problem”?
I continue to dispute the notion that everyone knows the full impact of their data caps and how much data they download. Therefore it’s not a water is wet argument. If this was a water is wet argument, by extension, the people who read this argument would be stupid for not knowing this fact, and I dispute that as well.
Just like it wasn’t Apple’s problem to “fix” the cell phone industry? Or their problem to hold manufacturers accountable? Of course it’s a problem for Apple. If you can’t download all you want over LTE, that severely limits the usefulness of LTE and of the iPad. Therefore the iPad doesn’t look as magical. It’s certainly a first world problem, akin to a problem like “I can only watch 2 hours of TV a day vs 6” but it’s a business problem for Apple none the less.
Here’s another way to look at it: if you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Apple wants to be a solution.
In other news, continuous use of the iPad drains its battery until it will no longer run.
Let’s see…. 2 + 2 still equaled 4 both before and after the iPad 3rd generation hit the streets… So was stupidity invented the day after the iPad 3rd generation was delivered?? Hummm…
Not really. The “standard” iPad functions already change behavior based upon the type of connection you have. For example App downloads are (or were) limited based upon connection type. Ditto for backup to iCloud which only occurs if you are on WiFi. Now on the iPhone, attachments are not downloaded on a 3G connection, probably because of bandwidth issues. Given that the new iPad is the first LTE iOS device, it’s possible that some standard functions (for example Mail) are treating LTE broadband connections as the same type of “free good” as a WiFi connection rather than as a “constrained good” such as 3G.
HA!! The stupid is everywhere….
Nice!
I’ve seen Verizon commercials where they do describe the amount of songs (even emails) that a cap allows for. It’s a completely useless thing; no one knows or even wants to count how many emails, minutes of video and songs they’ve streamed. Sure, it would be great if Apple negotiated an unlimited data plan for the iPad and iPhone but you describe this as if it’s Apple’s duty to do so. You could argue that like a car the iPad should display how much “gas” is left in the tank but they already do that. So what’s left and how is this any different from any other device that uses data? After each new wireless standard must we ‘educate users’ and remind them that downloading more means you’ve downloaded more?
First, on your subject of education people:Apple for years clearly marketed how many songs could fit in an iPod early on. “1000 songs in your pocket”. It’s not that hard to educate people. It was a rough estimate, and there were notifications that it wasn’t exact, but it was a good measure for people to generally understand. The geeks knew better but the general populace didn’t need to know the exact size of every song down to the number of bytes. And Apple continued to do so for some time, but doesn’t need to as much any more. Verizon can do the same thing and make sure their marketing identifies how much that is. However, In Apple’s situation it was in their interest to express just how “big” their device was it was both good marketing and good expectation setting for the customer. In Verizon’s case, it’s in their interest to have people go over so they can charge more, so I can see why they don’t try very hard.As to Apple’s Duty:I think this is where business has all gone wrong in the US because we keep using language that businesses just suck, get over it. Businesses do have an ethical duty to do the best they can for their customers. Now, Apple can ignore me, but then customers will exercise their rights and go elsewhere. We accept that and Apple has neither a Legal nor moral duty to that. But ethically, yes we want our businesses to do the best they can for us. Apple has a history of caring about business problems and their customers. Verizon and AT&T sure as aren’t going to solve this, they are oligopolies and they know we as customers have little choice in the matter, except to not have cell phones and go live in a cave with a $15 land line. Customers still have a choice in going with Apple and yet Apple is killing. Customers have little choice with wireless carriers, to the point that it’s a matter. It’s very much a business problem. And this goes back to education in that I very much reject an analysis where the market for wireless is specifically set up to shaft their customers and yet we post a response to an article that we all think is “duh you’re stupid if you don’t know it” but yet no one has really bothered to present evidence that it is all that duh when evidence is right in front of us that the wireless system is designed to take advantage of people who don’t know.And I’m not providing solutions or telling Apple specifically what to do, they are far more creative than I am and obviously have more clout and resources. Apple at one point wanted to put up their own wireless carrier system to bypass AT&T, there was an article on that a while ago. So hey you never know. Just on’t put it on people or USA today that they are some how stupid for posting something we all think is duh.
When you say “Of course it’s a problem for Apple.” you mean it’s a problem for the users of Apple devices then we are in agreement.
“If you can’t download all you want over LTE, that severely limits the usefulness of LTE and of the iPad. Therefore the iPad doesn’t look as magical.” I think this gets to the heart of the argument. Most people agree that this is a problem. What I take issue with is that this isn’t specific to the iPad. This is a problem with all devices that use data and have a cap. The question isn’t why Ed is calling out the iPad. The point is that, in order to draw page views, Ed is specifically mentioning the iPad.
“Here’s another way to look at it: if you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Apple wants to be a solution.” Again, I think I largely agree with the concept, but I would rephrase it as ‘it would be nice if Apple could solve the problem.’ Why arbitrarily stop at Apple? Replacing Apple with you (specifically) then; if you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Does what you’ve written still make sense?
This makes it sound like you think Apple has a *duty* to solve it and I disagree with the implication.
No I say it’s a “problem” for Apple in the sense that iOS users download the most, consume content the most, and get the most out of their devices and there is a percentage of users who will be less enchanted with their devices. Not 90%, not 50%, not even 10% but still a percentage. If Apple wants to continue to grow, selling iPads with a sweet data connection would be great for them. It’s a business problem in that it’s something that you want to fix to get more revenues or increase profits.
I don’t take issue with it because the the article never said “only the iPad has this problem” and the iPad will be the device that actually highlights this problem because of all the content it can download. Perhaps I can compromise on that fact: “This is not new to tablets, even cell phones have this same restriction, but the high resolution iPad is designed for high resolution content, which requires a lot of bandwidth to download, and thus can eat at your wireless cap.”
Oh and PS, I never said I wasn’t part of the problem 🙂 I’m giving money to AT&T so yes I’m contributing to it. But I vote, I discuss the problem here on the boards, and I personally try to educate people and discuss with them every chance I get. So I am trying to do something. I am sure you are too.
—
It’s difficult for me to address any one of your points without largely wandering completely off topic. Verizon has used the ‘how many songs, emails, videos’ you can stream thing for a while and it’s largely useless; there’s even an SNL skit about it. The general public doesn’t understand nor want to understand it.
“Businesses do have an ethical duty to do the best they can for their customers.” You use ethical and best too loosely here. By this logic Apple owes me the house and car of my dreams. Oh, and they should make sure that there are Verizon towers close to my home, work, and any place I might want to travel. Does Apple have an ethical duty to do any of these things? No, they have an ethical duty to present the device in a realistic fashion. In addition; everything the device was meant to do should be done well. I would say that these are the limits of it’s ethical duty.
I’m glad you took it as a joke (I wasn’t trying to be confrontational).
Apple used the idea of 1000 songs successfully. SNL can make fun of anything, and Verizon doesn’t have a vested interest to be successful with it, just make it look like they are trying. If it was that hard then they should remove the caps anyway.
I think in fact you are using my statement too loosely and you keep trying to act like I’m saying that Apple’s customers deserve the world from Apple. “The best they can” doesn’t mean “give them everything” it simply means “the best they are able to provide.” It’s a subjective statement but it’s a philosophy that I believe Apple is achieving that Verizon really isn’t. Apple gives good quality products at good prices and I believe they give me value. Verizon and AT&T, I bellieve not so much, specifically because of these caps, which hurt customers. In fact it’s unethical because it shafts customers.
That said, if Apple were to come up with a business model that allowed them to sell me a great car and a great house at a decent price, they should do it. I don’t expect that because Apple hasn’t set my expectation that they are in those markets, but if Apple figured out a way to do so, yes I would say ethically they should do so for the benefit of the customer.
—
“Nothing ends Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”
–Doctor Manhattan, “Watchmen”
Adrian Turkington
E-mail: deviladv@gmail.com
Web site: http://deviladv.wordpress.com
Totally agree with His Shadow here: data rationing is something the carriers created, not Apple. Think about it in a way that we can all easily relate to as Americans: the iPad is the hot new car, and carriers are oil companies who’ve limited the allotment of gas you can buy in bulk (i.e., your data plan) before having to pay enormous ‘overage’ fees per gallon/GB. How is it the fault of the car company that some OTHER company is limiting the utility of your car? It’s not.
I’m also unclear on why he didn’t use wifi, but this article *is* called Fighting the Stupid.