The Macalope knows it’s Saturday, but he’s here with a late-breaking news update: turns out new technology is generally faster than old technology.
Writing for the Forbes contributor network and weaponized banality factory, Scott Kramer explains “Why I’m Swapping My iPad For A Kindle.” (Tip o’ the antlers to David and Joe.)
Kramer’s Forbes bio reads:
I cover golf, luxury technology, and the intersection of the two.
ATTENTION GATED COMMUNITY SQUAD CARS. THERE IS AN 8-CART PILEUP AT THE INTERSECTION OF “GOLF” AND “LUXURY TECHNOLOGY.”
I’ve been frustrated for quite a while with my old iPad. It’s a 3rd Generation model…
Hold up. The Macalope thinks he’s found your problem.
…that I think is now five or six years old.
There’s that patented Forbes contributor network eye for fact checking that we’ve come to know and… uh, that we’ve come to know.
The iPad 3rd Generation is, in fact, six years old, having been released in March of 2012 and discontinued just seven months later. Turns out you can just look these things up on the internet. It’s wild.
It’s slow at doing almost anything.
Yeah, maybe because it’s six years old. The Macalope has a Google Nexus 7 and an original iPad mini, both from the same year. The Nexus is unusable and the iPad mini is barely better.
Kramer laments the size and weight of the iPad which he says he primarily uses for watching movies in bed, so he’s switching to a Kindle Fire 7. That’s certainly fair if that’s your use case. It’s probably worth noting that the iPad 3rd Generation is almost a half a pound heavier than the current iPad but, still, the Kindle Fire 7 weighs over a pound less. Which, of course, is the same weight as the iPad mini 4, which has a display that’s almost an inch larger. Hope you like bezels. And ads.
This model is known for poor battery life, inferior screen resolution and limited app flexibility.
For a guy who purports to cover “luxury technology,” last year’s Kindle Fire tablet with “special offers” at the low, low price of $35 doesn’t exactly scream “luxury.” The only luxury part of this scenario is the lying in bed.
It arrived two days ago. At first, I was alarmed that my phone had almost the same screen size.
Does Kramer not know these specifications are all available online?
But after using both devices for two days, I can say the Kindle screen is noticeably larger without being too large.
Turns out a 7-inch screen is actually larger than a 6-inch screen. Go figure.
… it’s worlds faster than the iPad 3, when it comes to loading web pages.
THE IPAD 3 IS SIX YEARS OLD.
Yes, the 1.3 Ghz quad-core processor out-specs the iPad’s 1.0 Ghz dual-core. I performed several side-by-side tests on web page loading of sites I’d never visited — so as not to skew my test in the iPad’s favor.
You speed tested them?! What are you even doing?
Next up on Forbes: how does the PowerBook Duo stand up to the latest gaming rig from Razer?
If watching movies and TV and reading books are your primary use cases for a tablet, a Kindle Fire is certainly a fine choice. But don’t pretend that your comparison to a six year old iPad has any relevance to anyone but you.