M4 iPad Air Gets Up to $149 Off at Amazon and Best Buy This Week

And is still $50 more than it was just a few months ago... full price. *sigh*

I’m hoping to see iPad upgrades post-haste.

My 12 yo’s iPad - their lifeline to friends with phones (yes, phones at 12) - is barely functional. It only charges when something is jammed under the usb cable (where it connects to iPad). And even then, the failure rate is 75%. I would upgrade today, but none of the reg iPad line is currently capable of running new Siri and It seems dumb to buy something that can’t.

Would really like to see the iPad line updated in Oct as opposed to what I fear is more realistic: spring.

Glad somebody else out there with a 12 year old doesn’t just let them run free with an iPhone from a young age. My daughter gives me so much crap for not letting her have an iPhone. First of all it’s expensive (device + monthly plan), second of all a phone isn’t required at 12. We compromised and got her an Apple Watch SE for Christmas on a special deal so she could stay better connected, and I told her she can get an iPhone “e” when she starts high school in a couple years.

It’s crazy how many of her friends have had phones since the middle of elementary school, and she’s not lying I’ve seen them with them. One is a neighbor girl down the street who has had one since around 3rd grade and all she watches is something called “Italian Brain Rot” and I swear to you her brain is so cooked. One time she wandered into our house without knocking and said “What are you watching” and scared the hell out of me, I was downstairs in our basement rec room watching a show, and nobody else was home. We had to have a talk with her parents about that. She says the most unhinged stuff sometimes and is so awkward. My wife was sure she was autistic, as she used to work with autistic children, but apparently she is not. She is just one of the “cooked” Gen Alpha that has unrestricted screen time because her parents can’t be bothered to parent her or care about her wellbeing or future to any extent. The worst part is her mother works for the school district.

Don’t even get me started on that, they don’t even make kids do homework anymore, and the reason is because they said so many kids are having to watch their little siblings after school and all evening, because their parents have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. I don’t even know what to say to that. We’re just setting up the future generation for so much failure on so many levels, and yet they wonder why test scores keep dropping. They also said they don’t do assign reading anymore in middle school, because most of the students can’t read a grade level and therefore won’t be able to read anyway, so they let them pick any book they want and then ask them some questions about it verbally. I’m just so done with devices being used with children so much. They use iPads all day at school and it only makes things worse. We had to have our daughter give us her iPad after school each day because they make them take it home for some reason, because she was playing on it too much since it has Minecraft and other stuff on there. Her personal iPad limits games to 30 minutes and other apps and educational content to 30 minutes during the week, and they get a little longer on the weekend, and my kids seem pretty normal so I’m hopeful they will be okay.