Similar to the parent I only ever see iPads in two places, the hands of rich kids in restaurants, and in primary schools.
If you spend a lot of time on public transport, an iPad isn't really that much of a luxury item. It's a really pragmatic choice, and at least in the UK an entry-level or recent secondhand iPad is not much more expensive than the cheapest usable alternative.
Most seats on British trains are not at tables, and while many (by no means all, depends on the operator) have a seatback tray table, it is generally not the right shape for all but the smallest laptop, and the proportions are not such that they work well with convertible PCs that use screen-cover keyboards.
We really get crammed into trains.
An iPad is large enough to read a book or emails even if you are stuck without a seat, the on-screen keyboard is practical enough to write reasonable emails or edit small documents on, watch a film on, etc.
So is a very cost effective way to make use of what might be 2+ hours of every working day.
(Train travel is pretty expensive over any distance, too. An entry level iPad is only about ten times the cost of an ad-hoc journey into London from where I am.)
So is a very cost effective way to make use of what might be 2+ hours of every working day.
You can either drive it and do nothing but listen to something relatively simple, or sit in a train and read/work/draw/listen/play games/sleep.
(It’s not my commute; I work from home. But I visit clients sometimes; yesterday involved six hours of train/tube travel. I wouldn’t do that every day but I could do it once a week.)
However, 30 miles is significantly under the average US commuting distance. And, unless you live and work near an urban downtown, 30 miles probably doesn't get you to a lot of appropriate professional jobs. I live in an exurb outside a major metro and my (nominal) office is the nearest tech job I could physically commute to and it barely squeezes in under 30 miles.
https://hbr.org/2021/05/that-dreaded-commute-is-actually-goo...
But, yes, other numbers seem to be lower (and are generally more likely to quote commute time rather than distance which is probably more relevant for most people).
But thirty miles in an hour on urban/suburban rail isn't particularly unusual. And this time is time you can use, if you have even a little bit of method about it. I know people who have done all the reading for entire higher education degrees in that period of time.
At any rate, the notion to which you're responding regarding the area of possible commute being 2800 square miles is foolish. You have to go to where the jobs gather, and there are all sorts of complex reasons why they don't distribute evenly across that area that a rational person should not spend time weighing up when they consider whether an iPad might be a useful thing for the train.
In my case, if I made the commute into London on a daily basis, knocking down the distance to this hypothetical US average of 16 miles might save, I think, about a third of the journey time in practice. It would knock off half of the price of a season ticket, which might be useful. But it would add easily 40% to the cost of a house, which is the overriding concern. And even then I'd still buy the iPad for that journey.
People who actually live in London tend to be either very rich or unemployed.
Sincerely, from someone in the third world who has taken UK public transport. You don't.
I don't say this to disparage your message, but hopefully to give some gratitude for the nice things you do have over there.
I found it most amusing how people would get antsy and annoyed when a train was more than 5 minutes late in the UK. For years of me taking South African trains, if there was any delay worth being mad about, it would've been after 2 hours had passed.
And as far as safety is concerned, when every seat is full and there's already very little seat-to-seat distance, the aisle is crammed with people face to back with nothing to hang on to, and the vestibules are all full to the point that people are standing with nothing to support them if the train brakes hard, that is a crammed train. Dangerously so -- indeed, often illegally so.
And this is quite normal, routine and unexceptional at commuter times, and that is not talking about the underground, where it is routine to be packed in to the point that someone's nose is against the window (mine was, yesterday).
I'm sure there are trains elsewhere that are worse. There's nothing I can do about that; it doesn't really change my observation.
(I'm not sure there's a really good point about gratitude here, either, when the people paying for these services where they don't get a seat have to take out substantial loans to afford the annual ticket, whereas you can travel from Cape Town to Johannesburg, with a sleeping car berth, for about 20% more than the amount it costs me to travel an hour into London at off-peak times. But that's a separate point.)
That was the Metra BN line in Chicago when I lived there, at least the rush hour departures at around 5:00pm. I was on a train so full that I could not even fully get into the vestibule, I had to push people in with my body so the door could close behind me. Many times the CTA trains were similarly full.
Generally speaking and especially when compared with trams or buses, mainline trains don't really do "hard" braking, though. Though I concede that the jerk of coming to a full stop with the brakes fully applied (during regular braking drivers and/or the train control system will ease off the brakes before stopping) may be somewhat borderline in terms of keeping your stability.
Also try the Tube in London’s rush hour - more like stuffed in than even crammed in. Full armpit-in-the-face experience.
I've also hung out of Cape Town trains because that's the only way to get on - all doors forced open by commuters so we can get a few more people to work.
That said, I'm going on a few week--mostly recreational--trip in a bit and I'll just take my phone and my iPad. It will be fine for note-taking at the conference I'm attending and I really just want media consumption and a browser on something bigger than my phone for everything else.
An iPad is probably one of my more optional devices but I've gotten almost 10 years out of my current model so it doesn't feel like an unreasonable luxury even if I mostly use it when traveling.
As someone who very much prefers having a physical keyboard, the only workable solution I have found for UK trains is an iPad with the Magic Keyboard, whose cantilever design is relatively shallow, and which provides a firm base for balancing on your legs.
There is no reason this form factor couldn't be achieved with an android tablet, but it feels relatively uncommon. Most keyboard cases I've seen are only really suitable for stable table/desk scenarios.
So cost of an iPad isn't a huge concerns at that point
https://www.thetrainline.com/season-tickets/chelmsford-to-lo...
(Source - worked at Google in Android)
On my journey home in a more crowded train I saw half a dozen iPads just from where I was sitting. They are extremely useful devices for train journeys.