Honest question: What data do you store on an iPad Air? On a phone you might have some photos and videos but isn't a tablet just a media consumption device? Especially on iOS where they try to hide the filesystem as much as possible.

No data, but iOS apps have gotten massive, caches have gotten massive and install a game or two and 64GB is gone.

Not to mention that occasionally is nice to have a set of downloaded media available for vacation/travel and 64GB isn't enough to download week worth of content from Netflix.

This is why this is so annoying - you're right, I don't need 512GB or 256GB. But I'd still like to have more than "You're out of space!!" amount.

Where is 64GB coming from?

The base iPad Air model - the one the price is most quoted - is 64GB.

No it’s not.

https://www.apple.com/ipad-air/specs/

Not sure if you're pretending to not know, but all previous base iPad models were 64GB.

I've had the original iPad Pro with 64gb since it first released and have somehow never run out of storage. Maybe my problem is that I don't download games. I'd suggest using a USB drive for downloaded media though if you're planning to travel. All of the media apps I use (Netflix, YouTube, Crunchyroll, etc.) support them. That's worked well for me and is one reason I was comfortable buying the 64gb model.

How do you get Netflix to use an external drive?

Sorry, I thought I had done this with Netflix but I tried it just now and couldn't find the option. Then I googled it and it looks like it was never supported, I must've misremembered Netflix being an option.

> isn't a tablet just a media consumption device?

This is actually most of the storage space -- videos downloaded for consumption in places with no or bad internet.

Surely it supports USB OTG? Or is that just an Android thing[1]?

[1]: https://liliputing.com/you-can-use-a-floppy-disk-drive-with-...

Even on Android you can't download streaming media to OTG USB storage.

Once again, pirates win, paying customers lose

Yes. However, applications have to be specifically written to use external storage, which requires popping open the same file picker you use to interact with non-Apple cloud storage. If they store data in their own container, then that can only ever go on the internal storage, iCloud, or device backups. You aren't allowed to rugpull an app and move its storage somewhere else.

I mean, what would happen if you yanked out the drive while an app was running on it?

> What data do you store on an iPad Air?

Games. You can put maybe three or four significant games on an iPad Air before it maxes out. (MTG Arena is almost 20GB all on it's own, Genshin Impact is like 40+ GB)

Email, password manager, iOS keychain, photos, videos, etc should all be there if synced to iCloud.

As he said, you buy excess storage so that you don't have to think about how much storage you are using. Meanwhile if you barely have enough, you're going to have to play data tetris. You can find 256GB SSDs that sell for as low as 20€. How much money is it worth to not worry about running out of data? Probably more than the cost of the SSD at these prices.

We use PLEX for long trips in the car for the kids. Like 24 hour drives. We drive to Florida in the winter and the iPads easily run out of space after we’ve downloaded a season or two of Adventure Time and Daniel Tiger.

I could fit more if I didn’t insist on downloading everything 1080p I guess.

VLC or Infuse + external storage.

iPad OS is 17 GB and every app seems to think it'll be the only one installed.

> but isn't a tablet just a media consumption device

In my sphere, everyone with an iPad uses it for the Apple Pencil and/or video editing. Raw files for drawings get surprisingly big, once you get up into the many tens of layers, considering an artist can draw a few a day.