The trend is to cut costs on domestic carriers; what you describe is just the excuse. When a flight has both IFE and this "iPad experience," I almost never see anyone using their own device. Even without the IFE, when people are entertaining themselves on their own devices, I'm skeptical that many of them are actually using whatever WiFi-driven entertainment monstrosity is available, as opposed to e.g. predownloaded Netflix content or Kindle books. In my experience it has never worked very well.

Watching TV/movies on the airplane screens is better than your phone/ipad because the screens are sometimes bigger, the content may be different (sometimes newly released movies show up earlier than netflix), and the screen is positioned in a more comfortable place for viewing while leaning back into your seat.

Playing games on those screens sucks: the controls are bad, the input latency is bad, the screens are usually pretty low fps (30 in the best case), and the hardware running the games is underpowered.

Playing games on your phone is better than the screen, watching stuff is better on the screen, so while this may be a cost cutting measure I'm fine with it for the most part.

> When a flight has both IFE and this "iPad experience," I almost never see anyone using their own device.

I don't like the IFE screens because of terrible hardware (unresponsive screens) and software. I always use my own device.

But you're right -- I generally don't even want to interface with the IFE and either leave it in map mode or off, if that's possible. Occasionally there's a film I'd like to watch, but never enough to watch on the seatback. On my ipad, OK.

Built in IFE's are pretty expensive, due to the required certification for each a/c type, periodic checks and fixes, and eventual need to be removed or replaced. And most of that has to happen with the plane not making money, in a hangar. Then also weight + fuel burn. It seems like a reasonable excuse to me.