Apple needs to do something. The screen on that new nexus 7 is second to none at the moment. The performance of the ipad mini needs to be addressed as well. Apple can't just keep using several year old parts anymore. Just look at how bad the mini does.
My wife and I thought people who bought Apple products were less than intelligent... until a few months ago. We had Samsung Tab 2 7" tablets, along with the Note 10.1 and Note 8. We thought they were nice, and continued to make scratch our heads over anyone that didn't recognize the superiority of Android products. THEN WE BOUGHT AN IPAD 4. The first thing we noticed was the iPads superior build quality, and quickly found out that the battery meter didn't move downward rapidly like the Note tablets. We had tried Samsung's version of Apple TV, and it stunk. Apple TV delivers what it promises.
My problem is I tried to go the other way - My first tablet was iPad, then I wanted a smaller (and cheaper) tablet dedicated to the kids and bought couple of the Samsung 7" tablets. Being used to the smoothness of the iPad/iOS, it was almost a torture using the Samsungs even though it was meant for the kids. As soon as the Mini came out I dumped the Samsungs.
I bought the new Nexus 7 on release day. Yes the screen is very sharp, yes general UI operations are silky smooth as iOS has always been. Opening and switching apps is FAST on the Nexus 7. But the one thing that is driving me nuts is the poor internet browsing experience. Chrome browser just lags and lags, touch inputs don't register half the time, other times it registers the wrong thing I tried to click. Even with 2GB of RAM, the Chrome browser loves to purge all tabs that are open and reload them. I think it's Google's doing to keep its ads fresh. I think the poor browsing experience with Chrome is that it is too busy collecting info from my device to send to Google
Browsing on the iPad mini is so much more responsive even though all other tasks the Nexus 7 will be vastly superior. I tried Firefox on it but it's just another set of compromise.
The new Nexus 7 is a great device at a great price, no doubt. I thought I was going to sell my Mini after I bought it, but I can't. I prefer the Mini's 7.9" 4:3 screen, holding the Nexus 7 in landscape is awkward, and I much prefer web browsing on the iPad (especially my iPad 4) over the Nexus even though it looks much sharper than the Mini.
If there's going to be a retina Mini, I will no doubt upgrade. If there's going to be a 7.9" retina display, it's not going to be of the vanilla 1920x1080 or even 1920x1200 resolution displays that get cranked out by the billions (slight exaggeration here). Apple will insist on doubling up the resolution evenly to keep all apps looking their best. Even if there's a 7.9" 2048x1536 display in existence, it will probably cost way more than the vanilla 1080 display.
