better tablet due to better color?
Bigger display comes with less portability. I am still lost how this could be a plus point. I would say a plus point is something that can't be compensated. If the plus point is better or warmer color for iPad Air then yes
Color gamut indeed. Less portability? It's a pound and maybe a ¼" thick. I've got em both and enjoy both for different tasks but when it comes to portability, at least for men, neither fit the bill. Both need some sort of case to carry or hold. The Air is incredibly portable and easily held in a single hand in portrait as well as the (almost double surface area) real estate. Again, I'm not disagreeing as you're spot on with the color but I don't agree the Air lacks portability. As an owner of each iPad, the Air is hand's down the only true portable iPad/Lg.
As much as I agree WRT winner and runner-up, I can't really take the reviewer seriously, he claims the Samsungs have clumsy this and clumsy that, he doesn't really justify his reasons well enough. I've used a number of the Samsung tablets and I wouldn't call anything about them clumsy, the software can be a bit heavy but they do what they do very well and are seriously light and very comfortable to use, but Android still needs a lt of work ...
'Used' or 'owned'? I've got the Xoom, Nex 7.2 and I've owned the Note 3 for nine months. Samsung needs a lot of work, as does android and it's app selection for tablet purposes. TouchWiz sucks. I love my Note, but TW is easily the worst UI in Android land. I'm not interested in rooting, romming or dicking with it in any fashion other than using the display and stylus with clients to sketch our business and rigging diagrams, credit cards and larger display to share with folks. iPhone 5s is my personal and go to phone. The Xoom is a collector. Nex 7 I gave to my son and the 7.2 hasn't been 'lit' up in six months. Sorry, but if agree with the author. Samsung uses cheap materials with a crappy Android 2.x GUI and identical apps ( Asphalt 8 for example ) flat, fly on iOS. iPhone. iPad. Doesn't matter. My Note 3 has GB RAM, and a quad core 2.3Ghz SoC. No apps running period, just TouchWiz. And it's using 1.8-2.3GB @ any given time. Again, I love both but for different reasons and Samsung needs to step up their quality both on the soft and hardware side. 4.4 has finally concentrated more on refining and eliminating some of the bloat ware but TouchWiz in comparison to Sense, stock ...LG, HTC, Sony, they're all slicker and smoother than Samsung's lineup.
the feel or ease of typing on external keyboards was the reason sited in the article. The writer liked the selection of 3rd party keyboards for the Air.
Which is weird as the 'good' or higher rated keyboards are available for both ...that's another bonus for the iPad. Typing on an iPad in portrait is slick. Not so much on any of my Android tablets I've owned. My Note is better but tablet Android typing without a keyboard is tough
To you.
I think differently. The rMini excels.
To me.
To the author as well. They're identical with just a couple exceptions. The Air is clocked a bit higher. It's color gamut is incredible and the rMini doesn't suck. It's #2. And even or a tenth of a point off. Isn't it cool we've all got the right to an opinion and MacRumors to sound off?
I've owned both and I could not disagree with you more. The retina Mini certainly does not truncate user experience.
I own both. While truncating the user's experience seems a bit extensive there's a difference and it's evident. While your usage and workflow may not feel 'truncated' on the mini, mine is when I'm editing in Lightroom, controlling our mixing console or focusing multiple cameras, their settings (white balance and exposure, shutter speed and aperture), or even just plain 'reading'. A book, a magazine or PDF hell, even surfing the net. It's larger and easier on older eyes to see without 'zooming' or using text resizing in accessibility or a third party browser. While not truncated it's certainly a better 'fit' for me, my workflow and doing business (we've owned an audio/video production company almost thirty years now) while the iPad mini with retina is fantastic on the John in the morning, at lunch while waiting on your meal or just general 'all around' tablet computing ...as this generation and last (A6x) have closed the gap for possibly 80-90% of our population and their 'need' to own anything other than an iPad. Browsing. Email. Surfing. Docs. Pics. Magazines and games, there's not much a tablet can't do that a computer can IF you're not a professional that relies on horsepower for your project. Hence the significant decline in PC sales and massive impact tablet sales have had on the customers.
That may be the opinion of The Verge editors, but if I recall correctly the 2nd gen Nexus 7 won the reader's choice award for best tablet of 2013 on both Engadget and ign.
To each their own.
1-1. Engadget gave the mini iPad retina #1. Air #2. Nex7.2 #3 and iPad 4 #4
http://www.engadget.com/reviews/tablets/
IGN named the best laptop the Razor blade (while the Haswell rMBP and it's PCIe SSD storage and Iris Pro/750, Thunderbolt 2 and easily the best display I've yet to see on a laptop ...Alienware, MSI, Falcon, even the HiDPI ASUS and Samsungs tested significantly better for display, power, storage speed and the rMBP, portability) and they named the best gaming system the Occulus Rift? Not the new PlayStation, XBox or Wii. The OR no one owns but have seen at trade shows. At least they got the phone right. I'm not finding a single site that disagrees with Ars' assessment. IGN aside, and certainly not one of the better known testing sites (objectively). Check out Anand. Ars. DisplayMate (I know, the new HDX Fire tab from amazon bests iPad with the display by a point, but the iPad MORE than makes up with that point deficiencies with the App Store and a helluva fluid UI, efficient battery and massive third party accessories to choose from
Too bad it is crippled with just 1gb of sys ram! That is my only gripe, otherwise it is perfect!
Silly. We just mixed down 48 channels for Collective Soul Saturday night with 110,000 watt outdoor system with six iPads as the console and a seventh to walk around with an RTA mic for EQ'ing, feedback and delay. 7.1 significantly improved the '1GB' foolishness. I've got a Note 3 with four cores clocked each a full GHz higher than my two core 5s. It's got 3GB of RAM. At any given point in time with a single app open 2-2.4GB are being used. RAM management in iOS is excellent and a year later it's STILL a powerhouse with significantly improved Android 2014 devices. The A7 still maintains top 5 if not top dog in most benchmarks. 5c as well! A7 was the 64bit jump. 2GB of RAM will come when necessary, but even with 16 in my rMBP, it's now using compression management allowing all RAM to be used all the time, with prioritization. It's amazing this still comes up as a negative when iOS 7 on a 5, 5c or 5s is just fine since the .1 update. As an Android owner I can assure you RAM isn't a magic bullet for mobile. It's an SoC and built for efficiency and battery length, usage for a day. And again, with half the battery (even less in many cases with flagships) on the iPhone ...check Anand for objective, real world battery tests while maintaining speed and not throttling. Air is an excellent example. It just keeps pegging the needle. Doesn't throttle and it's a natural heat sink with the aluminum. Not so with the flagship Android field. HTC is attempting and LGs look good but with double the battery and double the RAM, you're looking at the same performance AND relatively similar efficiency/battery.
I always think it's funny that the one thing that makes the iPad great in many people's eyes is also the one thing that makes it so bad also....
Rugged
Battery
Wide screen
...whatever else I cut out easily remedied by third parties ...Otter, Mophie, your TV and Apple TV ...
Some will say, Yes, what makes the iPad great is that Apple has total control....
Apple will never give people that choice of course
As I say, this is Apples strong point and also it's weakest point, as if you want a different feature, then you can't get it from Apple. which is a shame.
Did you happen to catch WWDC? I'm curious because I got the feeling the sandbox is going to get a bit bigger, deeper and 'complete'. iOS 8 and OSx 10. Continuity with Handoff, aggregation of all devices to a central depository, ala Dropbox but 'open' with new API and Swift/Metal's development (& current training available as well as a helluva update to XCode, free of charge so you can dabble in development, without expense and see just how easy resolution changes, compatibility and abilities now for an 'open' file center without precious space chewed up by redundancies.)
Your concerns for rugged protection, extension of battery life, water proofing and 'widescreen' (sucks by the way as anything 'other' than watching extremely specific aspect ratios ...as widescreen varies ...185/235? Which? Perfect answer. $99 hockey puck. Best CNote you'll ever spend. Apple TV. Just fling your content from your computer or iOS device to your tv and walla! Wide. Screen
I see your point but luckily it won't happen. iOS is the fluency champ, the leader in development monies delivered back to development community. Optimized tablet apps, and hundreds of thousands of them. It's cool. It's a paradigm shift. Started on a IIe. Went to college and ended up with a 286. 486DX Turbo when I graduated I think
...and two decades in the 'enterprise' environment mandated Windows as my OS. As they say, Times are changing ..and BYOD isn't going away, it's gaining momentum. By Apple licensing iOS they lose their jewel ...they're both vertical and horizontal. Like windows, finally with the SP3. I'm not sold on their phones or 8.1 but I own an 8.1 13". And it's not terrible since the '.' Update, but it's no OSx ...and if OSx isn't your thing, you're more than welcome to install whatever OS you'd like on a Mac. Not the other way around. I've got a friend that loves Win7. But he's using it solely (no OSx other than a 50GB partition for updates and anything necessary) as his operating system on a 2012 15" rMBP. He's never been happier
So don't be surprised when the Air2 appears with 2gb of SRAM.
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UI is NOT fluid, it is jittery in many instances, there is a lot to improve, and I am not comparing with other devices which I would not consider in any case.
You've either A) got a defective device or B) you're using old hardware to run new software. iOS 7.1.x is as fluid as fluid could possibly be on A7 devices. Some chop on gestures, talking milliseconds, on my iPad 4. My 5s, Air and Mini2 display no such 'jitter'. At all. We use intensive programs and link them to very expensive gear. We've had a zero failure rate, I've yet to see a glitch, warble or anything but pure fluency on the latest devices. From surfing to email, five finger pinch and four fingers up or down, doesn't matter. It's immediate ...but the A5/6(x) devices we've got DO indeed chop a bit. It's funny though as an ambidextrous user since '09 talking about fluency and glitchy UIs as I've suffered until this time last year with that exact challenge on Android. Snapdragon 800s, KitKat and massive power have now overcome those deficiencies but it took that long. iOS is typically great to excellent for two generations of updates. By the third it's going to slow down a bit or eliminate features, but even our iPad 2 is pretty damn quick on iOS 7.1. I'm not sure what you're doing so intensive to notice ...nor do I have a clue if you're using the 'new' iPad 3 and iPhone 4 with iOS 7 and wondering WTH? Then, I understand. Today's devices are incredibly fast, fluent and a joy to use.
I've found iOS and OSX has gained a lot of functionality but also picked up some jittery/lag. For me the most obvious is iOS 7 and Mavericks vs iOS 6 and Moutain Lion even on the latest devices offered.
Point is it's not the tops when we've seen it done better by the same manufacture.
I am also not comparing Apple to anyone else then Apple.
Again, any chance you could share the hardware guide using? Mavericks on my 2011 iMac, 12&13 rMBPs and two 2012 Airs is flat fantastic. Amazing quick and stable as an ox. Whether I'm using Premier or FCPx, Mail or Safari...I'm not understanding this rationale. I've got a snow leopard rig for Rosetta and older programs still necessary on a single rig, but man does it feel dated when compared to Lion.3 (mavericks). This is the third generation build on Lion and I agree Snow leopard was a tough one. But ML to Mavericks has slowed your computer? Something's wrong. If anything it's made older hardware quicker by utilizing the RAM more efficiently. Is your HDD full? Older device? Did you install in cleanly?
Sorry, didn't mean to go on this long but yeah. The Air Rocks. The Mini ret Rocks! Even the 'score' says so! Who cares what someone else prefers? Objectively all things taken into consideration I concur with the article. And I've got both. The Air is a hair better all the way around ...but I'd give up every Android tablet I've got (3
) to hang on to my mini. They both kick ass
I'm also using the betas of iOS 8 and 10.10. I think you'll be happy this fall if you're not participating or developing
J
