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First iPad Mini Reviews: "Shockingly Nice to Hold", Non-Retina Display, Pricier than Rivals
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Amazon managed it. Google managed over 300ppi with stunning displays on their Nexus 7 and Nexus 10.
Apple could have done it if they wanted to
iPad 2 - 133 ppi
iPad mini - 163 ppi
iPod nano - 202 ppi
Nexus 7 - 216 ppi
iPad 3/4 - 264 ppi
Nexus 10 - 300 ppi
RE: Bezel Size
Watching the Apple iPad Mini presentation I could tell the guy had never actually lain in bed and tried to read a book. If he had he would know that a tiny bezel makes it almost impossible to hold the device and read. The larger bezel on the Kindle makes it much easier to read with.
It's amazing because all they would have to do is try to hold it with one hand while laying down. They would have seen you thumb covers a portion of the screen making it hard to read and uncomfortable to hold.
Watching the Apple iPad Mini presentation I could tell the guy had never actually lain in bed and tried to read a book. If he had he would know that a tiny bezel makes it almost impossible to hold the device and read. The larger bezel on the Kindle makes it much easier to read with.
It's amazing because all they would have to do is try to hold it with one hand while laying down. They would have seen you thumb covers a portion of the screen making it hard to read and uncomfortable to hold.
Excellent coverage from the iMedia.
Keep up the good work, kids.
Your $1 off coupon for hundreds of different iAdapters is in the mail.
Happy Halloween,
Tim
Keep up the good work, kids.
Your $1 off coupon for hundreds of different iAdapters is in the mail.
Happy Halloween,
Tim
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Understandable. But for me, all three serve very different purposes, and are not meant to replace one another. They compliment each other. And with iCloud even more so.
In my 5-member family household I have a 27" iMac, a 17" MBP, an iPad 2 (I can't really count that one; I'd have to pry it from my wife's cold, dead fingers), an iPad 1, 3 iPhone 4s (one was issued to me at work), and 2 older iPod Touch (camera-less).
The iMac is used as the Home base, iTunes, photo, movies, and docs repository, Apple TV driver, as well as the heavy lifter for things like blu ray conversion.
My MBP is my personal toy: virtual machines for every OS out there, iMac (limited) backup, school and travel machine, and music studio.
The iPad 1 is also used for school note-taking, Garageband, Fender Amplitude controller, casual games, email, tv, and chilling in the back yard while the kids bounce on their trampoline...
The iPhone is, well, a phone, camera, music player, nav system, email, and voice memo machine (I LOVE that app).
So, different purposes, all devices used to the max, by everyone in the family.
Perfect integration. The above is why for me, a move to Android is just unrealistic..
That's a valid point. Ultimately the free market shakes a lot of these things out.
If Apple can get enough people to pay $329, $529 or $799 - there is no incentive for them to change.
But my priority is as a consumer...not what fills Apple's wallet or stock value. I have a hard time spending $500 for essentially a mini-iPad 2 LTE....only to have a Retina version trotted out next spring or summer.
Apple has always charged a premium for their products. I totally get that. But this doesn't feel like a premium product, it seems like a compromise. It's essentially a smaller iPad 2 for $70 less.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
This argument is old. Do you have to carry around a router for wifi? No. Do you have to carry around your own cellular tower for LTE or 3G? No. Why? Because when enough of some new hardware capability gets into public hands, things like "charging stations" start popping up. Build in wireless charging to millions of iDevices and wireless charging stations that support them will pop up like wifi & LTE towers have popped up.
Yes, for the interim, those who want to charge wirelessly will have to bring along their own pad... OR they can just keep charging their iDevices as they do now (because such an option wouldn't kill off the wired method of charging). So then they're not carrying anything more than they do now but they also enjoy this added benefit whenever they come across a charging pad in their travels. Eventually, if it could go like "free wifi" has gone, you might be able to leave the charging cord at home because you know you'll be able to easily find charging pads at the places where you travel.
Agreed on most fronts. But I think that what you call "rip off" is really a sound business strategy to maintain profit-margins while providing an excellent and comparable product, with the associated and ever-present trade-offs that come with that.
Also, I wouldn't underestimate the whole "installing into a smaller chassis" thing as easy..but still. I agree that one could skip this generation mini and wait for the next. Ooor you could get it, enjoy it, and sell it when the new one comes out. You'll get a good return on that.
Now, "innovation"? How much more innovation do we need? The tablet market today is what it is because of Apple's innovation (they nailed it the first time) and I believe it is beginning to mature. No need to re-invent the wheel; were just switching rims now to suit our tastes. I think that refinement and style is what it is all about.
The basic premise for what a tablet is is now set, and different companies are taking their own approach to Apple's template. For my part, I think Microsoft is doing the most interesting take and has huge potential, but the big three are just driving each other at this point.
Overall, I think it is a great time in computing (or electronic devices, I guess) and I feel that it'll only get better.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
One thing though. While we easily swallow the pixel-doubling concept to get to the current crop of iPad 3 & 4 resolution, would something in the middle between 2/mini and 3/4 really be a developers issue (yet another resolution to code for)? For example, doubling for retina made sense because of the big leap up in number of pixels. But what if the mini "2" did go with some resolution in between- maybe 80% of the resolution of the "4" AND then downscaled from the optimized-for-retina apps?
Upscaling is always a loser. It is asking software to create graphics that aren't there. Downscaling is working from a higher quality to a lower quality by only deleting some fine resolution. While upscaling can still look pretty good, there's always a visual tradeoff. Downscaling often looks great because the system is working from a higher quality. So if iPad Mini "2" went retina without matching the pixel count of "4" and then used the "4"s retina-ready apps downscaled to- say- 80% for the iPad mini, I would think it would look fantastic.
And the spec hounds would get a PPI number within the retina range so they should have less to gripe about too.
Should iPad Mini 2 adopt the 4s resolution in a smaller screen, it's PPI would then step up to a much higher level, superior to the 4. In other words, it would have the sharpest screen vs. the iPad Maxi. I just don't see that happening.
The point? Downscaling is the way to add another resolution for iPad Mini 2 without the developers having to do anything. Just scale down from iPad 4 retina-ready apps just like 1080p movies are scaled down for iPad 2/mini (less than 1080p resolution screens). I would think Apple could pick any resolution between mini and 4 for mini version 2 and use downscaling to feed the "must be retina" crowd without having to actually deliver a shrunk iPad 4.
Will it? Knowing that Apple will most definitely stick to doubling resolutions to keep things simple for devs, we can assume that a "retina" iPad mini would need to carry the same 2048x1536 resolution as the retina ipad.
Is this feasible for a 7.9" screen were the PPI would be about 325, keeping with the $329 price tag?
I wouldn't hold my breath.
I can't wait for mine to arrive. I bought it for a family member, but I might want my own also. I can imagine my full size iPad being used a lot less.
Do you haters realize what you sound like to me? WAAAAAAHHHH, I can't afford one so I'm going to hate. I mean really, what incentive is there to post that you "don't want one" in a thread like this? When I'm not interested in something, I don't read or post about it. When you say it's too expensive, you're just exposing yourself as someone who doesn't have the means. You clearly want it, but not at that price.
Do you haters realize what you sound like to me? WAAAAAAHHHH, I can't afford one so I'm going to hate. I mean really, what incentive is there to post that you "don't want one" in a thread like this? When I'm not interested in something, I don't read or post about it. When you say it's too expensive, you're just exposing yourself as someone who doesn't have the means. You clearly want it, but not at that price.
See I don't understand this rational. This is why a 4.5" iPhone would be ideal all those people saying it would be to big and bulky now love this thing?? Even in the Apple commercial selling this thing they have someone pulling it out of their pocket...
Agreed on most fronts. But I think that what you call "rip off" is really a sound business strategy to maintain profit-margins while providing an excellent and comparable product, with the associated and ever-present trade-offs that come with that.
Also, I wouldn't underestimate the whole "installing into a smaller chassis" thing as easy..but still. I agree that one could skip this generation mini and wait for the next. Ooor you could get it, enjoy it, and sell it when the new one comes out. You'll get a good return on that.
Now, "innovation"? How much more innovation do we need? The tablet market today is what it is because of Apple's innovation (they nailed it the first time) and I believe it is beginning to mature. No need to re-invent the wheel; were just switching rims now to suit our tastes. I think that refinement and style is what it is all about.
The basic premise for what a tablet is is now set, and different companies are taking their own approach to Apple's template. For my part, I think Microsoft is doing the most interesting take and has huge potential, but the big three are just driving each other at this point.
Overall, I think it is a great time in computing (or electronic devices, I guess) and I feel that it'll only get better.
The concept is that this is a 1st gen product. Like the first iPhone, iPod, iPad, Surface or whatever, early adopters always pay more than the value they get.
Usually, the coverage of research and development costs is a justification, but in this case they are negligible, because we're talking about pre-existant hardware in a different form factor, which doesn't require massive work from the R&D department, I think.
Something innovative would've been NFC, but apparently Apple still couldn't figure out a way for making money out of it. Or many other features that we couldn't imagine until Apple uncovered them.
But, in fact, one could argue that the iPad mini not only fails to innovate, but is a step backwards in regard to innovation, because Apple entered in a market as a mere competitor compared to Samsung, Google and Amazon, which believed, invested and created demand for a new product. It usually is the other way around.
Moreover, Jobs and Cook explicitly denied the need for that product to defend their own (10" iPad), until Cook saw that there was money to be made, and he made sure to get it with the deliberately limited 1st gen "bait" mini to be replaced with the "new" one next year.
And, honestly, I don't remember the last time in which Apple entered in a proved market with a "recycled" product just to milk it for profits.
That kind of makes me sad.
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OK guys. Chicken or the egg thing here.
To be fair though, the modern template for tablets was set by Apple with the iPhone (yes, the iPhone), then the iPad. I read somewhere that Steve Jobs actually wanted to do the iPad first.. The "white" device thing has been an Apple staple for decades as well. In any case, tablets as we know them today simply did not exist before the iPad. Who cares who did what first, though?
I'm starting to hate the "i" word almost as much as the "s" word (skeuomorphic or whatever). The tablet template is set. You want "new" and "different"? Microsoft has a Surface to sell you. But to me, "innovating" means completely changing the game. This already happened long ago in the tablet space. Now everyone is just refining..
P.D. I'm so sick of this Apple vs Samsung, Ford vs Chevy, mine-is-better-than-yours crap. I'm a consumer; I really don't care if every company out there copies/sues each other to death. Just crank out the good stuff; I'll pick and choose what I like.
Usually reactions in the internet comment sections go like this -
A non-Apple device gets a high score in a review:
"Excellent objective review!"
An Apple device gets a high score in a review:
"Bias! Paid shill! Sad how biased the review is. Without the Apple logo it wouldn't have gotten a good review."
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Thank you, sir. Refreshing to see there are still grown-up, reasonable individuals here.
I'm in the same situation you are: too invested in Apple to go anywhere else. But for those on the fence, the mini just made things hard...
Nice to see the positive reviews, but I don't get their price comparisons. 20% or $50 more? The ipad starts at $329 versus $199 for other options, that's $130 or 65% more. And when you go up to 32 gigs, the price difference goes up another $50, it's $180 for the mini.
People accept that apple makes a better build and justifies a higher price. But these reviews need to be honest about how much the difference actually is - if it really was 20% or $50 more ($240 or $250), nobody would be complaining about price, people would be surprised it was such a good deal.
People accept that apple makes a better build and justifies a higher price. But these reviews need to be honest about how much the difference actually is - if it really was 20% or $50 more ($240 or $250), nobody would be complaining about price, people would be surprised it was such a good deal.
Amazon managed it. Google managed over 300ppi with stunning displays on their Nexus 7 and Nexus 10.
Apple could have done it if they wanted to
First, Google and Amazon don't make their own devices. Second, the Nexus and Kindle Fire HD devices are all sold at or below cost. Apple sells the Mini at a 25% profit margin (which is lower than the full-size iPads yet how many people complain about how overpriced the full-size iPads are?). If Apple sold the Mini at $250 they would only just be breaking even (and that would kill profit margins and blast the stock; actually, stock is down in part because of these reduced margins). That's not how Apple runs as a company. If you don't agree with that business model, don't buy their products. Maybe Apple will change over time as we get farther and farther from the influence of Steve Jobs and maybe that will be a good thing but I doubt it. Apple has been so successful because of quality products, superb marketing, great customer service, and top notch profit margins.
You can always buy more inexpensive products that work and might even have more features but I appreciate Apple resisting the race to the bottom even if it means prices are somewhat higher. Apple doesn't want to be the McDonald's of the tablet industry. In many ways, Apple is like Steinway or Trek or BMW.
I will gladly switch from iOS products when the quality and utility of the competition - largely meaning apps - is similar to what exists in iOS. Google's ecosystem is not even close yet and Amazon's, while better than Google's, is still essentially Google's system with limitations but some bonuses (e.g., Prime).
"If you want to save $50 and buy a cheap-ass tablet, go ahead. If you want quality the iPad mini will be waiting for you when you come to your senses."
I asked this question in a different thread and no one seems to be able to give me an answer? What do you do with NFC if you have it in Iphone today? If we were in Japan, I think I can understand the needs for NFC since a lot of payment is done with NFC device. How can I show off an NFC device to my friend or my wife? I think there is wireless charging. Samsung has the exchange picture by touching two S3 together.
Excellent question, I've been wondering whether this is possible or feasible myself as it makes a lot of sense if it is, as I just can't see their going to a doubling of the current resolution, which would then create a device offering same resolution as full sized iPad, in a smaller form factor. Two devices with same resolution in different form factors - that doesn't make sense. And creating a new resolution for developers to code to, isn't something any of us want, I think.
Another question - when do our eyes stop detecting increased pixel density? When does it make sense to stop increasing PPI on these devices?
1. OK. That is one way of looking at it. I do not work for Apple, so I cannot say you're wrong outright. Personally, I'm more of a "glass half-full" kinda-guy, and to me your view seems a bit pessimistic, but that is perfectly fine.
2. It has been reported that there was internal strife at Apple regarding the smaller tablet form factor for a while. Regardless, I know I saw it here for a while where people wanted a smaller tablet. Why would I complain about Apple providing something that didn't exist for those who want it? And you don't have to re-buy, re-learn anything! Just sync it and go. How is this a bad thing? Again, what exactly is there to innovate? Just add features. Make things even easier. Etc. I agree with Ive on the fact that "new and different are relatively easy. Genuinely better is hard".
3. NFC? Really? I just don't see the value in that. And it has been shown to be unsecure (I removed all my credit cards that have that from my wallet). I laugh at those Samsung ads that have people bumping phones and sharing things. Just too risky for me, from a security standpoint. But hey, to each his own.
4. So, Apple releasing a product (that they did not previously make) to fill a(n arguable, but demonstrated) "need" makes you sad? Hmmm.
The way I see it, it is better to have and not "need", than to "need" and not have.
