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My Mini 7 doesn’t seem to have jelly scrolling, but it has spontaneously restarted about half a dozen times since I got it. Has anyone else experienced this?
Nope. Could be a rogue app that you have installed causing the crashes.
 
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"Jelly scrolling" refers to screen tearing,
No, it doesn't.
Screen tearing is when the frame is changed during a screen refresh, causing a sharp discontinuity during scrolling. Jelly scrolling happens because the display is refreshed from top to bottom (depending on orientation).
Screen tearing looks like this: ⎻⎻⎼⎼ Jelly scrolling is like: ╲
 
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IF Apple has improved the jelly scroll on iPM7 - what's the educated guess on how they did it?

• a slightly better LCD?
OR
• software changes?

If software - why not fix the Mini 6?
 
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Try turning it to landscape. My understanding is that Apple moved the display controller to the landscape posiition in the iPad mini 6, which shifted jelly scrolling from landscape to portrait. I’ll bet it does have it but since nobody scrolls a mini in landscape, no one noticed it. Minis are generally used in portrait. Anytime it’s in landscape, it’s usually because the user is playing a game or watching a video, in which case there is no scrolling going on. I think this is why iFixit is baffled as to what Apple did to reduce it in the 7 since the display controller was not rotated back to the landscape position.
When I had a mini, I never used it in portrait mode. I have an Air now and it is always in landscape.
 
IF Apple has improved the jelly scroll on iPM7 - what's the educated guess on how they did it?

• a slightly better LCD?
OR
• software changes?

If software - why not fix the Mini 6?
Purely speculative but maybe a teeny tiny bump in refresh rate albeit basic test still show 60hz. As a previous owner of a Mini 6 and currently testing a Mini 7 it’s not as bad but still very noticeable to someone like me.
 
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It was a minor upgrade to a product people and users love, but probably doesn't move the needle much at apple. If we got a better screen and performance it would've been a game changer. Its a great device just with an underpowered screen and processor that didn't prove much with this upgrade. Tim Cook and the team blew this one😔
Agreed

It's pretty much the equivalent of what they did with the next AirPods Max as well with only a port change from lightning to USB-C

Talk about some squandered opportunities to make some things some legit upgrades
 
My Mini 7 doesn’t seem to have jelly scrolling, but it has spontaneously restarted about half a dozen times since I got it. Has anyone else experienced this?

Haven't seen that on mine. And have not heard that happening on others' Mini 7s here.

I'd return it ASAP for another one.
 
Agreed

It's pretty much the equivalent of what they did with the next AirPods Max as well with only a port change from lightning to USB-C

Talk about some squandered opportunities to make some things some legit upgrades

Do you mean like doubling the base memory and storage, and a faster processor, on the Mini 7 while keeping the same price? And what appears to be a better display?

That's not a legit upgrade?
 
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Double buffering doesn’t eliminate the issue (and I would assume that iOS already does double buffering), because the issue is caused by how the pixels refresh on the panel itself. See my previous post above.

Your summary captures everything I understood about the issue but to the extent double buffering won't address this problem then it seems that the display on these devices isn't truly refreshing the whole screen at 60Hz?

If the framebuffer is drawn completely before being pushed to the display (double buffering) and the whole display is being refreshed at 60Hz, the issue shouldn't be any worse than we had in the CRT days. Which I never heard anyone complain about when phosphors durations were properly matched to refresh rate and double buffering was used.
 
I used to watch tv shows on a 13” CRT and thought they looked perfectly fine, too.

How quickly we become accustomed to luxuries.

Boy you ain’t kidding
I actually laid my eyes the other day on the 17-19 inch? Mitsubishi TV I watched in the 90s… it still works

Oh my God is it terrible
But it sure didn’t seem terrible with the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation one hooked up to it
 
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Pleased with my v7 Mini. Had no issues with my v6 Mini either. I take the mini when I have to wait in offices for reading emails and news. I have one game, Solitaire, which does not strain the CPU or GPU. I can look at my photos if desired.

I use my M4 11" iPad for some serious photo work. While some of those apps can be installed on the Mini, screen size is not conducive for that activity.

As a former instrument rated pilot, I would have loved to have a mini for the approach plates versus the 70 pound Jeppesen leather bag with seven or eight leather binders and a several hour commitment every Friday when all of the updates arrived in the mail.
 
Your summary captures everything I understood about the issue but to the extent double buffering won't address this problem then it seems that the display on these devices isn't truly refreshing the whole screen at 60Hz?
It does refresh 60 times per second, but the refresh isn’t instantaneous (a 60 Hz frame lasts 16.7 milliseconds, so a refesh can stretch over that timespan), and it also doesn’t happen on all lines at the same time. Similar to a CRT, the refresh starts at one edge of the display and ”slowly” progresses across the screen. Depending on where a pixel sits in that progression, it will be in different states of transition at any given time (if it’s a pixel where the old and new frame have a different color value).

In a scrolling situation, this means that one edge of the frame looks as if it already scrolled further than the other edge, or conversely, one edge lags behind in its scrolling compared to the opposite edge. If, for example, you scroll at a speed of 300 pixels per second, this means you get a slant of 5 pixels (300 divided by 60) across the screen if the refresh takes the whole 16.7 milliseconds of the frame. (And 5 pixels mean a steeper angle on a narrower screen than on a wider screen, hence more noticeable on a narrower screen.)

The time it takes for an individual pixel to change its state, the so-called pixel response time, is also independent from the frame rate. The frame rate is the rate at which each pixel is triggered to change its state, not necessarily the time it takes for it to actually change its state. Ideally the response time should be shorter than the frame rate, but it’s not unusual (depending on which brightness level the pixel is transitioning from and to) for a pixel transition to take 20 milliseconds, i.e. a bit longer than a frame. In other words, a pixel may start changing again for the next frame before it had fully finished changing for the previous frame. Generally that’s only the case for large jumps in contrast, which rarely happens on each frame (unless you watch a 30 Hz stroboscope video or something).

If the framebuffer is drawn completely before being pushed to the display (double buffering) and the whole display is being refreshed at 60Hz, the issue shouldn't be any worse than we had in the CRT days. Which I never heard anyone complain about when phosphors durations were properly matched to refresh rate and double buffering was used.
CRTs in principle have the same effect when you scroll horizontally on them. But I guess you rarely had smooth horizontal scrolling of vertical lines that stretch across the full height, and also the aspect ratio wasn’t as narrow. Another difference is that CRT phosphor responds (lights up) almost instantaneously (0.01 ms or less), and also decays relatively quickly (5 ms or so, less than a third of a 60 Hz frame), which means the human eye only gets a short “flash” of each frame. This is opposed to LCD and OLED, which hold the picture across the whole duration of the frame (“sample and hold”, which also causes motion to be more blurry in general than on a CRT).
 
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It’s funny how this non issue is only an issue on tech sites. Nobody in real life sees this as an issue. And no, responding comment, you really don’t.
It is likely similar to the Apple Vision Pro blurring. When I whip my head back and forth with the AVP on, browser windows blur horribly. It isn’t really a problem though, because 99% of the time I’m browsing the web on my Apple Vision Pro, I’m not whipping my head back and forth. I actually find that it makes reading more difficult than it needs to be even when I’m NOT wearing the AVP.
 
This is making the news even worse. Apple is offering something like that after years as new tech?
Only to folks that want it. In any given year, there are about 7 billion plus people that don’t want to buy what Apple’s offering. To the half billion or so left, they only have to sell a couple hundred million of various products.
 
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A complete non issue to most iPad mini users. I’ve had multiple iPad mini and larger iPads and yeah I can see it if I look, but it doesn’t bother me and I forget about it.

It’s a non issue for most and only seems to come up in detailed reviews and macrumors forums. That’s probably why they don’t do anything so major about it.
“THIS REALLY SUCKS!! I can’t read while I’m scrolling like this, see?”
“Have you tried reading while NOT scrolling?”
“Yea, but then I can’t see the problem and don’t have anything to complain about!”
“Ah, completely understand.”
 
It's a form of gaslighting that some people use to justify taking a swing at Apple.
Usually because Apple stopped making:
Airport Base Stations
Printers
iWeb
iPods
FCP7
etc.

and, as a result will be going under ANY DAY NOW… but, just in case, they take swings at them to help hasten the end of the company.
 
Lying? Really? Would that include the person who recently reviewed the iPad Mini 7 for MR and found no jelly scroll?

Tell us about *your* experiences with *your* iPad Mini 7.

I have an iPad Pro. I woudn't buy an inferior product, but that is just me. YMMV
 
CRTs in principle have the same effect when you scroll horizontally on them. But I guess you rarely had smooth horizontal scrolling of vertical lines that stretch across the full height, and also the aspect ratio wasn’t as narrow. Another difference is that CRT phosphor responds (lights up) almost instantaneously (0.01 ms or less), and also decays relatively quickly (5 ms or so, less than a third of a 60 Hz frame), which means the human eye only gets a short “flash” of each frame. This is opposed to LCD and OLED, which hold the picture across the whole duration of the frame (“sample and hold”, which also causes motion to be more blurry in general than on a CRT).

Thanks for all the explanations of all the underlying issues! Last question, are there any LCD/etc panels that don't have visible "jelly scrolling" in either vertical and horizontal direction? That is, is there any current display technology that provides a mechanism to not have this for a screen that will be used equally in landscape and portrait?
 
It never ceases to amaze me how many people jump to defend anything Apple creates, almost as if owning the product compels them to shield it from any criticism. It’s as if buying an Apple product comes with a sense of loyalty that overrides any objective view, where every flaw or legitimate concern brought up by others is brushed off or outright dismissed. This behaviour seems especially frustrating when people with real-world experience or genuine complaints are silenced or downplayed, as if differing opinions somehow threaten the perceived perfection of the brand. Instead of embracing constructive feedback or acknowledging that no product is flawless, these defenders act as if critique is inherently invalid—especially if it challenges their own investment in the product.
 
Thanks for all the explanations of all the underlying issues! Last question, are there any LCD/etc panels that don't have visible "jelly scrolling" in either vertical and horizontal direction? That is, is there any current display technology that provides a mechanism to not have this for a screen that will be used equally in landscape and portrait?
I don’t think so. This has to do with the wiring used to control each pixel. Because it’s not feasible to wire each pixel separately, the wiring is generally a matrix (grid) of horizontal and vertical wires (rows and columns). To switch one pixel, the two wires corresponding to its row and column are activated. Conversely, this means that only a single pixel can be controlled at any given time (because if you’d activate two rows and columns at the same time, their intersections would ambiguously match four pixels). Refreshing the display thus means activating each pixel individually one after the other, line by line and column by column. This process necessarily introduces a time delay between updating the first to the last pixel.

The only way to counteract this is to increase the refresh speed, but that is costly (tighter tolerances on everything) and consumes more energy. It’s probably hardly perceptible on 240 Hz TVs and monitors.
 
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