Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iPad mini Ipad Mini Very Nice -- 45 Year Old Eyes, not.

S

Spellman Jones

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 14, 2010
12
0
I bought the black 32g iPad mini today. I wanted the 16g, but BestB was out of those.

A friend from work went with me and he bought the same. He is 40 years old.

We both took them in to work with us after lunch. Everyone wanted to play with it, so I passed it around the room. The general consensus was that it was great.

I don't have a problem with it being non-retina. It probably would be awesome if it was, though.

While I cannot find a real gripe with it, I think it is going back tomorrow.

At 45 years old, I have 20/20 distance and supposedly 20/20 near, but something is really wrong here. I am having a heck of a time adjusting to the size of the print.

I compared it to my iphone 3gs and iPad 1. I don't have high expectations with the 3GS, so I accept the small print. The iPad 1 appears to be smallest size tablet that is acceptable for my eyesight. My macbook pro 13" is fine too.

I think a 7" device of any size is probably going to be too small for me to read comfortably.

Again, nothing against the iPad mini. I wish I could keep it but I could feel the eyestrain with 5 minutes.

Anyone else, with tired old eyes, notice the same thing?
 
Unfortunately, I am right with you (and also happen to be 45). I would like to have a mini, but it is just too small for me and my eyes.
 
Same problem and I am only 29....I am hoping that I get used to it. I have an iPhone 4S and don't have this problem so I can't imagine what could be different. I'm going to cross my fingers, squint for a bit and hope it gets better.
 
The is definitely an issue that apple did not properly deal with when choosing to just reuse the 10 inch iPad resolution and apps. Everything is just shrunk to 7.9 from 9.7. This is different from android which offers a resolution independent interface and is also aware of pixel density and screen size. 7 inch tablets will render apps differently than 10 inch tablets. They will increase the font size to adjust to the higher ppi. Apple really made a gigantic mistake when they designed iOS without considering the fact that screen sizes and resolution differ between devices. You never have to deal with black bars or pixel doubling on Android. Unfortunately these problems are very real on iOS and its also what dictated apple from not being able to use a higher resolution screen I'm the mini.

A good example of what I am talking about is to compare the nexus 7 and the Xoom running the same app. They both have the same resolution yet the nexus 7 is aware that its pixel density is 216 vs around 160 in the Xoom. It therefore renders its elements larger as the actual pixels are smaller. This is all handled seemlessly in android. Do not think of it like iOS where developers specifically have to address device resolutions.
 
I wanted to love the mini, played with one today, the screen is a deal breaker for me too. After several months of a retina screen, I can't make this switch.
 
IF the type is bothering your eyes it's time for some glasses. The simple act of reading from a typical distance should not be causing you issues IF your eyes are functioning properly. I have zero issues with the iPad mini and am glad to have it in my hot hands.
 
Just get reading glasses

No way am I going to send this back just because of small print. I bought it for an e-book reader anyway. It's far easier told in one's hand than a full-size iPad. I can adjust the font size to whatever I want for Kindle books.
 
AFDoc said:
IF the type is bothering your eyes it's time for some glasses. The simple act of reading from a typical distance should not be causing you issues IF your eyes are functioning properly. I have zero issues with the iPad mini and am glad to have it in my hot hands.
Click to expand...

I have glasses (well contacts, rather thick ones) and my eyes are functioning properly per my recent optometry visit. Thank God for your 20/20 vision, but there is absolutely a difference. Just because you don't have an issue doesn't make the rest of us off base.
 
LawyerBarbie said:
Thanks for the tip, trying it now! I love it too much to quit on it just yet.
Click to expand...

I agree that Safari seems a bit off-base when it comes to font size. I'll try another browser too.

I'm blaming Safari, not the iPad itself, because it's the only app where I find this bothering me. I usually enjoy small fonts, even with my bad eyes and contacts. The others apps are just totally fine.
 
Quantus said:
That only applies to certain Apple apps and not even everything displayed within the app.
Click to expand...

Then Apple needs to have it applied to all apps and system-wide.

I knew it would be an issue for some ppl with the smaller screen size.

Hopefully iOS 6.1 will have this feature.
 
I am 46 and have perfect near and far vision and the mini screen is definitely affecting my eyes too. Can not even describe the effect it has and no I don't need reading glasses either.

I also have an iPad2 and never had this problem. No issue with the Kindle either.

Too bad, as I really like the mini. I got to play with an iPad 4 (new iPad) and that screen is awesome and is definitely much quicker than my iPad 2. Looks like I will be buying that one.
 
Geekbabe said:
I wanted to love the mini, played with one today, the screen is a deal breaker for me too. After several months of a retina screen, I can't make this switch.
Click to expand...

Exactly what happened to me, so I exchanged the 64gb mini for a 32gb iPad 4. Happy I did!
 
I'm 35 and have decent vision (minor reading glasses prescription) but I, too, think the font sizes are too small.

On my Nexus 7, everything seems to rendered much larger and is quite pleasant.

Sadly, mini is going back.
 
klover said:
I'm 35 and have decent vision (minor reading glasses prescription) but I, too, think the font sizes are too small.

On my Nexus 7, everything seems to rendered much larger and is quite pleasant.

Sadly, mini is going back.
Click to expand...

Do particular apps bother you, are pretty much everything?
 
LawyerBarbie said:
I have glasses (well contacts, rather thick ones) and my eyes are functioning properly per my recent optometry visit. Thank God for your 20/20 vision, but there is absolutely a difference. Just because you don't have an issue doesn't make the rest of us off base.
Click to expand...

Hmmm..... That's strange. IF your eyes are corrected to 20/20 the text should not be much of a challenge, strange.

Not doubting what you're saying but there should be no physiological difference between natural and enhanced 20/20 vision.
 
LawyerBarbie said:
I have glasses (well contacts, rather thick ones) and my eyes are functioning properly per my recent optometry visit. Thank God for your 20/20 vision, but there is absolutely a difference. Just because you don't have an issue doesn't make the rest of us off base.
Click to expand...

This..
 
I am 50 and I cant read the text my retina iPad 3 without glasses. So the Mini will be the same. I saw the mini today and with zooming and font sizing you can read it fine.

I think people just dont like the fuzziness when used to crisp retina.

You'll be waiting a year for a retina version.
 
klover said:
I'm 35 and have decent vision (minor reading glasses prescription) but I, too, think the font sizes are too small.

On my Nexus 7, everything seems to rendered much larger and is quite pleasant.

Sadly, mini is going back.
Click to expand...

I had N7 and used app called big font, otherwise the standard font was a bit small for me. Mini is also too small for me.
 
Quantus said:
Do particular apps bother you, are pretty much everything?
Click to expand...

Apps like Scrabble are fine since the graphics are very large. Text in the browser, however, is hard to read without a lot of zooming. IPad 3 was fine in this respect.

I wish Apple had a DPI adjustment like Windows. I know you can enlarge text via accessibility settings but they only support a few Apple apps.
 
Spellman Jones said:
I think a 7" device of any size is probably going to be too small for me to read comfortably.
Click to expand...

I can understand that, at least for web browsing. I compared the iPad Mini, Kindle Fire HD, and Nexus 7 today, and web browsing was not great on any of them when I visited sites like cnn.com, which are scaled horizontally to take up the whole width. I needed to zoom or go to landscape mode to improve the quality of text on all these tablets. OTOH, I found that the larger text as displayed in iBooks looked fine. Much more on all this here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=16211312&posted=1#post16211312

I also explained why the difference between 163 PPI on a 7.9" tablet isn't as far from 216 PPI on a 7" tablet when viewing web pages in their native sizes as you might think.

I have no use for a tablet, but after comparing these tablets, I would prefer the Mini to the others due its larger size and squarer aspect ratio. The resolution would not be a dealbreaker, because larger text as displayed in readers like iBooks looked fine to me, and trying to browse full-size web sites on any of these tablets is filled with fail as they're just too small to read and operate comfortably; the tablet must be rotated to landscape or zoomed, which improves the rendering of the text, and needing to do this sort of means that whole battle is lost anyway. And for landscape, the 4:3 Mini is hands down better than the 16:10 Kindle and Nexus, so there's also that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back