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I like everything about the mini, except that it's ppi is so much less than the iPad 3/4 and half of my iPhone's. If they can make the friggin' phone retina, I don't know why they couldn't make the Mini retina. Oh, yeah I do, so they can have a splashy ad campaign next year for the Mini with Retina. If I get anything, it'll be an iPad 4. Looking at photos and reading PDF's and things is important to me and I need high rez. Would have liked for the Mini to work for me because of the gorgeous and light form factor, but it's not to be and it is the only dealbreaker.
 
For many people, the size advantage outweighs the lack of retina.

Still, now that Apple is adopting a super frequent Samsung product cycle, you'll be able to have retina is just 6 months.

And if you can't wait, you can always get the refurb iPad 3 from the Apple Store.
 
I will look at it Friday. In about 36 hours.
If display sucks, I will hold on to my iPad 3 until next refresh.

Not going to spend money just to compromise.
 
There are people that consider the screen on a tablet to be the most important thing, and people that are satisfied with a basic screen. This is nothing new, I know many people that have a nice, large flatscreen TV and never bother to watch the HD channels because they just don't care and don't see the difference.

I care about screen sharpness, and to me Mini is dead on arrival. I've had iPad 2, hated the screen next to my iPhone 4, and now I have iPad 3. Until the new new iPad, it was the best tablet on the market. I read a ton of books, and the double-page view with Retina quality has been awesome.

I also had the original Galaxy Tab, 7" 1024x600 crap. I wanted something much smaller to take with me to read books on. Well, the resolution sucked, I could see pixels easily, and just like with iPad 2, my eyes would get tired too quickly.

I would've been glad to pay the $559 for a 32Gb LTE Mini, IF it was Retina. As it stands, I'll be getting a $299 32Gb Nexus 7 3G, simply because that screen is so much sharper and better suited to reading.
 
I will look at it Friday. In about 36 hours.
If display sucks, I will hold on to my iPad 3 until next refresh.

Not going to spend money just to compromise.

Agreed. Im in the same boat. I use my ipad 3 for reading, as well as everything else. Why take a step backward? Personally I dont think the retina display issue is over hyped. People seem to forget one crucial thing.

The iPad Mini aint free.

So why pay for an product that has an inferior main feature? Would you buy a Porsche with a dent in it? Just because its a Porsche?
 
So why pay for an product that has an inferior main feature? Would you buy a Porsche with a dent in it? Just because its a Porsche?

Bad example - Porsche is going to make some smaller, less powerful cars in the future real soon, just like the ipad Mini....Even now, A Cayman ain't a 911....
 
I laugh that the mini is dead on arrival just because YOU think it needs retina. None of this moaning was going on during iPad 2's release. The Mini's screen is perfectly fine and some could argue it will sell more than the new iPad. If the screen was so "terrible" a lot of these reviewers wouldn't be dumbing their daily tablet driver for this.

Great thing is if you don't like it you're not forced to buy it. Others will and don't care about a few more pixels when this screen suits their needs perfectly well. I guess you all should dumb your retina iPads for googles nexus 10 then. They have a higher resolution with more ppi!!!! Sounds stupid right? Exactly. It's not dead on arrival because it lacks a few pixels, cut it out.
 
I laugh that the mini is dead on arrival just because YOU think it needs retina. None of this moaning was going on nearly 2 years ago when no tablets had retina display. The Mini's screen is perfectly fine and some could argue it will sell more than the new iPad. If the screen was so "terrible" a lot of these reviewers wouldn't be dumbing their daily tablet driver for this.

Great thing is if you don't like it you're not forced to buy it. Others will and don't care about a few more pixels when this screen suits their needs perfectly well. I guess you all should dumb your retina iPads for googles nexus 10 then. They have a higher resolution with more ppi!!!! Sounds stupid right? Exactly. It's not dead on arrival because it lacks a few pixels, cut it out.

fixed that for you.
 
Agreed. Im in the same boat. I use my ipad 3 for reading, as well as everything else. Why take a step backward? Personally I dont think the retina display issue is over hyped. People seem to forget one crucial thing.

The iPad Mini aint free.

So why pay for an product that has an inferior main feature? Would you buy a Porsche with a dent in it? Just because its a Porsche?

A dent? What? That comparison makes absolutely no sense.
 
I laugh that the mini is dead on arrival just because YOU think it needs retina. None of this moaning was going on during iPad 2's release. The Mini's screen is perfectly fine and some could argue it will sell more than the new iPad. If the screen was so "terrible" a lot of these reviewers wouldn't be dumbing their daily tablet driver for this.

Great thing is if you don't like it you're not forced to buy it. Others will and don't care about a few more pixels when this screen suits their needs perfectly well. I guess you all should dumb your retina iPads for googles nexus 10 then. They have a higher resolution with more ppi!!!! Sounds stupid right? Exactly. It's not dead on arrival because it lacks a few pixels, cut it out.

LOL. No one complained that the Core 2 Duo was in computers in 2007 because... it was state of the art back then. Let me put a Core 2 Duo in your Macbook Pro and see what you think about it today :)

Pixels, processors, and RAM matter (to some of us), especially when we would be spending over 100 dollars more than competing products that have better ppi, processors, and RAM. No one is complaining about Apple's fabulous designs -- just their decision to put aging components into their stuff.

Come to think of it, they did the same thing with the MBA for a while and guess what -- people complained about the Core 2 Duo in 2010 because it was old tech sold at a premium. Now they finally have the MBA at a premium price with premium parts. That is what we (the people complaining) are talking about. Hopefully, Apple staff are reading these forums and the designers who did such a great job with the Mini body are up in arms about how Apple's decisions nerfed a potentially great product.

I don't doubt that many people will buy and enjoy the Mini, so perhaps DOA is an overstatement. I think we are just expressing our sadness and frustration at seeing a product we'd be interested in having if only it had something better than last year's tech...
 
I was just reading the review on the Microsoft Surface.

10.6" screen with 1366 x 768 resolution.

That's 148 ppi, even lower than the iPad Mini's 163 ppi.
 
Retina screens are great, but they aren't the biggest reasons to buy a tablet, especially a portable tablet. Weight, build quality, screen size, app eco-system, and compatibility with my existing devices are all more important IMO.

I am currently sitting working on a laptop with a resolution of 1366 x 768.

Is it as nice as the iPad 3 resolution? No

Is it perfectly usable for web browsing, playing games, and watching TV and movies? Yes

Will the iPad Mini likely look better than this laptop screen? Yes

The iPad Mini screen will look worse than retina, but it won't look like a ZX Spectrum display, and many people won't notice the difference unless you put them side by side. When watching TV and films in sensible scaled down sizes (i.e. not an 8GB HD file) then I'll doubt that anyone could tell a difference.

It's not perfect, but it's still better overall package than a Nexus 7 FOR ME. I'll use it quite happily for a year and then sell it and upgrade to the Retina version when it is released. I'll maybe be out £100 for one year of using it everyday. That sounds okay to me.

If that doesn't sound okay to you then buy the Nexus 7, it's a great product at a great price.
 
I was certain about buying and well aware of the low res display.

Then I read this article, and now I appreciate my Nexus 7 even more.

No iPad mini for me. Phew... that was close. :)

http://bgr.com/2012/10/31/ipad-mini-criticism-display/

What absolute rubbish.

The display on the Nexus 7 is not HD either by any definition

Do you also enjoy scaled up phone apps? I bet they look wonderfully pixelated.

Do you enjoy the 33% less screen real-estate?

Do you also enjoy the awful plastic finish?

Do you enjoy typing in landscape mode? Where you have about an inch between the keyboard and top of the browser?

When you want a proper tablet and not junk, but an iPad, until then, stop embarrassing yourself

I think this might be a classic case of "I can't afford one, so I'm going to build up my cheap junk"
 
I've had no problem with pixelation with my iPad 1, so I'm not really worried about running 1024x768 on the mini when it was fine on my iPad 1.

I doubt very much that any company, particularly apple would release a tablet that had high pixelation in this day.

From the reviews I've read, if you want to compare a retina iPad to the mini, yeah there's a noticeable difference. If you're comparing apples to apples, i.e., non retina displays then its fine
 
LOL. No one complained that the Core 2 Duo was in computers in 2007 because... it was state of the art back then. Let me put a Core 2 Duo in your Macbook Pro and see what you think about it today :)

you're still complaining about why there's no quad core i7, 650m, or retina display in the 11" MacBook Air?

The 11" air and iPad mini are both half the weight of the iPad / 15" retina
 
ridiculous...I owned an Ipad2 and it was fine - retina is so over-hyped by macrumors posters...............

I don't know how overhyped it is but I never thought my ipad 2 display looked anything other than great. I just sold the ipad 2 to fund the mini.
 
For many people, the size advantage outweighs the lack of retina.

Some people around here need to read the above sentence over and over until it registers. And yes, some need to read the converse as well. Different people, different priorities! Not hard to understand!
 
This'll be the first Apple tablet/phone that I'll be skipping. Why purchase non retina when you'll be itching to upgrade?
 
Considering the fact that almost all Apple products, beside the iMac and iPad mini, have retina displays now it's quite disappointing that the mini has such a low resolution display. I'm sure most of you are willing to settle for the portability, but it IS a huge step back and there's no denying that.

"willing to settle for portability"?????? Seriously????

What do you people not understand. Portability is a requirement, just like display resolution. Some people value one, some value the other. Along with the retina display comes a much larger battery requirement, adding girth and weight. It also adds more heat and chews up more computing power, which would entail cost more to drive. And it arguably uses more memory as well. Everyone has different needs. To me, cheap and portable are two key requirements. I could really care less about retina or not retina. The iPad 2 sold in record numbers and didn't have retina. I am sure the iPad Mini will as well. It will be visually better than the iPad 2 since it is smaller with the same pixels. There is no "huge step backward" here... just a different set or requirements

And to the OP, if it looks like crap, then I will return it. But, it won't look like crap and so I will be keeping it. Apple doesn't make junk. And all the reviews I've read said the display was gorgeous.... not quite as tight as a Retina, but still gorgeous.
 
you're still complaining about why there's no quad core i7, 650m, or retina display in the 11" MacBook Air?

The 11" air and iPad mini are both half the weight of the iPad / 15" retina

I don't think your analogy makes much sense. The Ivy Bridge i5 and i7 are leading edge technologies, and they would be equivalent to A6 and A6x, which we see in the iPhone 5 and iPad 4.

SandyBridge is about as old as the A5 processor, and that would be a better analogy. If Apple put Sandy Bridge into the 2012 (or better yet, 2013) Macbook Air, then people (like myself) would be up in arms.

Apple filled the iPad Mini with old, outdated stuff. It's a fact. Moving from processors to displays, we see the same thing. Look at the iPad 4. Look at the iPhone 5. Look at the iPod Touch. Look at the Nexus 7. Look at the Kindle Fire. Giving Apple a pass on something like this doesn't do them or us any good. If we are going to be asked to pay a premium price for their devices, then I think we ought to expect premium components.

I don't know what processors have to do with weight, so I am not sure where you are going there.
 
I don't think your analogy makes much sense. The Ivy Bridge i5 and i7 are leading edge technologies, and they would be equivalent to A6 and A6x, which we see in the iPhone 5 and iPad 4.

SandyBridge is about as old as the A5 processor, and that would be a better analogy. If Apple put Sandy Bridge into the 2012 (or better yet, 2013) Macbook Air, then people (like myself) would be up in arms.

Apple filled the iPad Mini with old, outdated stuff. It's a fact. Moving from processors to displays, we see the same thing. Look at the iPad 4. Look at the iPhone 5. Look at the iPod Touch. Look at the Nexus 7. Look at the Kindle Fire. Giving Apple a pass on something like this doesn't do them or us any good. If we are going to be asked to pay a premium price for their devices, then I think we ought to expect premium components.

I don't know what processors have to do with weight, so I am not sure where you are going there.

I think soc tdp matters a bit more than you thinking you know what x86 chip is socially relevant to which ax series.
 
ipad2 sitting next to an ipad3, can only make a slight difference in image quality on 10-15% of things I use it for, so the mini will be fine for me. Reading been doing it fine on the iPad2, will be fine on the ipad mini. Watching netflix, been fine on Ipad2 will be fine on the ipad mini. It's also been said with the smaller screen the pixels are barely noticeable.

Now if you are going from an iPad3 to an iPad mini, I can see your hesitation but if you are using a iPad2 now and are just looking for the smaller form factor iPad mini is your tablet.
 
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