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

Steve Jobs Criticizes 7-Inch Tablets, Says 10-Inches Minimum

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; sv-se) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

By law they can't lie on earnings calls so I really think Jobs meant it. Forget about a 7" iPad it's not happening.
 
i was totally against the 7" widescreen, but a 7" 4x3 wouldn't be too bad. i wouldn't want one however. in any case, it's probably a bad decision at the time to bring it to market. i think it will only cannibalize their own sales.
 
Steve only said the obvious. 7 inch doesn't make any sense. There are things called smart phones for that. Been saying this sense forever.
 
iPhoneONLY said:

A 7" tablet SHOULD run at the exact same resolution at the 10" iPad - 1024 x 768. That way developers wouldn't have to developer a third size. If the iPhone 4 can run 960 x 640 they can squeeze 1024 x 768 on a 7".
Click to expand...

And that would make things too close to accurately touch. ;) l2r
 
tinman0 said:
About time the 7in rumour was killed. 7in is simply not big enough and not worth the hassle.
Click to expand...

Good to hear this. About the only thing he didn't say was something like, "We don't design to maximize our margin of parts and labor vs. wholesale price. We make great products that do high volume. From that, we can get volume pricing from our suppliers and everyone wins."

The 7" tablets screamed cheap when I saw their first specifications. Heard it best this way, bad companies are run by accountants, marginal companies are run but salesmen, good companies are run by marketing types, great companies are run by engineers.

tinman0 said:
My wife wanted 10" and I gave it to her. (iPad that is) ;)
Click to expand...

I am sure you get plenty of "it" from your wife anyhow. If Apple doesn't use Aerosmith's "my big ten inch" in a commercial, someone will on YouTube. I bet they have a joke ad for the iPad featuring that Aerosmith song at the Apple Christmas party this year.
 
Listened, Steve is awesome, on a very articulate brilliant roll! Very enthusiastic, precise, well thought out, clear as a bell. What a Titan! All cylinders firing like a rocket!
 
!¡ V ¡! said:
Resolution Independence, knocks on the door. Hopefully we finally see this in OS 10.7 Lion and iOS.
Click to expand...

Don't hold your breath on that, they've been talking about and working on that since something like OS X 10.3, possibly even earlier. It turns out there's a lot of thorny issues with fully implementing it.
 
I've never understood the requests for a 7". I couldn't see how this would work since with a touch interface (unlike a laptop) you are driven by finger size not pixels. So Jobs comments make perfect sense from that perspective.
 
Giuly said:
Didn't learn anything from history? If Jobs comes out of nothing and says "No 7" iPad!!!!!11", take out your credit cards and wait for Wednesday, if you want one.
Click to expand...

We have learned from history, which is how we know there won't be a 7" iPad any time soon. What we learned from history was nuance. There are times when Steve says "No" and he means it. This was clearly one of those times.
 
Giuly said:
Didn't learn anything from history? If Jobs comes out of nothing and says "No 7" iPad!!!!!11", take out your credit cards and wait for Wednesday, if you want one.
Click to expand...

My credit card is ready. I do hope the 7 inch comes out soon. If apple does not come out with one I might have to settle for an android version. :(
 
No Flash

To the people saying that Steve´s No answer for 7" iPad means that there will be a 7" iPad... I don´t see any iOS device using Flash, I mean, he did say no Flash for iOS devices over three years ago.
 
JulianL said:
The other issue is that a 7" iPad would be a nightmare for developers and confusing for users. Let's assume a 7" had a 1024x768 screen so can it just run the 9.7" iPad versions of apps? I would suggest no, those apps have been deliberately designed for a 9.7" screen and so all the finger targets (buttons, sliders, tick boxes, etc) would be uncomfortably small and display panes crushed up. Should it run the iPhone version of the app in full screen mode, or maybe make the resolution 960x640 and run iPhone 4 retina-display capable apps? Again I would say no to both these because we all know how odd most iPhone apps look when run at x2 on the iPad and again that's mostly to do with the physical size of the UI elements rather than the resolution. So that just leaves the option of the developers needing to redesign their UIs yet again for a 7" iPad and having to sell and support 3 different versions of their app, or at least three different modes that the app might run in if they decide to make it a universal app. For an app that isn't universal then an iPad user would need to be very sure that they were buying the right sized version of the app they want.

All in all it would have been a mess for developers and users so I for one am glad that it seems to have been kicked into touch.
Click to expand...

I tried this line of argumentation as to why the myriad of Android tablet sizes and formats would be a nightmare for devs, but I was met with indignation and told that "everything will just scale and the world will be fine". But you are right, such "fragmentation" will just end in tears for users and devs, and ultimately the manufacturer. This is why I see a dark future for Android powered tablets unless Google quickly establishes a minimum size and format restrictions/guidelines.
 
"There are clear limits to how close elements can be on the screen before users can't touch accurately."


If Jobs doesn't think a 7 inch tablet will work, then how does he explain apple's 3.2 inch tablet (iPhone) ?

;):D
 
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