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Thoughts On the iPad Mini

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-bet-it-will-have-a-button dept.

John Gruber at Daring Fireball has a thoughtful piece about the design of Apple's smaller iPad, which the company is expected to announce on September 12. Simply shrinking the current iPad's dimensions to a new form factor is unlikely, he says, and the bezel surrounding the display is more likely to be a cross between an iPad and an iPhone. He also discusses evidence of Apple's PR team getting the rumor mill going immediately after the announcement of Google's Nexus 7, and how Apple has probably bet on having a thinner and lighter tablet than Google, rather than worrying about a better display. Quoting: "Apple product designs are true to themselves. Each thing has proportions suited to its own nature. Consider how the iPad doesn’t look like a blown up iPhone. They share a few similar design elements — a family resemblance, if you will — but the proportions are different. The iPad has a thick bezel surrounding all four sides of the display; the iPhone does not. Why? Because you need a place to rest your thumbs while holding an iPad. ... Should not the iPad Mini fall somewhere in between? Not as close to the aspect ratio of its display as the iPad-as-we-know-it, but also not as far away from its display aspect ratio as the iPhone. You might need more thumb-rest room on the sides than you do on the iPhone, but not nearly as much as you do on the full-size iPad. If that assumption is right, the proportions of a 7.85-inch 4:3-aspect-ratio display iPad Mini are likely not the same as the proportions of the 9.7-inch 4:3-aspect-ratio display iPad."

2 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Look, it's a smaller iPad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The other question is the size. The Nexus 7 is just barely small enough to fit in the pocket of a pair of men's pants. It's got a 7" screen and a 16:10 aspect ratio. This is one of the major features of a mini-tablet versus a full-size one: you don't need to carry a backpack or manpurse or whatever in order to have a place to put away the device.

    If Apple is pulling a 7.85" screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio, it's going to be significantly wider. If it doesn't fit in a damn pocket, there's really no point in getting one over a full-size iPad.

  2. We don't know anything by jbolden · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think it is fair to say we don't know anything. Gruber along with everyone else is just guessing. His point about this not shipping in September but being announced in September is a good one, we don't know enough so this isn't a few weeks from going on sale. October/November sale date seems more likely.

    Here are the resolutions:
    iPad 1/2: 1024 x 768
    iPad 3: 2048 x 1536 (doubled)
    iPhone 4S: 640 x 960
    iPhone 5 (rumor): 640 x 1136
    earlier iPhone: 320 x 480

    I'm going with a bigger version of the iPhone 5 resolution. 1136x640 is close to what the original iPad had, allows for a cheap screen, doesn't require developers to support yet another resolution... But no one really knows.

    The other big question for September is whether there will be a 13" inch retina macbook pro.