Difference Engine: Smaller still is smarter
Jan 1st 2013, 20:25 by N.V. | LOS ANGELES
WHO really needs a tablet computer? Fashionable as they are, such devices are neither fish nor fowl. Even when fitted with a fast cellular connection, tablets still make terrible telephones. And lacking a proper keyboard, a serious amount of storage and professional-grade applications, they cannot compete with even the lightest of laptops when it comes to getting work done.
Fortunately, for Apple and other tablet makers, the public thinks otherwise. Some 122m tablets were reckoned to have been bought in 2012—a figure that IDC, a market-research firm based in Framingham, Massachusetts, expects to grow to 172m during 2013. Meanwhile, Apple's world-wide share of the tablet market (currently around 54%) is continuing to slip as Android tablets (now 43%) catch up fast and Microsoft flexes its muscles. Android tablets will knock iPads off their perch this coming year, forecasts Finvista Advisors of Hyderabad, India.
Last year, your correspondent was one of the millions who hoped an iPad would meet all his online needs. He was thrilled with everything about the device except its size. After a month of ownership, he went back to taking a laptop on his travels. The iPad has since been relegated to doing casual duty in the living room.
With a screen measuring 9.7 inches (24.6 cm) along a diagonal, the iPad is way too big to fit in a pocket. Though it is lighter than a MacBook Air, that still means carrying a shoulder bag to stuff it into for convenience and safe keeping. Which makes toting a tablet just as much of a hassle as lugging a laptop, but without the latter's better keyboard, faster processor and greater storage capacity.
Imagine, then, the delight on hearing news last summer about Apple's forthcoming iPad Mini with a 7.9-inch screen. Perhaps, finally, there would be a pocket-sized gizmo capable of fulfilling the role your correspondent's sorely missed palmtop computers played in the past. With their six-inch screens, scaled-down keyboards and instant-on performance, palmtops from the 1990s onwards offered little more than two-fingered typing and wimpy wireless connections. But their great saving grace was that, being genuinely pocket-sized, users took them literally everywhere. For reporting on the run, such portability was hard to beat. Your correspondent, living half-way around the world, even slept with his palmtop under the pillow, to check e-mail and news during the night.
When the iPad Mini hit the shelves in early November, therefore, he was waiting eagerly with dozens of other enthusiasts for the local Apple Store to open. But, despite half an hour of hands-on experience, he actually left without buying one. A couple of weeks later, he accepted the inevitable and ordered a Nexus 7 tablet from Google with its Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system (since upgraded to 4.2).
The biggest disappointment about the iPad Mini was its surprising lack of innovation. For those grown accustomed to Apple always stunning and delighting by ratcheting up the level of technology with each new product, a device that comes with innards based on aging (obsolete?) hardware is a serious let down. All the more so when the customer is expected to pay a whopping two-thirds premium ($329 vs $199) over comparable devices from other respected makers.
The Mini's touch-screen display, for instance, uses technology from Apple's pre-Retina era, dating back to iPads of two generations ago. The Mini's dual-core processor, with its stingy 512 megabytes of random-access memory (RAM), was lifted from an iPad that went on sale back in March 2011. Its graphics engine is also two generations out of date. By no stretch of the imagination could the iPad Mini be called cutting-edge stuff.
In an era when tablet designs are refreshed at least every six months, users today should expect nothing less than a quad-core processor, one gigabyte of RAM, and a screen resolution offering a good deal more than a paltry 163 pixels per inch (ppi). The seven-inch displays on Android tablets like Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire HD both provide 216 ppi. Barnes and Noble's ground-breaking Nook HD delivers 243 ppi. And Apple's own Retina display is capable of 264 ppi on a full-sized iPad and a stunning 326 ppi when crammed into an iPhone 5.
The Mini's only redeeming feature is its exquisite packaging, being a quarter thinner and weighing less than half as much as its bigger sibling. Even so, one cannot help but think that the late Steve Jobs—had he ever been persuaded (doubtful) to bless a four-fifths-sized iPad—would not have allowed the Mini out of the door in its present state. Nor, for that matter, would he have permitted a half-baked product like Apple Maps to see the light of day. Perhaps there is some truth in the claim that, in the absence of Jobs, Apple is now more interested in litigation than innovation. If so, it is a sad day for all who have championed the company for its creativity and pursuit of excellence.
Those disappointments, and more, your correspondent might have excused if only the Mini had been a little narrower. At 5.3 inches wide, it is still too bulky to hold comfortably in one hand, and way too wide to fit in a pocket. That means lugging it around in a case, just like its bigger brother. In comparison, seven-inch Android tablets like the Nook, Fire and Nexus measure five inches or less across, making them far easier to grasp in one hand—and capable of being carried in an inside or back pocket.
The Mini's size problem stems from the 4:3 aspect ratio of the original iPad—a format inherited from old-fashioned cinema screens, cathode-ray television sets and computer monitors from days gone by. As such, it remains a handy shape for displaying web pages. But it wastes precious screen area when showing films and videos, leaving large black "letterbox" bars top and bottom.
By contrast, practically all seven-inch Android tablets have adopted the 8:5 aspect ratio of today's wide-screen television sets and flat-panel displays. Apart from being close to the "golden ratio" of 1.62:1, based on a logarithmic spiral and beloved of renaissance artists and modern designers alike, the modern display format uses the screen area more efficiently, especially when showing video.
There is a good reason why Apple has stuck with the iPad's boxy format. The 275,000 gorgeous apps that have been composed especially for the iPad would have had to be rewritten if the Mini had a screen of different proportions. Android tablets with seven-inch displays can get away with simply scaling-up the 700,000 or so apps developed for Android phones of similar proportions.
Those Android apps would, of course, look a lot better if, like the iPad's, more of them had been written specifically for a tablet's bigger screen. But the point is that apps developed for Android phones with four-inch screens are good enough when scaled up and mapped over the high resolution seven-inch displays used by the Nook, Fire and Nexus.
Your correspondent lives in hope that Apple's next edition of the Mini will have a true seven-inch screen and the 16:9 proportions of the new iPhone 5. That would be a real one-handed, pocket-sized tablet that could double as an e-reader for books at bedtime. He would carry such an iPad everywhere and even sleep with it under the pillow. In the meantime, the Nexus 7—with its flawless multitasking, top-notch notification scheme and more than adequate apps—will do just nicely, thank you.
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