Apple iPad Mini is a One-Handed Wonder

As much as I love my new iPad — and it is the device I gravitate towards during non-work hours — there’s always been one nagging problem. Whether reading iBooks at a cafe or watching videos on the couch, you just can’t hold the 10-inch tablet in one hand.
Well, you can, but you’re going to notice the weight of it. Keep holding it that way, and you’ll either develop a pretty muscular forearm or a serious case of RSI. But you probably won’t ever be comfortable.
That’s the main reason why the iPad Mini, launched Tuesday in San Jose, is a big deal. Hold it in one hand, as I did, and your forearm relaxes. It may not simply be a large smartphone, but it certainly feels as light as one. It’s 53% lighter than its new cousin, the 4th generation iPad.

And the trade-off is a smaller screen than the regular iPad, right? True, but Apple really has done everything in its power to increase the screen size. The screen extends so far width-ways that there’s very little daylight between it and the edge of the device.
That may potentially result in a few accidental thumb-to-touchscreen moments. It didn’t in my case. Apple’s expectation is that you’ll hold the iPad Mini around the back or by its “chin” — the name for the strip of black with the home button at the bottom of the device. This does in fact feel quite natural.

Small Can be Beautiful

So the screen has roughly a third more real-estate than comparable 7-inch tablets. Is it enough?
Not for me, personally. I’ll stick with the larger 10-inch iPad size, even at the cost of two-handed discomfort. As I’ve often said, there’s just something magical in that screen size, where it fills just enough of your field of vision to take it over entirely.
But I knew that going in.

After spending some time with the iPad mini, I was impressed with just how much of your field of vision the 7.9-inch tablet can fill. For those looking for a lighter, cheaper tablet, this will be the right device.
My first impression of the screen, visually speaking, was that I was holding an iPad 2 — just holding it a little further away than usual.
It turns out that’s an apt comparison. The iPad mini has exactly the same number of pixels as the iPad 2. That means it isn’t technically a retina display — but when you squeeze that many pixels into a smaller space, it comes damn close.

You have to wonder if Apple could have gone the extra mile and made the iPad mini a full-on Retina device. It wouldn’t have taken that many more pixels to push it over the edge. But that’s a common behavior for this company — leave the next level just out of reach, ready for the upgrade (likely next year, around the same time as the fifth-generation iPad).

In all other respects, the iPad mini beats the iPad 2 hands down. Browsing, loading apps, playing games, all seemed significantly faster with the Mini’s chip and “twice as fast” (according to the Apple boast) Wifi. And those apps and sites don’t suffer from being on a small width screen, as they do on an Android tablet; they’re simply scaled down.

About That Price

Is it worth $329 for the basic 16GB model? That’s going to depend entirely on your budget. It’s certainly not a price tag to wow the average consumer, considering its Android competitors are heading in the $100 to $200 range.

But it does give you an entree into the iPad world. If you’re going to be spending a lot of time with your tablet, then to my mind, it’s worth paying a $129 premium for significantly more real estate. You will feel the difference on just about every website.

If you chose the iPad mini over the regular iPad and get the iPad mini’s special smart cover, you’ll have something over regular iPad owners. The smaller smart cover is a thing of beauty, with no annoying hinges or metal strap that twists the wrong way as it does in the regular model. The magnets are built straight into the cover.
And of course, you’ll be able to tote your iPad mini around in one hand, with nary a twinge in your forearm.

Will you be opting for the iPad mini when it arrives later this month? Let us know in the comments.

The iPad Mini Will Be Less of Everything

Most pundits believe Apple’s 7-inch tablet, the iPad Mini, will see light of day on Oct 17. Now with the date fast approaching, they’ve switched gears to guessing when the event invites will go out (most think Oct. 10th).
I have some iPad Mini predictions of my own, but not the ones you may think.
The tiny tablet — which Apple has never officially acknowledged — will be less of everything. It will be the iPad Retina’s stunted little brother.
It will offer less screen real estate than the 9.7-inch iPad and fewer overall pixels (though it is sure to be another retina-resolution display).

It will be a consumption device. The full-sized iPad has always been both consumption and creation. People write stories, build presentations, make music, and create artwork on the big iPad (along with reading, browsing the web and watching movies).
The iPad Mini will be about reading books, browsing the Web, listening to music, watching movies. It will support many, but not all, of the iPad’s apps, but will not have the same horsepower.
I fully expect the iPad Mini to run the Apple A5 chip (instead of the more powerful A6) chip and top out 32GB of storage. It’ll probably feature a half gigabyte of memory (RAM).
It’ll have an accelerometer and gyroscope, but probably not a magnetometer. More importantly, it won’t have GPS or 3G.
7-inch devices are usually for the home and its ever-present wi-fi, or used where there’s Wi-Fi available (maybe even tethered to a device such as the iPhone 5).
Many people download and consume books, movies and music while the 7-inch devices are offline (airplane use is a good example, though more people are starting to GoGo those devices, too).

Less = More

Despite all this, the iPad Mini will be a perfect example of “less is more.” By managing all the parts and capabilities, Apple will finally be able to offer a $199 tablet. As I’ve said before, the Cupertino tech giant has to offer a sub $200 tablet to remain competitive — at least in the 7-inch tablet space.
That space is now crammed full of worthy competing devices from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Google. The Kindle Fire HD, Barnes & Noble Nook HD and Google Nexus 7 are strong entrants that benefit from solid, growing and, in the case of Amazon, well-established ecosystems.
This is the competitive landscape I thought the iPad would face in early 2011, but has finally arrived in 2012, albeit in a form factor I thought consumers didn’t want.
Steve Jobs thought the same thing; he was adamantly against a mid-sized iPad. Current Apple CEO Tim Cook venerates Job’s memory, but that doesn’t mean he won’t go his own way: “Steve taught us to not focus on the past,” said Cook earlier this year, “Be future-focused.”
I think it’s now safe to say the future of tablets includes 7-inch devices.

A Nice Museum

So, now that we all agree that the iPad Mini is coming, that it will likely launch this month and that it will truly be a subset of the full-sized iPad, let’s talk about how Apple will unveil it.
Apple will launch the iPad in New York City … at the Guggenheim museum.
Now bear with me here: There is some logic to this odd idea.
At the beginning of 2012, Apple launched iBooks 2 and textbooks (and other digital tomes) built with the brand new iBooks Author. It was an unusual event, focused almost solely on software and content, though Apple demonstrated the new digital books on the iPad 2 and the authoring software on some large-screen iMacs.

I liked the ease of use and how beautiful the finished books looked on the iPad. It reminded me of what I sometimes miss when I read books and magazines on an e-ink-based Kindle.
Wouldn’t it make sense for Apple to unveil the device so perfectly designed for consuming those digital books in the very same venue? Indeed it would. There’s also the fact that Apple has almost never done two major hardware product roll-outs with two full-scale events in less than two months.
Part of the reason Apple might not do two large-scale West Coast events in less than 60 days: it is somewhat sensitive to what media outlets have to shell out to fly staffers to these events. A lot of tech media happens to reside in NY.

There’s also the simple fact that having a big event for a product that is a lesser version of its big brother will seem somewhat anticlimactic.
I just don’t see Apple gearing up for another major event so soon after the iPhone 5 and iPod update rollouts. Apple is also busy dealing the largest PR kerfuffle of Tim Cook’s administration: AppleMapsGate. Celebrating while the company licks its wounds just doesn’t seem right.
A smaller event run by content guy Eddie Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, will likely focus more on the special content ecosystem designed just for the iPad Mini — with less oohing and aahing about the hardware.
That could avoid the impression that Cook and his key lieutenants are not focused on resolving the iPhone 5′s biggest issue.

I could be wrong, of course. There might not even be an iPad Mini. But all the signs tell me there is, and that this launch will be fundamentally different from its predecessors.

Pinterest Finally Comes To Android, iPad

Pinterest is still a relatively new kid on the block. Up to this point, the site launched new features by talking about them on its Facebook wall and then waiting for the comments to start rolling in.
Consistently among the first comments after each Facebook post? A Pinterest Android app. The requests are so common that it has become a Pinterest in-office joke with each launch: How long will it take for someone to ask for an Android app?
Well, the wait for Android fans ended on Tuesday. Pinterest officially launched an app for Android as well as iPad, and also launched an updated version of its iPhone app.
Announced at a summer party at Pinterest’s new San Francisco headquarters, the Android app represents a complete redesign of the app from the ground up, this time designed specifically for Android.
The app has been in the works for some time, and was even rumored to be coming late last month at Google’s I/O developers conference.
In May, Pinterest raised $100 million in a round of funding that values the company at $1.5 billion. Originally an invite-only service, on Aug. 8 Pinterest went public for everyone without an invitation.
Pinterest for Android is available now from Google Play. Pinterest for iPad and the updated iPhone app are also available now from the App Store.
Are any of you excited about Pinterest finally making its way to Android and iPad? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.