Year: 2012

iPad mini Review: Good Things Come in Small Packages

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It’s become a familiar cycle, these things. First, we see a single rumor, then photos of camera cables leak from China, then a Best Buy employee sends a screenshot to 9to5Mac with price points. Back housings and screens pop up, and before we know it, someone’s assembled a product that hasn’t been announced.

Then, Apple gets on stage, announcing the very thing we all know is coming, leaving some people underwhelmed and disappointed at the lack of anything surprising.

The iPad mini came in to the world last month under these circumstances. While it was less documented than the last several iPhones, Apple nerds pretty much knew what to expect from Phil Schiller’s time on stage in San Jose.

I — like a lot of nerds — ordered an iPad mini on day one. I’ve been using it consistently since, and these are my impressions.

Hardware

Above: An iPhone 5, Kindle Paperwhite, iPad mini, Moleskine notebook and iPad 3

The iPad mini takes Apple’s category-leading tablet and makes it just a tad bit smaller, but a lot lighter. This weight decrease is one thing I’ve really come to enjoy using the mini, especially in bed or on the couch.

The iPad mini is also thinner than its bigger cousin, but the difference doesn’t make a big impact, day to day, like the weight does.

Like all iOS devices, the iPad mini experience is all about the screen. Like the larger iPad 2, the mini sports a 1024×768 display, but unlike the iPad 2, it does so with a 7.9-inch panel.

This puts the iPad mini at 163 pixels per inch, right in between the iPad 2 at 132 ppi and the iPad 4 at 264 ppi.

When I unboxed the iPad mini, the screen turned me off right away. It’s less clear than the Retina iPad, and the pixels aren’t as close to the glass.

However, I — like most other reviewers — have already grown accustomed to this step backwards in quality. Yes, it’s not as good as the Retina display, but it’s also totally usable. I haven’t had to adjust the text size in any apps, and it doesn’t generate any eye strain, either.

For Apple to include a Retina display in the iPad mini, the company will have to get the price down, and be able to support it in a chassis this thin, with a battery this small. While I’ll be stoked to see it, I don’t think we’ll get a Retina mini any time soon.

The screen’s colors and viewing angles are just great. The thin bezel on the sides is weird to get used to at first, but iOS 6 does a good job at ignoring a “resting” thumb. I think I’ve already adjusted.

The rest of the iPad’s construction is stellar. My model is of the “Black and Slate” variety and resembles an iPod touch in iPhone 5 skin. The full-sized iPad really does seem like its due for an overhaul sometime soon.

The buttons on the iPad mini are metal, not plastic like on the larger tablet. While the feel is much-improved, I miss the volume rocker. It was much easier to use without much thought.

The stereo (!!) speakers flanking the Lightning connector are the best I’ve heard on an iOS device. Of course, that’s not saying much.

Performance wise, the iPad mini is no slouch. As it has the same internals as the iPad 2, and same CPU as the iPad 3 (but not the “quad-core” graphics), I don’t have any concerns about this thing slipping in to obsolescence as quickly as the first iPad did.

The only time I notice the iPad mini’s 512 MB of RAM is in Mobile Safari. It loves to dump tabs quickly. I really wish Apple would work on that, as it’s annoying to have to re-load a page after leaving it for just a few moments.

Software

Even though all of the iPad apps in the iOS App Store work on the mini out of the box, iOS can be weird at this resolution. I haven’t come across anything that’s unusable, but the smaller touch targets do take some getting used to. I’d like to see Apple address this in an update to iOS, but I can see that the company doesn’t want to fragment the OS anymore than it already has.

I was initially concerned about typing on the iPad mini. Turns out, this really hasn’t been an issue for me. I have larger hands than some, but I can type easily in portrait mode with my thumbs, since it’s just like typing on the iPhone 5 in landscape.

While I can thumb-type on the iPad mini in landscape, it’s not super comfortable. I can hunt and peck pretty quickly, though. Like before, I’ll be pairing this thing with an Apple Bluetooth keyboard when I need to get some serious words down.

In Conclusion…

The iPad mini doesn’t add anything to the iOS experience feature-wise, but it does make using iPad apps out in the real world far more likely. I never felt comfortable using my iPad outside the office or house, but I think I’ll be taking this smaller, lighter iPad with me more often.

That said, I’m returning mine and upgrading to an LTE model. The size makes the iPad mini feel much more like a digital notebook than the regular iPad ever could. I see myself carrying it with me far more often than I did with any previous iPad.

Lots of people have compared this iPad to the iPod mini, which was famous for being a huge seller for Apple thanks to its smaller frame, despite it’s decreased storage space. With the iPad mini, Apple has come up with something that’s as full-featured as the larger product, in a smaller package for less money. It’s a win all the way around. I won’t be going back to the larger iPad.

A New Foundation →

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Nilay Patel at The Verge:

There are many other valid reasons to vote for Obama — from health insurance to women’s issues to immigration policy, his platform offers the most complete path to recovery for nation still badly damaged by a terrible recession and two costly wars. But true economic recovery requires more than just replacing what was lost; it requires building something new. The internet is the foundation for an entirely new economy, and it’s vitally important we select a candidate that will protect it. In this election, that candidate is Barack Obama.

If you think Romney is for net neutrality — and that this issue just affects nerds — think again.

Incapable →

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Nathan Swartzendruber, on the aforementioned NYT piece:

It’s sweet, in a way. We should want to be together enough that we’re worried we’ll miss each other. Either by not showing up at the right place at the right time, or by being so distracted by our pocket computers that we don’t recognize who’s with us. But are we really so incapable of putting our phones away that we need a hurricane to do it for us?

Yes, we are so incapable. That hurts.

On Smartphone Withdrawl →

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Jenna Wortham with The New York Times:

While Hurricane Sandy left hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers without electricity or heat, the loss of one utility left some especially bewildered: cellphone service.

“Not having hot water is one thing,” said Kartik Sankar, 29, a technology consultant who lives in the East Village. “But not having a phone? Forget about it.”

The whole article is interesting. This paragraph sums it up nicely:

On the scale of hardships suffered in the storm and its aftermath, these were more like minor annoyances. But the experience of being suddenly smartphoneless caused some to realize just how dependent on the technology they had become.

I recognize this in myself, and as I read this piece, I felt the weight of my iPhone not only in my hand, but on my life.

‘The Biggest Compliment’ →

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Shawn Blanc, on the Kindle Paperwhite:

The Kindle Paperwhite has a lot going for it: the e-ink screen, million-year battery life, illuminated display, improved software, the iOS Kindle apps that sync with my iPad and iPhone, and the lightweight yet rugged build of the device hardware. The biggest compliment I can give the Kindle is that thanks to it, I read more books and I read more often.

I agree. I’ve read a ton more since purchasing my first Kindle a year ago. It’s one of those devices that is so enjoyable to use, I can’t help but spend time with it.

On the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display

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During Apple’s iPad mini event, the company introduced the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. While the machine has a wordy name, it’s a welcome sight to those of us who have always loved the 13-inch MacBook Pro. I’ve reviewed the machine two times over the years, both times showing my love of the form factor and power.

These days, I’m using a 15-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro, and love it, but still ache for something a little smaller. When Apple announced the 13 Retina, I got excited.

Then I did some reading, and got sad.

First there’s the specs. Here are the two models for sale at Apple.com:

You can bump up to a 2.9GHz Dual-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz for $200, and add up to 768 GB SSD for $1,000. It’s easy to spend the same amount of money custom-ordering a 13 as would be getting a similarly-equipped 15-inch machine. While I understand Apple’s trying to keep these machines affordable, limiting them to just 8 GB of RAM is a crime. If I want more RAM, give me the option to pay for it.

Then there’s the performance issues some are seeing with the new machine.

Here’s Nilay Patel, in his review of the machine:

The 2.5GHz Core i5 in the 13-inch Pro offers terrific raw CPU performance in benchmarks, running Geekbench at a solid 6700–6800 range, but the integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics chip can struggle driving such a high-resolution display. Oddly, it showed up for me more during day-to-day usage than under any crazy test situation I came up with: RAW files in Aperture scroll around just fine while QuickTime is playing back 1080p movie trailers, but Safari and Chrome both stutter a little while scrolling simple web pages. And they stutter a lot with image-heavy sites like The Verge and Polygon.

You’ll also notice some general lag when you start multitasking heavily. Open more than a few tabs and apps and you’ll start to notice things slowing down around the system as a whole. My standard workday set of 15–20 tabs open in Chrome, music playing in Spotify, email and IRC open, and Skype, iPhoto, and Messages running in the background never pegged the CPU meter, but I could clearly feel the system running just a hair behind me. You might not notice it if you’re coming from an Air or a much older MacBook, but I’m used to my 15-inch Pro with 2.3GHz Core i7 and Radeon HD 6750M graphics, and and the 13-inch Retina is definitely a little slower. If you’re a pro looking to step down to a smaller machine, you’ll almost certainly notice the performance dropoff as well.

That’s the first time in recent memory that I can remember a review of any Mac using words like “stuttering” and “general lag.” Clearly, Apple’s pushing the Intel HD 4000 chipset further than it was meant to go. Again, it seems like Apple trying to keep the price down has hurt the machine. If Apple had waited a generation of chipsets, or opted to charge enough to get a better GPU in there.

Of course, maybe the 13-inch form factor simply can’t handle a bigger, hotter GPU. As it stands now, the 13-inch Retina machine is the first laptop of that size by Apple to have two internal fans.

So, what does all this mean? First of all, it means I won’t be moving to one of these machines for now.

More importantly, I think it means we won’t be seeing a MacBook Air with Retina display any time soon. Doing so would damage the two thing that sets the Air line apart: thinness and cost.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to see Retina displays coming to more Macs. But Apple might be moving faster than the technology — or the market — is ready for them to.

Squarespace Still Up →

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The other day, Squarespace reported that downtime was expected due to Sandy. However, since that initial post, the company has hauling fuel up seventeen flights of stairs to keep their servers running on backup power.

By hand.

In buckets.

Apparently downtime due to a hurricane was unacceptable.

Here’s an Internet high five, Squarespace.

(And no, this is not a sponsored post. I really think this is a great example that other companies could learn a few things from.)