The Glade 4.0

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/10/23/app ... ipad-mini/

As well as iMac and Mac Mini upgrades, and the iPad 4.

But the mini is what I'm really excited about- especially with LTE. Don't want a smart phone, but it would be really nice to have an option for pay-as-you-go 4G, albeit a small data plan for e-mail and the occasional map search.

And while I love my iPad, something smaller that I'd keep with me a lot more sounds nice as well. And a nice bit under a pound fits that bill nicely.

Price is a bit higher than I'd like, but I'm personally really glad it stuck with the A5/non-retina screen. I don't really want a retina display, or the extra horsepower necessary to drive it. And as nice as the iPad 2 still performs, that in a shrunken form for $70 less appeals to me. I usually wait at least generation and order refurbed, but I might actually pre-order this one.

First impressions: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1473669

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Goddamn they're overpriced.

I was expecting $299, $349, $399...

But $529 for the 64g version? Apple is goddamn high.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Just depends what you're looking for, I guess.

I think it's kinda funny that people didn't/don't seem to think the "new" die-shrunk iPad 2s were overpriced at $399, but that the same internals in a smaller frame are horribly overpriced at $329.

Or the 4S. which is currently $549 with an even smaller screen and the same internals.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

It's blatantly obvious that Apple is nervous about the Windows 8 launch and tablet releases, that's why they are starting preorders on the 26th, when Windows 8 & new hardware comes out. They even broke their yearly release schedule. They want to lock people into another iPad before they realize how awesome stuff like the Surface is.

The 4S contains cellphone equipment, and is available with a cellular subsidy.

Those prices are for the WiFi versions of a 7" tablet.

The Nexus 7 16gb is $249. There's no reason that a technically inferior device should cost $80 more.

Either way, there's no way that an extra 48G of memory should cost $200. They are obscenely overpriced. But, people will buy them so eh.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I'm going to hold off for a Retina display (next mini gen, I would assume). I want to love the 7" form factor, but I would use it primarily for reading (both books and web), and a Retina-level display is the only way I really want to do that.

Resolution alone isn't everything and that's why MS is talking about the Surface and its 1,366 x 768 display being arguably better for reading than the New iPad

And since the 4G LTE version of the mini costs $459, wouldn't that put it in line with another ~$90 for the second cellular antenna? Based on the component price scales, that seems quite reasonable to me. So given the same relative internal components, it's a 4S with a larger (more expensive) screen, but without one cellular antenna, or an iPad 2 with a smaller screen. So $70 less for the screen shrink sounds reasonable, as does ~$90 less for the loss of a cellular antenna.

I'm not trying to compare it to things outside of the Apple ecosystem, per-se, but I think it's hilarious that people complain about how overpriced this *one* product is when it seems quite in line with other prices they're OK with.

And as for a cellular subsidy... Really? You end up paying far more than that $549 over the course of the contract. And especially now that carriers are starting to offer cheaper plans if you have your own phone....

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

To be fair to Müs, he complains about the price of every Apple product.

FTFY.

Ditto. **** Apple

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Just sayin that a 4S is what $99 now? Or free? I dunno.

By point of comparison, the 4gLTE Galaxy Tab 7.7 is $399. So yeah, they're overpriced.

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Holy shitsnacks!

A 4S is about $2500 over 2 years, actually.

I have to say, though, the 'lets troll every Apple thread' is getting quite old

And I wouldn't call $60 that hugely overpriced.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

It is when the Mini is an inferior device. Just by straight comparison.
http://www.phonearena.com/phones/compar ... ,7143,6739

But hey, if its what floats your boat, more power to ya. I'm just sayin there are better, more inexpensive options out there.

Uncorroborated rumor says the Nexus is going to get a bump next week to 32G for that $249 price. (I heard from a guy that heard from a guy, that saw it online)

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Holy shitsnacks!

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

<3

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Holy shitsnacks!

Just out of curiosity, how are you getting "inferior device" by that comparison? Things look pretty similar across the three devices, to me, with each having some strong areas the other lacks.

Since (as far as I know) there's no other tablet with a 4x3 form factor, there's nothing else (that I know of) that suites my preferences. But I really would like to know what you're seeing in that comparison that makes you think "inferior", cause I'm just not seeing it.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Both android devices have higher screen resolution (higher pixel density), double the RAM and faster processors. The Nexus is quad cored to boot. The Samsung has an SD slot in addition to that.

I don't see anything that the iMini has that is better than the other two devices. Oh, wait. My bad. The camera. It has more megapixels. Which is important in a 7" form factor device.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Like all Apple products, the build quality is likely leagues above any of its competitors.

Not worth the price considering its other pitfalls, though.

And yet, the OS and apps all run as smoothly or (in most cases) better on the iPad.

Tablet and phone specs are irrelevant compared to how it actually runs. I have a Kindle Fire HD. I had a Nexus 7. Neither ran as smoothly or as well as my iDevices. On paper, the specs were "better." That means nothing. The only legit point of contention is the lack of retina, but reports are that the smaller size don't render it terribly noticeable.

It's not what you have, it's how you use it.

Also (from what I can see) has a wider range of bands available for LTE connectivity, and 5 GHz wireless compared to 2.4 in the other two devices.

As for the pixel count- 166 vs 190 is a difference, but I wouldn't consider it a huge difference, and the reviews I'm seeing say the screen quality (color saturation, viewing angles, etc) are much better on the mini.

As to ram- since it hasn't been torn apart yet, we don't know whether there's 512 or 1 gig of ram inside it. But since the other specs exactly match the iPad 4, other than the A5 vs A6 processor, there's a decent chance it has 1 gig of ram.

And as for Tegra vs A5... Benchmarks have A5 much better in graphics, and Tegra better in raw computing power. But it's also a bit misleading to look at processing power over different OSes, just like the same processor doesn't perform the same on Windows, OSX and Linux.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Why is this important?

I can't speak for Nephyr, but for me, it's a usability issue. I don't like reading on 16x9 tablets (I don't even like reading on a 4x3 tablet in landscape mode). Also, 16x9 is a pain to type on in landscape mode (the keyboard eats up so much of the screen and it's difficult to see what you're typing). 4x3 for a tablet device A) offers a more comfortable hold in either orientation, B) allows for a more comfortable, book-like canvas for reading, and C) allows for far better landscape typing.

It's a personal preference, but for me at least, it's an important one.

All about what you use it for. I use mine for reading/referencing PDFs and documents, as well as viewing/showing photos, powerpoints, etc. And to show, think about the following ratios:

8.5x11 paper: 0.77
3.5x5 photo: 0.7
"Standard" Digital photo: 0.75

And then compare the screen ratios:

4:3: 0.75, vs 16:10 at 0.63 and 16:9 at 0.56.

If I was primarily, say, watching widescreen videos, it might be different, but I'm not. So the 4x3 screen lets me maximize what I can view at 100% zoom.

Also, the keyboard and holdability thing- as Farsky mentioned, you can see a lot more of what you're typing/replying to using the keyboard in landscape with 4:3 relative to the others.

But then, I also really hate 16:9 monitors, although I don't mind 16:10 as much. I love to flip my 21" 4:3 to portrait, and be able to easily view an entire document. With a large enough monitor, sure, you can have two documents side by side, and that's great. But you need to get a pretty sizable (30" or more) to have them both be fully readable at that size, imo.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

16:10 is almost exactly two 8.5x11 pages side-by-side, ratio-wise.

And I find it plenty legible on anything bigger than 20".

Given that most of what I'd want to read on a color display (vs. black and white e-Ink) is either a comic book or a role playing game book, both of which feature a lot of dual-page art spreads or similar page-spanning layout decisions, this works out quite well for me.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades