| News | Features | Interviews |
| Blog | Contact | Editorials |
| Apple unveils iPad mini |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-10-23 19:12:55 |
| It's one of those days again: Apple held a product announcement today, announcing several new products. The most important of which was rumoured about for a long time now: a smaller iPad. It's called the iPad mini, and has the potential to become the best-selling iPad - and thus, the best selling tablet. |
|
| iPad 2 owners rejoice |
| By henderson101 on 2012-10-23 19:19:32 |
|
The fact that the features of the mini are so similar to the iPad 2 means that we iPad 2 owners have a new "promise" that our devices will be supported with OS updates for a couple more years. I too own a Nexus 7. It's a good little device. Am I envious of the new iPad mini? Not really. My Nexus 7 gives me different things. My iPad 2 gives me different things. As a user and consumer, they both suit me. I don't think I need yet another/different tablet. But next time I upgrade (2+ years from now), I'll look in the iPad mini direction first I think. The size id much more convenient in general. |
 - Score: 1 |
| Comment by osrocks123 |
| By osrocks123 on 2012-10-23 19:43:11 |
| the meaning of creativity has changed nowadays !! |
| - Score: 2 |
| resolution variability |
| By kristoph on 2012-10-23 19:49:22 |
|
I don't think the issue is that the OS does not support multiple resolutions. It supports them fine. The main issue is that, traditionally, most developers hard code positions and sizes into their apps making it difficult for apps to adapt to different resolutions automatically. Both Microsoft and Google strive for resolution independence but as you can see from the apps themselves that process is just not very successful. This is mainly because it's easy to just let some fields stretch but it much more difficult to reorganize a UI dynamically for a larger screen. ]{ |
| - Score: 5 |
| MacPro |
| By kristoph on 2012-10-23 19:54:20 |
|
I have a dual quad-core Xeon Mac Pro that I REALLY wanted to update.- to make use of the 27" Thunderbolt displays. I also have an Air. I guess I am going to consolidate to the new Mac Book 13" and see how that goes. I like the idea of having a more powerful portable device. ]{ |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE: iPad 2 owners rejoice |
| By Narishma on 2012-10-23 19:58:42 |
|
Knowing Apple, don't be surprised if they release a new OS update that somehow only works on the iPad mini and not the iPad 2, even though they have the same hardware. Edited 2012-10-23 20:03 UTC |
| - Score: 7 |
| RE: MacPro |
| By laffer1 on 2012-10-23 20:08:51 |
|
I'm in the same boat. A Mac Pro refresh needs to happen. It's obvious they're gong to drop optical drives and go to sandybridge xeons.. just get it over with already. Funny thing is I put money into a new 5770 radeon card and bought some faster xeon's off ebay to beef up my Mac Pro 1,1. It's now an 8 core with current graphics, but I can't run mountain lion. If it weren't for that, I'd be content right now. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: resolution variability |
| By Nelson on 2012-10-23 20:22:13 |
|
Resolution independence is a solved problem. Where issues start to arise are on displays with different aspect ratios. The app will scale, but things will look different. Windows 8 solves this by having a developer choose between letter boxing and showing more content. Works well for apps (which likely will want to show more content) and games (which sometimes will prefer to letterbox). |
| - Score: 5 |
| RE: MacPro |
| By jared_wilkes on 2012-10-23 20:27:41 |
| They already stated earlier this year that an answer for the Pro wouldn't be coming until 2013. Really confused about any expectations for an update during this event. |
| - Score: 3 |
| Interesting |
| By franksands on 2012-10-23 20:27:58 |
|
When was discovered that the resolution of the Surface RT was 1366x768, Thom said "poor, poor Surface", like this alone would be the end of MS' tablet. Now, when the iPad mini has an even lower resolution, 1024x768, "Resolution isn't everything". Very interesting in seeing how one changes its own opinions so quickly, isn't it? |
| - Score: 6 |
| RE: resolution variability |
| By some1 on 2012-10-23 20:34:02 |
|
Yes, it's not because iOS cannot handle different resolutions at the low level (e.g. display drivers). It's because its UI toolkit does not come with a proper layout manager as standard. This makes many applications hard-code layouts for specific resolutions, making change of the resolution on new devices a pain. So it doesn't matter much that iOS could run with a different resolution. It's still not going to happen: otherwise all apps will look ugly at launch. Android apps handle different resolutions fairly well. Of course, there's no magic that will automatically optimize your layout for different screen sizes, but similar sizes with different resolutions work fine. iPad mini will have the size problem too -- even though the resolution matches previous 10" iPad many apps might want to use a different layout on the smaller 7" screen. |
| - Score: 4 |
| News | Features | Interviews |
| Blog | Contact | Editorials |