Wednesday, 12 September 2012
Get A Sense Of What A 7.85″ iPad mini Would Be Like
Rumors of a smaller iPad were back again this week with a report from Bloomberg and since then the rumor mill has been in full swing. Not much detail was in the rumor, other than it’s a smaller iPad and that it’ll launch later this year. Earlier in the year, the display was rumored to be around 7.85″ and A.T. Faust of AppAdvice gave compelling reasons as to why it makes sense. That number seems to have stuck around with this latest round of iPad mini rumors.
“The reason we [won't] make a 7-inch tablet isn’t because we don’t want to hit [a lower] price point,” Jobs said. “It’s because we think the screen is too small to express the software. As a software driven company, we think about the software strategies first.”
When I read the rumors this week I sighed, not again. I wasn’t the only one either, an iPad mini
seems like a compromise, with little advantage. Plus the old Steve Jobs quote about 7 inch iPads
just kept circling around. But others weren’t so closed minded and were considering whether it
ial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-leround-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 20px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 746px;"> The biggest issue I have is with the screen, and whether the screen can still be sufficiently useful
at the smaller size. To find out, I decided to do the old hack of making a little paper template of the
iPad mini and see how it looked. I decided to stick with the 7.85″ diagonal display size suggested
and use a bezel only slightly smaller than those on the current iPad. For comparison I also made
a paper template for the current iPad and versions of both with the bevel colored in. You can
download, print and cut them out for yourself.
seems like a compromise, with little advantage. Plus the old Steve Jobs quote about 7 inch iPads
just kept circling around. But others weren’t so closed minded and were considering whether it
ial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-leround-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 20px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 746px;"> The biggest issue I have is with the screen, and whether the screen can still be sufficiently useful
at the smaller size. To find out, I decided to do the old hack of making a little paper template of the
iPad mini and see how it looked. I decided to stick with the 7.85″ diagonal display size suggested
and use a bezel only slightly smaller than those on the current iPad. For comparison I also made
a paper template for the current iPad and versions of both with the bevel colored in. You can
download, print and cut them out for yourself.
That was all good and well, but it didn’t really give me a sense of what the UI might look like on
an iPad mini. So I decided to take some screenshots and shrink them down to the appropriate
size. But I also made a duplicate copy of the screenshot and using Photoshop, reconfigured
the UI to fit on a 7.85″ display without adjusting the size of the buttons. To my mind that’s the
only way that Apple would do this – Apple does frequently remind iOS designers to keep buttons
at a tappable size (mentioned prominently in iOS Human Interface Guide), just shrinking the current
iPad display would make buttons more difficult to tap
an iPad mini. So I decided to take some screenshots and shrink them down to the appropriate
size. But I also made a duplicate copy of the screenshot and using Photoshop, reconfigured
the UI to fit on a 7.85″ display without adjusting the size of the buttons. To my mind that’s the
only way that Apple would do this – Apple does frequently remind iOS designers to keep buttons
at a tappable size (mentioned prominently in iOS Human Interface Guide), just shrinking the current
iPad display would make buttons more difficult to tap
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