13 inches
You mean diagonally, not across.
Apple is testing larger screens for next-gen iPhones and iPads, according to whispers from hardware suppliers in Asia. The fruity firm has ordered some slightly larger iPhone displays, measuring more than four inches, and some supersize iPad screens at least 13 inches diagonally, the Wall Street Journal reports. The current …
If you're talking about those people that keep saying that XXX had it for years and now YYY is catching up, I agree -- not only absurd but annoying.
Get out of your basement, screen size is ONE of the features of a tablet, price another, OS another, investment in apps another, personal idiosyncrasies and smugness factor another, and so on. Must we point this to {fandroids,fanbois} all the time?
Also, kindly show "fanbois screech hysterically" in any event outside your imagination. The closest thing I've seen was Steve Balmer chanting "developers developers developers".
This is as far from innovative as you can possibly get. What shall we do next, eh, attach a bigger screen and someone might buy it, even though it will be too big to hold comfortably for any period of time - like Microsoft's surface.
Seriously apple, innovate if you want to sell stuff.
Innovation should be done in conjunction with incremental improvements, they are not exclusive. It's pretty clear Android manufacturers aren't innovating either - like TV manufacturers they are just coming up with new things and throwing them on in the hope they are popular, rather than coming up with something genuinely useful.
A slick touch-screen tablet that can run for days without charging doesn't, maybe, support much innovation, certainly it doesn't require it because whatever OS is used it is basically solving the problem very well.
or they could reposition stuff and have the iPad Mini, New iPad mini, Big iPad Mini, iPad Classic, iPad Classic Large Edition, iPad Large, iPad Large Mini, iPad Classic Mini and possibly if technology allows it, iPad Large Mini Mini.. but that might be a tough one.
Paris is happy to take any size on offer.
Until then any decent sized electronics company will be testing many different parts that may or may not end up in a production device.
The only thing that S Jobs said about tablets was that he didn't think there'd be a big market for 7 inch tablets, that they were too big to compete with phones and too small to compete well against 10"+ tablets. As, at the time, the market for tablets in general was quite small he wasn't wrong. Small tablets didn't sell in huge numbers. As market size increased they became a practical proposition. This has nothing to do with wether or not a 13" tablet would sell.
Re: Call us back when they order a few million
"Went into some detail about how the idea of a 7" tablet was fundamentally broken."
... at the time.
Why do people need to always interpret someone's words out of context?
Did people's fingers get smaller in the meantime? Did space-time morph allowing three different form factors somehow to become two?
"People have always come with a range of different finger sizes, your point is?"
My point is that one of design genius Steve Jobs' reasons why 7" tablets would be "DOA" was that individual features would too small for people to tap or pinch, so unless people's fingers have all got smaller over the last few years, the context of his comments hasn't changed.
The problem is that analysts and share holders are looking at Apple for new shiny shinys.
They gotta keep the cash cow milking.
So now they sit there looking at their range of products and now working on variations on a theme.
They look at what others have done, what is selling and the money men say, "WE should be in that market sector". Apple are riffing on iphones and ipads - bigger ones, smaller ones, coloured ones (how about one with a micro SD slot, eh?!).
Samsung have splattered tablets in ALL sizes EVERYWHERE. When markets like the iphone and ipad are saturated - you got a BIG problem if you're a one trick pony. They are ripping up the Jobs commandments - they really have no choice - the only way is DOWN and the only thing they can do is put the brakes on it. All companies eventually have to settle back into the pack.
While the iphone was a game-changer - it's just another nice phone now. Itunes is a mess and they killed off their great advantage with iphone docks by changing the connector.
When EVERYONE + DOG has a cool product, it's not cool.
Unless there are some serious advances on multiple fronts that could make it weigh less than the original iPad, it isn't going to be something comfortable to hold for very long. If you have to leave it in your lap or on a table to use it, perhaps you might want a laptop instead? Isn't the Mini outselling the big iPad now? How much of a market could an even larger, heavier tablet have?
They are probably testing a 13" touchscreen for a laptop, but I think that's pretty pointless. I guess if they get to the point where adding it costs only $10 extra or something they might as well for the small number of people who think there's a point to this, so long as they don't ruin OS X to add touchscreen functionality in the way Windows 8 was!
A proper A4 (or even A3) tablet is what's needed for sheet music, and large format graphical material like comic books where layout and dimensions are very important. The market for musicians alone is enormous.
There are markets for small books with small pieces of paper and markets for large books with large pieces of paper.
That would be niche. Apple doesn't aim at niches, no matter how much we would like them to..
The books comparison is not a good one. Books are 'single purpose devices' and much cheaper to produce.
One day, when producing electronic paper devices becomes much cheaper, we could see them produced in all possible sizes. But this day is not today.
Whatever you think about general computing, in the TV world (where computing is going) large screens are needed. We are so so into visual values that we need a wide variety of screen sizes to satisfy our visual needs.
For example the ice box surface is crying out for large screen real estate. My TV room wall could use a high 4K definition screen. Perhaps the front door or any door will provide a screen surface.