Steve Jobs' death clears way for '7.85-inch iPad prototype'
Apple's Kindle-killer rumoured for Q3 2012
Sample screens for a seven-inch Apple iPad have been delivered for testing, according to Taiwanese manufacturing bible Digitimes. That means that production lines could start knocking out baby fondleslabs as early as June.
Citing unnamed "industry sources", as it usually does, Digitimes states that the 7.85-inch iPad will be cheaper too: between $249 and $299 (£188) compared to the $499 price tag on the Wi-Fi 16GB iPad 2 model.
Going for the 7-inch form factor and a lower price will enable the budget tablet to compete directly against the Kindle, which is raking in significant sales in the lower price bracket. Rumours of a smaller iPad have been swirling for a while.
Indeed The Register predicted this move after the arrival of the first iPad. Sadly, we didn't patent the idea.
Apple co-founder and ex-CEO Steve Jobs dismissed the concept of a smaller iPad a couple of years ago. But then he often vehemently dismissed ideas before taking them up, and now he's obviously unable to make executive decisions having lost his battle with cancer.
One of Jobs' primary objections to different form factors was that it would fragment the iOS experience by causing apps to resize in a messy non-optimal way. However, a 7.85-inch iPad will get round this problem by having the same 1024 x 768 resolution of the iPad 2, meaning that no changes need to be made to apps to accommodate the smaller screen. ®
COMMENTS
…pretty flippant way to talk about someone dying of a serious disease.
I'm seldom motivated to post comments on articles, but there is something about your choice of language I find pretty distasteful.
I'm all for a robust discussion of Steve Jobs' performance as a CEO and the product decisions he made. He did some great things, he did some really daft things. However, I feel your line about 'being unable to make executive decisions dying due to having died of cancer' comes across as making a cheap gag at the expense of someone having gone through a very terrible experience.
Not cool.
What a bunch of whiny saddos
I think the man would've made a fine emperor, as it happens, and I've watched several of my own relations die slowly and painfully of cancer, so it's not as though I don't know what the disease is about.
But do you see me dribbling about the Register's irreverence on the subject of his death? No. Not least because, if Jobs had had the sense to go straight to real medicine instead of wasting a large fraction of what time he had on pointless hippie bullshit, he'd probably have lived at least another half decade.
And, Jesus H. Christ, sjam, you registered on the site just to make that comment? You'd really do better to go back and weep over the Steve Jobs shrine at the foot of your bed, and leave the conversation here to those of us capable of interacting with one another on the level of grown adults who don't need to go sobbing to the whole world when somebody says something we don't like.
Re: …pretty flippant way to talk about someone dying of a serious disease.
Have to agree. Jobs attracted a lot of love and hate, some warranted, some not but cheap shots about his passing are in poor taste and betray a lack of integrity and ability.
Re: Disgusting title for an article
I found it reasonably straight to the point and innocuous.
I mean, what's different, "Monarch/President X's death clears way for reforms in blah blah blah".
Same thing 'innit?
Are you that sensitive? Oh... god I forgot, Steve Jobs is more than that....
Geez....
Re: Re: …pretty flippant way to talk about someone dying of a serious disease.
Thank you for that.
My mother died of a brain tumor last year, and my sister is a breast cancer survivor.
You may have a thicker skin than I, but I found it offensive.
