Comment by nirvana | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nirvana | Hacker News Reader

I've been looking forward to this product since the rumors started. I've owned iPads and iPhones and iPod touches.

The iPhone (original and 4S) were both great devices but too small. I could carry them everywhere, but the reading and browsing experience was cramped, by necessity of the small screen.

The iPad (original and Retina) are big, and lovely for reading and browsing, but too big to hold with one hand. This really is an issue for me, the way I sit when I'm reading... it ends up limiting my use of what otherwise would be a fantastic device.

So, the mini seems perfect. Light enough to hold, big enough to get a fantastic reading and browsing experience. I know it will be a little cramped compared to the iPad (well, expect it will be, but the same resolution original iPad was not cramped at all) but that's a fine tradeoff for being able to use it, literally, everywhere.

I like that they decided to start at $329 with 16GB, about perfect pricing for me. We spent over $650 on our retina iPad with LTE, and ended up not using the LTE much at all.

For our startup, which is heavily involved in iOS, and all of us have iOS devices, we will probably buy 2-3 of these minis.

In fact, I think I'm personally, done with the iPad and iPhone... I don't need the phone part (which is why I've mostly bought iPod touches) .... only went with it because the original iPad was not as portable as I'd like.

So, I'm totally stoked that this device is as it was rumored... I see no downsides to it at all.

Agree.

I have an iPad 3. I found it too damn heavy for comfortable reading. So I bought a Google Nexus 7. Which is exactly the right size, and a delight ... except that most (not all) Android apps look like they were beaten with the ugly stick. The aesthetics are terrible. I read on the thing for 4-20 hours a week and it's just increasingly grating.

I'll be buying an iPad Mini. I won't be ditching the Nexus 7 -- if nothing else, there are some apps that, frustratingly, can't appear in the iOS Store -- but I expect to be doing 90% of my tablet use on the iPad Mini (and may well end up off-loading the iPad 3, aka not-so-new-any-more iPad).

((Stuff the Nexus is good for: (a) Firefox, (b) TextMaker, (c) being able to fire up a command line and run vim and busybox. No, seriously. I get antsy if I don't have a shell prompt to hand ...))

I have to admit a similar sentiment, I'm pretty Apple based for most uses, but had to get a Nexus 7 for some dev work and its quickly become my main reader for its size and weight.

Still like the Nexus 7 price point too. At $200 I'm cool travelling with it and if it got away from me it wouldn't be the end of the world.

(just finished The Fuller Memorandum on it btw...)

I think the Nexus 7 is also a better travel tablet because it has GPS and google maps.

On a slight tangent - does anyone else see Google pushing the Chrome OS onto the tablets?

It seems like the Chrome OS is geared towards media consumption and productivity, while Android is kind of the "low cost open source" solution.

Chrome OS is not designed for touch, and it seems like Google isn't interested in making it so- they relatively recently introduced a windowing system.

I'd argue that Android is already far more capable than Chrome OS is- I'm not entirely sure where Google are going with it.

I totally agree. I really like my iPad for a lot of things, but it has been disappointing for pleasure reading of books because it is just too heavy.

Given that my primary use case will be reading, I now have to decide between a Kindle Paperwhite or the iPad Mini, with the one additional input that my kids would love to have another iPad in the house.

If my primary use were reading, I'd get an ePaper-based eReader. No LCD screen can compare for readability, and the battery life is through the roof.

I have a Kindle Paperwhite and it is awesome for reading. I gave up on the iPad for reading a while ago.

I was convinced the iPad Mini was for me, until I just looked up the Paperwhite. However, I read a lot of articles and rely on Reader or Pocket. Does the Paperwhite support any such functionality?

You can configure InstaPaper to email your cuttings file to your Kindle account's email address whenever you add a new article to it. This works with any Kindle device (including the Kindle app on iOS or Android).

Get the Paperwhite. It's wonderful to read on, in any light. I've had a Kindle Keyboard, Kindle DX, iPad, Nexus 7, and Kindle Fire (original and HD), and the Paperwhite is far and away the best device. It also fixes a ton of the refresh-related issues with the recent Touch generation.

The only downside is PDF viewing, which you should still leave to device with more serious CPU and some auto-crop and fancy scrolling support (e.g., by quarter-pages).

So I've only ever had the keyboard version and was wondering about the page turn buttons. Are they gone in paper-white? Do I have to reach across with a second hand and swipe to turn the page? Because if that's the case I won't be getting one.

Part of the good thing about the kindle is that I can just hold it still and keep reading, especially useful in bed.

You can just tap the screen to turn the page on a touchscreen Kindle. Very easy to do with your thumb.

Wonderful to read on -- unless you're reading kindle books that involve mathematical symbols. In which case, forget about it.

I wonder how well PDFs render on it.

They render fine, but the page speed update is just a bit too slow, particularly if you read PDFs that have frequent references to figures that are 2-3 pages distant from the referencing text.

I use a Kindle for reading simply because of the lack of distractions. On the iPad I see notifications every time someone posts on Facebook, every time I get a new e-mail... it's hard to lose myself in the book.

Why don't you simply turn off notifications? Or even better, enabled the 'do not disturb' mode in the settings app?

I was running into the same problem, and ended up sending notifications for non-essentials to the lock screen but not elsewhere. It's made extended reading much more manageable.

Why don't you read in full screen mode then?

"Facebook would like to send you push notifications." - Do Not Allow

I love my iPad (2) more than any gadget I own (including my beloved 15" MacBook Pro that has really changed my life), but think of your poor eyes and get the kindle thing. Fixing your eyes (if, after hours of developing on LCDs, you spend a few other hours reading on one) is in order of tens of thousands of dollars.

I love my Kindle, but it's almost impossible to read PDFs on.

I have the nexus 7 and will be getting the new iPad 4thgen to replace my 1st gen. I love the Nexus but the mini looks great. The only worry I would have is that the bezels on the vertical sides look almost look to thin. Even when reading with the nexus I sometimes inadvertently change pages and I think this could be a greater problem on the mini. So for reading I would need to try it first.

According to Apple, iOS is capable, on the iPad mini, of recognizing whether your thumb is resting on the narrower border, or tapping on the interface.

"Rethinking the screen meant we also had to rethink the software behind it. iPad mini intelligently recognizes whether your thumb is simply resting on the display or whether you’re intentionally interacting with it. It’s the kind of detail you’ll notice — by not noticing it."

Source: http://www.macstories.net/stories/ipad-mini-our-complete-ove...

Thanks for pointing that out. It shows Apples focus on the user to consider something that would be easy to over look.

I double that. Plus for me the weight of iPad Mini (308g) is a killer feature, mainly because I plan to use it for reading and playing games.

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