Comment by siglesias | Hacker News Reader

Comment by siglesias | Hacker News Reader

While the Mini is unquestionably the device people want for doing what they already do on the iPad, which seem to be reading and gaming, there's part of me that regrets that we never saw the breakthrough multitouch apps that in my mind can only be realized on the larger iPad: imagine a mathematics app that accepts pen and ink input as well as a kind of sign language for massaging algebraic expressions (something that I've been toying with) or a video editing app that allows for fine scrubbing and instrument-like slicing and dicing. Of course tasks like the latter are waiting for processors to catch up. My point really is that I hope the market doesn't strangle the large-screen tablet approach before they can reach their full potential, if such potential indeed exists.

Good point, but I think that Apple might actually produce an iPad-whopper some day, largely because of the laptop replacing types of applications that you mentioned.

At least while at home, the sweet spot would be to have a mini and a whopper (perhaps 14" screen, hopefully weight much less than 2 pounds). Having both, perfectly synced, would be great, being able to grab the pad best for whatever use.

Other manufacturers like Samsung might do this first. Samsung did such an awesome job producing the Galaxy III S.

Toshiba has announced and distributed to reviewers an Android tablet with a 13.3-inch screen, the Excite 13. Weight is 2.2 lb, price is $649.

That math app sounds amazing. I think this is something that would be great to have in a Surface-type device with a touchscreen and a keyboard — I would love to have that sort of input integrated with Mathematica or sympy or what have you. I would never need to fiddle with LibreOffice Math ever again!

+1

At one point, people would love 13inch touch screen if it can be made as light as 10inch.

There are UI questions with a 13 inch tablet - for example, on-screen keyboard.

Tweaking a 10" optimized OS for a 13" screen sounds like a non-trivial process if you have a UX focus.

Weight is just one of the problems of a larger tablet - there's also display yields, cost, processor to drive the graphics, which leads to heat dissipation concerns, etc.

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