The Design Bankruptcy Of iPad Mini Clones | Hacker News Reader

The Design Bankruptcy Of iPad Mini Clones

mikecanex.wordpress.com

14 pointsmikecane21 comments

On a slight tangent: the iPad Mini is the best consumer electronics product I have used in a long time. I had a Surface RT before it, and while it was a neat device, the Mini has genuinely integrated itself into my workflow:

1) The size and weight are such that I can grab it along with my half-size notebook and the styling (I have a black one) is conservative and I don't feel weird pulling it out in a meeting. The Surface RT is too big to use say while waiting in line.

2) LTE is a game-changer. Microsoft is dead-wrong that you don't need to offer a tablet with LTE. It really maximizes the utility of the device. Yeah, I could carry around an LTE hotspot, but the battery life on those is ass, and I would feel stupid pulling that out at a meeting. Meanwhile, with LTE + Exchange e-mail, I don't feel so tethered to my blackberry. And tethering to my laptop over bluetooth is dead-easy.

3) The battery life is phenomenal. My current usage reading shows 12 hours usage and 7 days standby with 10% left. And I never turn off LTE/Wi-Fi/push e-mail.

4) Portrait 4:3 is the way to go for a work tablet. The RT's screen is a lot bigger, but the 16:9 ratio is useless for what is ostensibly a "work" device. Reading a document in portrait mode, the usable width of the Mini's screen is only 0.5" smaller than the RT's.

In many ways it's a shitty device. Old processor, little memory, overly glossy, low-resolution screen. But Apple just nailed the key features needed in the form factor: always-on connectivity, battery life, and size/weight/conservative styling.

+1 and I would've bought one immediately if it didn't have the same internals as my iPad 2. Put the 4th gen parts inside with a retina display and I'd be all over that.

ipad mini - Release date November 2, 2012

nexus 7 - Release date July 13, 2012

> Why was it up to Apple to create a thin and light tablet with asymmetric bezels?

> Why couldn’t someone else have done that?

because they have done it before Apple? (see nexus 7)

Come now, don't let facts get in the way of the outrage! We know Google just copied Apple, like they always do.

Is this satire? I can't tell anymore.

Not satire. The author simply assumes that his readership comprises design nuts that won't see all three proffered redesigns as exactly the same.

The author is correct that somebody ought to do that, but he is wrong about who it should be.

Speaking in very broad generalizations, successful businesses in a market have one core competency that they relentlessly apply to maximizing profits.

Apple is in the enviable position of having two, design/marketing/brand to justify higher prices and logistics to drive costs down, maximizing margin.

The Chinese shops are strictly in the logistics business. Like Dell in its heyday, they put all of their energies into minimizing their costs.

With no brand to speak of, they have no incentive to differentiate other than to avoid lawyers. If one of them changed the bezel and it didn't work, they'd go out of business. If it did work, everyone else would copy them and they wouldn't get any additional sales or margin, since they don't have a brand name.

The people who out to be differentiating are companies like Samsung, not these bottom feeders.

The design is not just functional, it also indicates origin - like a trademark. They aren't copying Apple for the design, but because it is known and valuable in the market. It's like making fake Coke, in a fake Coke can. i.e. it's a marketing strategy, not a design strategy, to "look like an iPad mini".

The author of this post assumes that the Mini clones will innovate over Apple's current designs. However, the iPad Mini clones are just that: clones of the iPad Mini. They are trying to look as close to the Apple's design as possible, and not improve in any way.

Right. From what I gather about a lot of these cheap Chinese clones of, well, any device, is that there apparently seem to be numerous reference hardware designs built around some cheap ARM SoC.

They take that board, toss it in a housing made to look like an iPad Mini/SGS 4/ whatever, and sell it for cheap.

It's not made to innovate, it's made to be a knockoff that's as cheap as possible. Although, it does seem that some of these clones do have features that are wanted by that market but aren't offered on the device being imitated. For instance a lot of these cheap knockoff phones have dual-SIM capability.

I think anyone that's ever seen a sheet of paper would probably come up with the same design as Apple there. It's a rectangle with a screen on it. The case is made of some sort of hard material so that the electronics don't fall out or get smashed, and the screen is glass because a thin sheet of glass protects the screen from damage while still allowing the touch sensor to work.

Apple's innovation in the space mostly consists of convincing people to want to buy a very large phone. I'm sure they would have sold just as many iPads if the bezel looked different. The software was also good and let people take what they liked about their iPhones and put it on a bigger screen.

I still cannot understand the logic of people like you that will dismiss a product and call it obvious only after the fact. If it was so easy that anybody could do it why didn't anybody else do it before Apple?

If it was so easy that anybody could do it why didn't anybody else do it before Apple?

Because they didn't think they could make any money.

It's like I'm suddenly in an alternate universe where all products prior to Apple's have simply vanished.

>>It's like I'm suddenly in an alternate universe where all products prior to Apple's have simply vanished.

Again with the silly comments. Is like taking a BMW and claiming that cars already existed before the BMW. Well yes, I'm not an idiot. But the specific form factor combined with excellent software did not. Add to that great quality and you have an iPhone, iPad, iPad mini.

Now Apple wasn't the first to offer a 7" tablet, was it?

No, the Nexus 7 came out a few months before the Mini,and is much better (IMHO).

What? Samsung Galaxy Tab 7" came out in November 2010 and I'm pretty sure there were a couple more before that as well.

Mini is way better, depending on what you do with it. The 7's screen is nicer, but lack of LTE and the 16:10 aspect ratio was deal breaker for me (I was looking for a "work" device).

Of course not. I thought it was common knowledge that it was Apple who had to "copy" everyone else, strategy wise at least, with a mini tablet.

People keep failing to understand that Apple created a desirable brand. Apple achieved high social status. If somebody else improve on the design, people won't want it because it's not Apple. It's the same thing as a popular guy in high school telling a joke and a nerd telling the same joke -- most peers will only find the first one funny, even if delivery is worse.

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