Mini Tablet Display Technology Shoot-Out

I could see it being nice for reading in portrait mode.

Apple has apparently concluded that the 'good enough' point is x2... if that's true, it makes sense that they're not building devices above retina density if there is little quantifiable benefit to 99.9% of end-users. Atleast until the tech becomes much cheaper.

Now like you, I don't care, I don't use my iPad mini for color intensive work either, but it still remains that it is unfortunate that it isn't better. It is clearly not a deal stopper.

Apple has never been about selling the latest and greatest hardware, they have always been about selling the hardware that works well enough to satisfy their standards.

They have always had high standards for colour accuracy, the rest of the industry has caught up and moved past them, but they will continue to ship what they think is "good enough". People like Apple because their "good enough" is usually of a very high standard.

Same thing for retina displays, Apple introduced them and did a lot of work to allow for their existence (especially in pushing Intel to develop stronger integrated GPUs, developing drivers). Now the industry has caught up and surpassed Apple in pixel density — but Apple doesn't care because they are not competing on pixel density — it's at the point where it's good enough for their products.

Apple gets those benefits of the doubt because they're one of very few companies that ships tens of millions of a single product. Your comment is also filled with intentionally obnoxious absolutes. I never said that this is the case, or surely it must be, I'm just speculating.

I'm more than willing to entertain the idea that they did it simply to keep fab costs low and margins high. Maybe if Google or Amazon delivered consistently or shipped similar numbers, people would give them the benefit of the doubt. One good generation each isn't exactly enough to build confidence.

Of course, if you're not using the standard RGB style screen, it may make a difference. Having an extra 100 DPI on a pentile screen may be noticeable. I don't know.

This is why the HN policy of editing titles is really frustrating. People start discussing it based on the original title, and none of the discussion makes sense after it's been edited. I don't see why they don't simply implement a technical requirement that the title is the title of the page or some heading element on the page; that's what it ends up being edited to anyhow, just changing the title out from under everyone just leads to more confusion.

1 - the display doesn't get dim enough; it's too bright to read in bed next to a partner

1a - this is INCREDIBLY annoying: at the lowest brightness, the display flickers. Noticeably.

1b - I repeat 1a

2 - slow charging times

3 - it's not quite wide enough to read technical pdfs comfortably. Also, the software available to read pdfs generally is not particularly good. Ebookdroid is the best of a bad bunch. On the bright side, it can invert colors for reading in bed. However, it still isn't particularly good at finding the content in pdfs formatted for other screens, boxing it to exclude eg page numbers or headers, then filling the screen with just content.

Anyway, I found the slightly wider screen on an ipad mini better for reading pdfs. ymmv; if I where just reading kindle books and not reading in bed I'd probably like it better. Also, I'm over 6 feet tall and have big hands, so I find the mini comfortable. Again, ymmv.