The iPad mini Dividing Line

The iPad mini has been out a few days now and it seems everybody is going bananas over it. Because I’m weak, I pre-ordered one as soon as I could. My wife received the delivery and did the initial set up for me. (iCloud makes that so easy.) As a result, it got handed to me as I sat down to record the Mac Power Users After Dark episode that published earlier this week. That is an interesting bit of tape in that it captures my immediate reaction “on air”, which was twofold: 1. “Holy Crackers, this is really nice”, and; 2. “This is definitely not a retina screen.”

After now having used it for several days, my immediate reaction hasn’t substantially changed. The small form factor is great. The smaller device footprint and lighter weight make it much easier to carry this out the door and even carry around the house. Nevertheless, I don’t see the iPad mini replacing my retina iPad for a couple of reasons.

  1. The Retina Display is a Really Big Deal (to me)

I don’t think I can overstate how much I love the trend towards high pixel density in iThings. The retina display iPhone, iPad, and now MacBook Pro are all gorgeous. I spend a lot of time reading and working on my iPad and the retina screen makes this easier. Crisp, sharp text makes a huge difference in my ability to spend hours working in front of a screen. Looking at the iPad mini, the non-retina display is immediately apparent. I understand why Apple made the decision not to include the retina display with this first iPad mini. I would not like a heavier, more expensive iPad mini but the lack of a retina display is a significant difference and one particularly relevant to the way I use it. I’ve heard people explain how you “get used to it”. I haven’t.

  1. Content Creation

While content creation certainly is possible on the new iPad mini, I still think it is easier on the larger iPad screen. Creating mind maps, writing words, annotating PDFs, and the other things I do with an iPad to pay for shoes are all easier using the larger screen. It is not impossible to work with these apps on the iPad mini but just like it’s easier to carry the iPad mini out the door, it is easier to create on the retina third-generation iPad. (As an aside, I believe the iPad mini may be a superior device for wireless presentation. I’m looking forward to trying it out in that capacity at my next speaking gig.)

For now at least, I think one of the big dividing lines between the iPad mini and the larger size iPad is content consumption versus creation. If someone is just going to be reading books, surfing the web, checking email, the iPad mini is perfectly adequate. If someone is going to do significant writing, digital art, or any of the other more traditional “creation” tasks, there’s a really good case to be made for larger iPad.

Microsoft Office for iOS

This makes so much sense to me. There are (at least) 100 million iPads “out there” and Microsoft will make a killing on Office for iOS. I’m really curious to see how far down the rabbit hole they go with feature parity. It could be a slippery slope.

Regardless of the money Microsoft will make, I think this is also necessary to keep Office relevant. A lot of previously die-hard Office users picked up iPads already and are questioning previous assumptions about word processors. I’ve written about this before.

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MPU 110: Sharing a Mac

We’ve received a remarkable number of emails from people asking how to share their Mac. We finally got around to doing a show about it this week. Get it while it’s hot.

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The Best Electric Kettle

Gabe does a thorough job of reviewing some excellent electric kettles. I’ve been using the Adagio UtiliTEA for several years and absolutely love it. It’s fast and gets my temperature just right.

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14 Days in Mountain Lion Calendar Week View

There used to be a really handy terminal command to open debug mode in iCal. One of my favorite settings was the ability to display two weeks in week view. Unfortunately, the command stopped working in Mountain Lion and it doesn’t appear anyone has figured out how to resurrect it. (I tried for 30 minutes.)

In the meantime, there is a terminal command to set the number of days to display in week view. Mac OS X Hints shows the way but here it is.

defaults write com.apple.iCal CalUIDebugDefaultDaysInWeekView XX

Substitute the number of days for XX. If that blows your mind, run it again and change the number back to 7.

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Harry McCracken Still Loves His iPad

I’m a little late in linking this story but with the excitement about the new iPads, I thought it still relevant. Harry is a top-flight tech writer who went public about the fact that his iPad is his primary computer about a year ago. Harry even guested on the Mac Power Users (Episode 71) explaining how he pulled it off.

After a year, Harry writes he still loves his iPad but is not so much a revolutionary as he first was since others are also using the iPad as their primary computer. For example, see M.G. Siegler.

I love my iPad and use the heck out of it but I’d put my Mac/iPad ratio closer to 60/40. I still use a Mac more often but anything away from my desk is done on an iPad (and I’m finding increasingly creative excuses to get away from my desk).

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