back to article Jobs savages 7-inch tablet competition

If you've been putting off buying an iPad because you're waiting for a more-affordable seven-inch version, or if you've been considering getting an upcoming seven-incher from a non-Cupertinian source, Apple CEO Steve Jobs would like to set you straight. "We think the current crop of seven-inch tablets are going to be DOA — …

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  1. sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
    Jobs Horns

    Screen sizes

    So now we have

    1. QVGA mobiles like the sony xperia mini pro

    2. iPhone sized devices

    3. Dell Streaks (and hopefully more of like)

    4. iPads and hopefully soon some proper android equivalents, whenever.

    Choice is good, honestly.

    Personally I would rather carry a netbook than an ipad. And rather have a dumb phone, or a very small smart phone with battery life to match, given in my case, a proper computer is really never too far away.

    Choice is good.

    The market will decide. Hopefully it won't be too fickle and heed Apple propaganda.

    ( Let me tell you what I'd like out in the field however, a completely ruggedized iPad sized device, something you could drop on concrete and expect to work again, in the mud and wipe clean. Something with heaps of endurance. Something that ideally is not locked down and customisable. With all that still approximating the size and weight of your typical 10 inch device - this ... might sell quite well)

    1. Ocular Sinister
      Pint

      Indeed!

      +1 for the small dumb phone and a netbook/iPad/whatever-small-computer-floats-your-boat. I just don't want the large multi-function phones coming out right now; they are too bulky, the battery life is too short and they all seem too fiddly to use. Of course, the feature-phone + netbook combo only works well if you have bluetooth (or similar) tethering.

      Have a pint!

  2. meehawl

    Too Legs Good, Four Legs Better!

    Jobs spent several years dissing flash memory MP3 players from the likes of iRiver because Apple did not yet have a flash player aka Nano available. According to him, disk was where it was and flash was pointless. Then suddenly one year everything changed. If others show there's $$$ to be made with 7" tablets, count on Apple getting out there to hoover up the cash.

    1. DZ-Jay

      Re: Too Legs Good, Four Legs Better!

      First, Jobs dissed the flash memory players as having crap battery life and not enough storage for the price. iPods started using flash memory when the technology was perfected enough, or integrated properly enough, to allow for great capacity, lower power consumption, and a lower price.

      Second, the arguments that Jobs brought up against 7" tablets seem to be reasonable--as a matter of fact, I thought about the "tweener" argument as soon as I heard the rumours of a forthcoming 7" iPad. This makes your suggestion that they would make money a very big "if".

      -dZ.

      1. Adam Williamson 1
        Jobs Horns

        Except...

        ...there's already a bunch of very popular devices out there, which their users generally love, in exactly this form factor. They're called e-readers. Go ask a Sony Reader or Kindle owner if they'd like a tablet in the same form factor as their reader, and a lot of 'em will say 'yes'. Clearly it's a form factor that works for people.

        The touch argument is clearly bullshit, otherwise why does Apple sell 3" touchscreen devices? To extend Jobs' silly argument about 'filing down your fingers' to a 3" display, you'd wind up with...well...a stylus. And we all know what Steve thinks of the stylus.

        Let's face it, all CEOs ever talk is whatever bullshit they can come up with to support what they happen to be hawking at that particular moment. There's no point taking anything they say remotely seriously.

      2. meehawl
        Jobs Horns

        The Horse's Mouth

        It's always amusing when people pop up echoing Mr Jobs' comments as the obvious truth. Just because he says something does not make it true, even though there are apparently many people out there ready to repeat his comments until they begin to*sound* like truth.

        Before the Nano there were lots of fine flash players. Some had very small memories, and some had slots that let you plug in larger cards as tech evolved. I have a 2001-era flash player that came with a measly 128 MB on board but now does 4 GB very nicely, thanks very much, and Rockbox.

        As usual though, most APple fans prefer to think that before Apple releases a product everything else out there was so crap it's not even worth bothering with.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Some random words here for the heading monster

    Oh, I don't know. I'd be quite happy with 7 inches.

    1. Uk_Gadget

      Nah,

      I am really happy with my 10 inch one....

  4. Phil P
    Stop

    Disingenuous

    He manages to make it sound as though all of the competition is 7" and therefore the Apple product is superior to all of the competition. But this simply isn't the case. Proof by counter-example: the 9.7" iPad compared to the 10" Pixel Qi display Notion Ink Adam.

    http://gizmodo.com/5471559/notion-ink-adam-tablet-caught-on-video-specs-finalized

    1. King Edward I
      Stop

      Problem is...

      ...The adam aint on the shelves yet. (I wish it would hurry up though. WANT ONE!)

      1. Daniel 1

        Can't get the parts, can they

        Steve Jobs, and Foxconn, are sitting on the world's-own supply of decent 10-inch capitative touch screens. Everyone else *knows* how to make decent 10 inch devices, but they can't get the parts. They *list* the devices in their inventory, because it's simply an assembly job... if you could get the parts. But none of them are for sale for the same reason.

        So, of course Job's is going to dis the only alternative form-factor that his rivals can afford to make.

  5. Dazed and Confused

    Square laws in a Jobsian universe

    45%

    how does he read that conclusion?

    10^2 == 100

    7^2 == 49

    I realise it's 6:20 in the morning, but since when has anyone rounded down 49 to 45?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Headmaster

      It's Actually 50% Smaller

      The iPad has a 9.7" diagonal and an aspect ratio of 4:3. The 7" Android tablets have an aspect ratio of 16:9.

      A little high-school algebra (and Pythagoras' Theorem) gets us:

      iPad: 7.467" x 5.6003" = 41.8174 sq.in

      Others: 6.101" x 3.432" = 20.9377 sq.in

      Consequently, the 7" tablet screens are almost exactly 50% the size of the iPad's.

      Algebra Nazi because I have no idea what calculations you were using - the screens are not square! (I also have no idea who did Jobs' calculations...)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Area?

        Jobs wasn't talking about area, he was talking about the linear diagonal. TBH I can't see where he gets the diagonal of a standard 7" LCD display being 45% of his supposedly 10" iPad. It isn't. I do agree however that area is a much better measurement and should be adopted as a standard. A 16:9 telly with the same diagonal measurement as an old 4:3 is has only 75% the area of the old 4:3.. A lot of people I know have been very disapointed with the dimensions of the widescreen TVs when moving from old 4:3 boxes.

        Anyhow going back to the old CRT days why do manufacturers always get away with measuring the diagonal and rounding it up their display size? How come the 9.7" iPad can be sold as a 10 incher? Tesco wouldn't get away with selling milk in the same way would it? A litre of milk is a litre or milk and if they tried selling you 950ml as a litre the trading standards bods would be down on them like 950kg of bricks.

        I prefer photography anyway. A 10x8 is a 10x8 and a 5x7 is just that. In diagonal terms the former would be call a 13 incher and the latter a 9 incher which is clearly stupid.

  6. Paul_Murphy

    But can I fit an ipad into my pocket?

    No? - well, sorry but it's no good to me then.

    ttfn

    1. DZ-Jay

      Re: But can I fit an iPad into my pocket?

      Are you purposely trolling, or have you really not being paying attention?

      Your iPhone/iPod Touch/Android/BlackBerry/etc. fits in your pocket. Your iPad sits on your coffee table, or in your briefcase on the way to the office.

      -dZ.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Joke

        @DZ-Jay

        "Your iPad sits on your coffee table, or in your briefcase on the way to the office."

        Or, if any British politicians or civil servants are involved, left on a train or on the back seat of a taxi somewhere before being sold on eBay.

      2. Paul_Murphy

        Neither

        >Are you purposely trolling, or have you really not being paying attention?

        I use my Hero for listening to music and reading ebooks whilst on the tube/trains etc. - I need something that I can slip into my pocket easily when I am moving between trains etc.

        A 10-inch iPad or similar is too big for my purposes - a 7-inch device is one that I could use.

        Hence my comment.

        On top of that you have Jobs saying that small screens are no use, which is rather funny considering the iPhone, iTouch etc all the way down to the Nano - whose screen is not only tiny but practically unusable when it's clipped to you - you need to unclip it to view the screen and find out what to press.

        They all seem to manage with small screens, so why spend any effort dissing them?

        strange.

        ttfn

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Grenade

        My 7" netbook fits in my pocket.

        Big pockets.

      4. Oninoshiko
        Thumb Down

        Re: Re: But can I fit an iPad into my pocket?

        Are you purposely trolling, or have you really not being paying attention?

        I don't NEED a device to sit on my coffee table, and certainly not to go in a briefcase (as I don't carry one), but a computing platform in my pocket might be useful. As far as my cellPHONE, I expect that should be optimized to making phone calls. That is, first and foremost, what I use it for.

      5. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        No!

        "Your iPhone/iPod Touch/Android/BlackBerry/etc. fits in your pocket. Your iPad sits on your coffee table, or in your briefcase on the way to the office."

        There's a big powerful PC on the table. Or rather a keyboard and mouse. There's a Blackberry in my pocket. There's a laptop in my briefcase. An iPad can do nothing as well as any of those devices. Therefore I don't need one. Or rather I don't want one. I don't suppose I really *need* the big PC. I have the BB and the laptop because my employer insists so maybe I do need those.

        The thing is though that I don't get the iPad thing. It isn't as portable as a phone, it isn't nearly as powerful as a laptop. So what's the point?

  7. It Wasn't Me, I Swear.
    Paris Hilton

    It needs to be at least 10" to satisfy Mr. Jobs.

    It seems to me that the iPod Touch is a mini iPad. I don't know how it slipped-by Mr. Jobs - oh wait. it didn't.

    -- Paris, because size is of primary importance.

    1. DRoe

      Then you don't know what you're talking about.

      The iPod Touch runs apps that were designed for a screen that size; it does not run apps created for the iPad (iPad apps scaled down to a screen the size of the iPod Touch's would be unusable). iPad apps can do a lot more than iPod Touch apps because of the additional screen real estate. So Jobs' argument holds water: apps designed for a 7" screen will not be able to compete with iPad apps in exactly the same way that apps designed for the iPod Touch cannot.

      1. Adam Williamson 1

        except...

        that the new-gen iPhone and iPod Touch use the exact same resolution as the iPad expressly to make it easy to create apps that run unmodified on both.

  8. Adam Williamson 1
    Jobs Horns

    No, no, that's something COMPLETELY different

    ""The seven-inch tablets are 'tweeners'," he said, "too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad.""

    Would that be, er, the way the iPad is too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with a netbook? No, wait, I've got it - that's 'creating a new category'. My bad! As you were, Apple!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    its not how big it is...

    ...its what you do with it.

  10. frank ly
    Headmaster

    We are not amused

    "...in our opinion," Jobs said in royal third-person locution."

    'Our' is 1st person plural. (He/she/it/hey is third person) It's the use of the plural (in 1st and 2nd person) that is the marker for speech to and from 'royal' personages.

  11. Gangsta
    Jobs Horns

    Steve

    As much as some people hate Steve,

    you've got to love him for his arrogance and hilarity.

    Add to that to the fact that he is a likeable character - no matter what we really think of him, we can't avoid him, because he is so charismatic

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I have to disagree

      I absolutely see him as creepy and Svengali-like, although of course I realise that many, many people disagree. I find him about as likeable as the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

      These comments from him sound strangely desperate (although I'm not suggesting he has a reason to be). If the 7" tablets are going to be so crap then why the followers need to be warned in this way, is he worried they won't notice how terrible they are and accidentally buy them, leave the Jobs fold and thereby sap energy from his ego?

  12. M7S

    Mine's three inches bigger, that should satisfy you

    And it's thicker too.

    PS: "...product at a great price".

    That would be great as in "unusually or comparatively large" would it?

  13. Saul Dobney
    Thumb Up

    For once he's right

    Tried a 7inch tablet UMPC at 800x480 and it's just too much of a compromise. Webpages are either made smaller and unfocused and unreadable on a zoom out, or get clipped one side or the other with too much scrolling left and right needed. May be a higher resolution 7" screen will work, but it doesn't make a good web-experience.

  14. Nic 3
    Thumb Down

    Title goes here

    That sounded like a fairly straight forward set of arguments Jobs gave. He explained his thoughts on the USPs of the iPad clearly as anyone representing their company would do. I see you had to do your best to add as much sneering commentary as possible. The Reg is a red top after all.

  15. strangefish

    will it or won't it

    I don't know if seven inches is enough or not (snarf) but sanding the fingers down seems a little extreme when people seem to cope quite well with far smaller form factors on other devices. I understand there's one called an "iphone" which is a bit smaller than seven inches diagonal, although maybe people have indeed been digit-whittling for years and I've just not noticed. Has there been a rise in band-aid sales since 2007?

  16. stucs201
    FAIL

    Doh!

    "He did, however, make one suggestion that might mitigate the challenge of a smaller screen — albeit a painful one: "While one could increase the resolution of the display to make up for some of the difference, it is meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one quarter of their present size.""

    So, never heard of a stylus steve?

    1. Ivan Headache

      Stylus?

      Pinch?

      Twirl?

      1. RegisterThis
        Joke

        A pair ...

        used like chopsticks ...

        pinch, twirl AND eat at the same time!

      2. ~mico
        Coat

        title here

        In reality, though i own an HP TouchSmart multitouch laptop, i've never exactly managed those pinches and twirls. Zoom's best done with scroll wheel/pad, rotation one seldom if ever needs, as to sweeps and gestures, stylus does it. Additionally, stylus can allow drawing and writing, which is quite uncomfortable with just the finger.

        But why not have the best of both worlds? My laptop supports both passive pressure-sensitive stylus and capacitive multi-touch with fingers. Seems ideal for tablets.

        ...is that Galaxy Tab in my pocket?

  17. Chris Beach

    He's Mostly Right Too

    tbh I think he's right. 10" puts the device nearer the laptop side which is what the tablet replacing. Its never going to replace your 2"-4" smartphone, but it can replace the light usage netbook or your cheaper 13/14" that you only use for internet anyways.

    I also agree that buying a tablet with 2.2 and no guarentee that it will be upgraded to 3.0, is daft. Having another app market isn't the solution either.

  18. bexley

    flash memory

    Very funny :-|

    your users dont find it nearly as amusing my friend.

    Grow up and allow flash for the love of god

  19. Antidisestablishmentarianist

    Seven Inches?

    I don't get it either. I want 13 inches. I can handle it.....

    1. Player_16
      Alien

      Do you now?

      I'll be right over.

  20. Bryan Anderson
    Jobs Halo

    He has a point....

    I have an iPad and wouldn't consider anything smaller. Seven inches isn't that much bigger than a smartphone but is still too big to throw in a pocket. It's a compromise that satisfies neither end of the market.

  21. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Jobs Horns

    "There are clear limits on how close you can physically place elements"

    At that point Steve's personal RDF started making a worryingly loud electric hum and sparks and smoke filled the air in front of astonished reporters.

    Because what works for smartphones suddenly stops working for 7" screens then miraculously starts working again for 10" screens. It's as if you can't re-scale and reposition icons for a 7" screen.

    1. Ragarath
      Happy

      At least someone said it

      I thought I was going to get to the bottom of the comments with no one mentioning it.

      UI, UI, UI so what if it is smaller physically. The UI is not going to be designed in the same way and I am sure that a 7 incher can cope with Mr Fat Fingers if needed. I mean smart phones cope don't they (mostly)?

      As long as the resolution is right of course.

  22. semprance

    Pfft

    "a seven-inch screen is only 45 per cent as large as iPad's 10-inch screen. You heard me right — just 45 per cent as large ... A display less than half the size of the iPad's — or, in Cupertinoese, "less than half the size of iPad's" — "isn't sufficient to create great tablet apps, in our opinion,"

    I can only assume that he makes this nonsense up on the spot. His maths is right but essentially useless and it kind of redundant. By this mis-applied logic, a tablet that was 2 inches high and 8 feet long would be better than the iPad. What a dope.

    I'll be picking up an Archos 7" in the next few days. I'm not quite as much of an Apple hater nowadays (Jobs makes it to easy for us, he really does), but I'd still say that giving the finger to Apple is on the list of reasons for my purchase.

    Also, if less than 10 inches is good enough then why bother to pick up an iPod touch, which is essentially just a tiny feature-lacking tablet... Again more twoddle from the Jobsian school of moronics.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Archos...

      That should be a swear word around here... I've got 2 of their damned devices! Rubbish that looks nice!

  23. Avatar of They
    Thumb Up

    Seems he doth protest too much

    Hasn't he denied lots of things in the past, and then had them come out with Apple saying that it was always their intention to release it...

    I expect next year an ipad mini. Doing to the ipad what the nano did for the ipod.

  24. David Evans
    Jobs Horns

    Once again SJ takes us all for idiots

    The contempt he has for his audience is really breathtaking isn't it? Of course he'll do an iPad Mini, but this is all part of the positioning to make the rivals who got ahead of him in the market "not count".

    And FYI, I've directly compared an iPad and a Galaxy Tab. The Tab is the one I want, but it needs to drop in price to about £350 before I can justify it.

  25. Luke McCarthy
    Stop

    I look forward to the 10 inch iPhone 5...

    Because I "cannot reliably tap, flick, or pinch" anything on the current tiny screen.

  26. Mage Silver badge

    This time

    He may be right.

    If you are clever at package and aspect ratio, you can just about do 4" (16:9) in a "pocket-able device. My 4.3" Archos is just too chunky for pocket, but it does have a 160Gbyte 2.5" HDD and quite wide bezel above/below screen in Landscape mode. 4.3" 16:9 is "just" possible if bezel is skinny on long edges and longer than screen, to fit stuff in without making it fat.

    If you go 16:8 = 2:1 you can just about manage 6"

    to do 7" in "pocket format you need approx 7" x 3" case and about 3:1 format

    7" is too big for 4:3 or 16:9 pocket and too small for a tablet.

    I'd argue that iPad is bit small for a tablet and too awkward to hold.

    The success of the 3.5" floppy was that it fitted a pocket easily.

    We did extensive usability tests back in 1986 to 1989 on "Notepad" concept with LCD touch screen in terms of suit pockets :) using Balsa, plastic and wood models. The trans-reflective back light was on case and fully transparent LCD hinged for OHP presentations, Mono of course in those days. Today you just put an HDMI port for presentations. The pico projectors are too dim.

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