[Robo]

Originally Posted by hmurchison An affordable smaller tablet satisfies both lovers of a lower price and smaller form factors. Neither is mutually inclusive or exclusive.

But if most of the reason people want a smaller iPad is because they think it will be cheaper, the potential for Apple to further drop the price on the iPad 2 is highly relevant. Like pscates said:

Originally Posted by pscates If Apple really wanted to make a statement, then yeah...get that iPad 2 down to the price levels talked about for this mythical 7" iPad. Nobody would ever want anything else! [...] That would surely kill all talk of a 7". The people who want a 7" for size/price reasons would deal with it and adjust accordingly, I'm sure.

And here, I agree with pscates completely. I think to most users, a cut-down iPad would seem suboptimal. They wouldn't view the smaller size as a selling point — it'd feel like a step down.

I know this because, outside of the Kindle Fire and Nooks, 7-8" tablets just aren't selling. The BlackBerry PlayBook didn't sell. The Galaxy Tab 7 didn't sell. The Galaxy Tab 7 Plus didn't sell. The Galaxy Tab 7.7 didn't sell. The HTC Flyer didn't sell. The Huawei Springboard didn't sell. The Droid Xyboard 8.2 didn't sell. The only 7" tablets that are selling are the super cheap sub-$200 ones, because they're super cheap. Amazon and B&N didn't want to put small screens on their tablets — they did because they're competing on price.

Apple doesn't compete on price. They'd rather keep the iPad user experience intact and hit that $299 price point a little bit later, because the iPad user experience is what they're selling. It's their #1 selling point. It's their biggest advantage.

The more I think about it, the more I think a shrunken-down iPad is just something Apple won't do. It seems so un-Apple. Displaying apps at a reduced size? It just seems so half-assed. I don't doubt that they have a 7.85" iPad in the labs, ready in case the Kindle Fire starts becoming a more serious theat — they'd be irresponsible if they didn't. But I think they can ride this one out. The iPad hasn't even had a holiday season at $399 yet, after all. And next spring, they can drop the price of the iPad 2 to $299, and all the talk of a smaller iPad will probably disappear, because a reduced price is the main reason people seem to want one, anyway.

Originally Posted by hmurchison With regard to keyboard input it's important to realize that the virtual KB is just one of many input modalities. With the new iPad voice dictation has arrived. Not yet full Siri but for those that struggle to type yet can articulate well in a supported language they have another method for inputing text.

But there goes the "it'd be better for using on a subway" argument. Portability isn't just size; if inputting text in a reasonably fast manner required speaking out loud, a smaller iPad could very well be less portable for many users.

Originally Posted by hmurchison The UI argument needs further examination. While the UI elements would indeed shrink it's important to realize the abstraction between a drawn element and its corresponding "tap target" Apple suggests the minimum tap target size is 44x44 points but that doesn't mean that the drawn element needs to follow. Put more succinctly Robo's point about a developer wanting to keep a 1inch drawn target on all iPads may not be ideal as the developer could simply modify the tap target irrespective of the drawn element. The only limitation would be a crowded interface that does not allow expansion of the tap target.

That seems less than ideal to me, and you're still admitting developers (that cared about UX) would have to modify their apps.

Originally Posted by hmurchison I contend that an overabundance or over-reliance on tappable targets is poor UI design in many cases.

I mean, I agree, but talking about how things should be doesn't really change anything. "It's okay that shrinking the iPad would make smaller buttons harder to use because, well, developers shouldn't use so many buttons anyway!" doesn't get us anywhere in the real world.

Originally Posted by hmurchison iOS is simply not OS X reduced down and simplified it's an new way of interacting with content and if the task manager Clear can deliver touch control with nary a button on the UI then developers need to look at how they can reduce the clutter of buttons and enable more intuitive swipes and other gestural controls. This makes for a more transportable UI across various sizes of mobile devices.

I like Clear, but it works because it's for power users. It's for people who seek it out and buy it and buy it because it's gesture-driven. If every app was like Clear, your average user wouldn't know how the hell to do anything once they turned on their iPad for the first time.

I subscribe to Gruber's analogy that gestures are like keyboard shortcuts. In that sense, Clear is like, idunno, Quicksilver? Super efficient for the people who want to get used to it, but not at all appropriate as the default UI for everything.