

The Design Bankruptcy Of iPad Mini Clones - mikecane
http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/the-design-bankruptcy-of-ipad-mini-clones/

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rayiner
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.

~~~
skyebook
+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.

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binderbizingdos
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)

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

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EliRivers
Is this satire? I can't tell anymore.

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

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raganwald
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.

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6ren
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".

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ihuman
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.

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ben1040
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.

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jrockway
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.

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rqwerwqerwr
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?

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jrockway
_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.

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acc00
Now Apple wasn't the first to offer a 7" tablet, was it?

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

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

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TelmoMenezes
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.

