Amazon.com criticising new iPad on homepage

The iPad Mini's far from impressive DPI is no doubt the result of Apple not wanting to introduce another resolution into the iOS ecosystem (the Mini's resolution previously appeared on iPad 1 and 2). I don't think they were cutting costs with this panel, rather, you are seeing the non-resolution-independent iOS chickens coming home to roost as software limitations begin to hold back hardware innovation.

Apple needs to bite the bullet and implement true resolution independence in iOS and OS X otherwise every new device form factor (or Retina display, in OS X's case) is going to make things more and more painful.

I knew this was going to be an issue when they decided on a fixed resolution as well as a fixed DPI - they are very limited in what size devices they can now produce.

It has been of great short term benefit to them though, as it has been much easier for people to develop great looking apps for it.

I'm really curious to see if they do eventually go for resolution independence and lose the advantages that comes with it, in order to gain the flexibility of making a broader (or even just different) set of devices.

I wonder if even they have decided with certainty which way they are going to go.

There's so much about this which is disingenuous. I'm not surprised by this, but it's worth pointing out some of the tricks Amazon are employing here:

1. Much More for Much Less. Much More is obviously the kindle fire HD, and Much Less is the iPad Mini. Heck, if you remove the 'f' of 'for' you get to the central point here which is to turn the choice into 'Much More or Much Less'.

2. Kindle Fire HD branding is used (sexy typeface, orange gradient), iPad mini has some weird typeface which a cynic might argue has been deliberately spaced to make it look antiquated and unprofessional.

3. The Kindle Fire is "stunning" and the iPad Mini is "standard".

4. Just because the iPad Mini display is high definition and has 30% more pixels than the iPad Mini, it doesn't mean that the iPad Mini is a "low resolution" display.

5. Because the iPad Mini has a bigger screen in the same overall form factor, they make the same point a different way ("30% more pixels than the Mini" => "216 pixels per inch"). If the Kindle had a bigger screen but lower PPI they'd put the screen size in here.

6. "Watch HD movies and TV" "No HD movies or TV". The phrasing here is very clever. To a technically competent individual it parses as "no HD content on iPad Mini, only standard definition". But the "and TV"/"or TV" phrasing means that an average consumer might assume that you can't get any TV shows on iPad Mini.

7. The screen of the Kindle Fire is odd looking. The iPad Mini behind it is on its default home screen. I'm guessing that the Kindle Fire has deliberately been shown all in black (with the bg the same colour as the bezel) because it makes it unclear where the bezel ends and the screen begins. (I don't know if this is the default setting of the Kindle Fire HD or not).

8. The iPad Mini has been photoshopped horribly. For a start I have no idea which iOS that is, but it's not the one which ships with the iPad Mini or the one which Apple are using in any of their promotional shots. If you overlay one of Apple's promotional shots on top and adjust the size and opacity, you'll see that the iPad Mini has been warped so that the icons seem slightly smaller and the positioning is off.

8. Ultra-fast MIMO Wi-Fi vs. A BLANK SPACE. Not even trashing the fact that there is Wifi in the iPad but it's not as fast. It looks like they just gave up at this point.

Again, I'm not blaming Amazon for any of this. It's just interesting to see how much thought has gone into basically attempting to deceive consumers.

If I had to guess, I would say that the resolution dependence has been a major contributing factor to the high UI/UX quality in iOS applications. Yes, there are other aspects to consider, but this single design decision has a lot of benefits to developers.