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Amazon.com criticising new iPad on homepage

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Re: Amazon.com criticising new iPad on homepage

#121

Post by FilterJoe »

The first 2 lines (display, PPI) and the price line are why I did not buy an iPad mini, which would have been my first tablet had it been priced at $200 or maybe even $249. So marketing is dead on, in my view.

Instead I bought an Apple-refurbished iPad 3, for $379, which is $79 more than the soon-to-be-shipped Kindle HD 8.9".

For $50 more than the Mac Mini I get a bigger and better display. And for $79 more than the Kindle HD 8.9 I get better apps and user experience.

EDIT: clarified what first 2 lines were

Re: Amazon.com criticising new iPad on homepage

#122

Post by moystard »

polshaw wrote: post #17
duiker101 wrote: post #2

I believe that what Gizmodo says is actually true and something that Apple "forgot" to mention when comparing(highlight the "good" things while omitting all the other things) the Nexus 7 with their new iPad so I do not blame Amazon for pointing it out to a wider public. If Apple wants to play this game, they must be ready to get fought back. EDIT: also, I still have no idea why isn't that thing Retina. I mean, they h…

> Why ? to put it in the next model to double the sales? Yes, apple has a long history of only releasing the stuff it needs to (arguably favouring stuff like battery life over these features-- iPhone without 3G, 4S with no LTE, etc), and then release an 'amazing' new version later. All the retina items (which doesn't include MBA, fyi), all had a non-retina alternative on launch, too. > To make it cheaper? It is not.…

Apple are known to take much bigger margins than competitors on their hardware. The reason has actually been given by Jeff Bezos during the Kindle HD announcement: Amazon wants to sell their ecosystem, their ebooks, movies and music; the hardware is only a gateway to allow users to buy from their store. Apple makes money on hardware itself and needs a bigger cut (even if they have an ecosystem on their own, much bigger that is in some domains).

Re: Amazon.com criticising new iPad on homepage

#123

Post by smackfu »

chucknelson wrote: post #67
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it can play an HD movie if that's the file you have, just the screen resolution is such that it won't appear as HD to your eyes. But this post is a wonderful example of the sort of doubt Amazon will be very happy to have spread as a result of the ads.

So Amazon is just saying that 720p is not HD enough? They have decided to define HD as high-dpi screens only all of a sudden? I guess it goes with their branding, but yeah, totally misleading.

iPad mini can't play 720p either (1280x720) without scaling or cropping since the screen is only 1024x768.

Re: Amazon.com criticising new iPad on homepage

#124

Post by gurkendoktor »

polshaw wrote: post #44
georgespencer wrote: post #16

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 (…

I hope you are aware that apple does this too (and far better). I say this because I wouldn't see this type of post after an apple keynote. They are MASTERS of setting the conversation points. Take the iPhone4 launch. A new phone with a slightly higher resolution screen, but significantly smaller than the existing competition. Their framing, with retina branding, switched the existing conversation from screen size, n…

I agree that Apple is great at marketing, but I also don't think that there is any lack of criticism/analysis online. I actually felt that they even failed to set the conversation point with the iPad mini - I have not seen one excited person on the internet, yet many comments complaining about the lack of a Retina screen.

Speaking of aggressive runner-ups, it will be interesting to see how Samsung behaves in the future. Right now, they are still at the "Mac vs PC" stage.[1][2] And they're highly effective too - they've pushed the Note form factor from ridicule into the mainstream. Are they too big already to launch another comparative ad campaign?

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf5-Prx19ZM, [2] http://www.droid-life.com/2012/09/17/this-full-page-galaxy-s...

Re: Amazon.com criticising new iPad on homepage

#125

Post by mtgx »

bornhuetter wrote: post #22
Spearchucker wrote: post #13

When you're a Microsoft, an Apple or a Google you have the money to create something truly epic - and none of them have. The Surface has great design, as do all of Apple's products. However the Surface, while having the potential for great software, comes with something not quite finished. So while it's eminently usable as it is, it falls short of greatness. The iPad Mini, similarly, has the quality one expects from…

I think they are all epic in their own way. Especially in the case of the Surface - it's the first version of the product! The original iOS and Android devices all had crappy or non-existant app stores when they were launched, and were plagued with problems and limitations. Similarly, for the right use-cases iPad Mini and the Nexus tablets are epic , and many people adore them.

What's so great about Surface besides its design and build material? I don't mean to knock on those. I think they are great, but that doesn't equal that the product overall is great. Windows RT is performing very poorly on an high-end ARM chip (don't want to imagine how it would perform on an older dual core ARM chip, or god forbid a single core one) compared to the true mobile operating systems like Android and iOS, and its app store is virtually non-existent. Office on it is also an exercise in frustration.

The price is also too high for what it offers. Even if the build of materials is exactly the same as the iPad 4 (I think it's lower), that doesn't mean it should cost exactly the same as an iPad 4. Because it offers lower value than an iPad (think ecosystem, brand, etc). I also don't think it's acceptable for a $500+ product to have such a low resolution anymore. And don't tell me it has an "extra 16 GB". It doesn't. It only has 17 free GB of storage.

Re: Amazon.com criticising new iPad on homepage

#126

Post by minton »

Doesn't matter how much better the specs on this device are. I'm uncomfortable using it to purchase content that can be revoked without warning or appeal[1] and nothing short of a popular article on Hacker News can reverse their decision (and only then as a PR issue).

I realize you're also "renting" content from Apple but the company doesn't have a history of abusing this and Amazon does.

1 - http://digitaljournal.com/article/335484

Re: Amazon.com criticising new iPad on homepage

#127

Post by taylonr »

georgespencer wrote: post #16

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 (…

Aren't points 1-8 commonly referred to as "advertising"?

Re: Amazon.com criticising new iPad on homepage

#128

Post by DannyBee »

jws wrote: post #19
duiker101 wrote: post #2

I believe that what Gizmodo says is actually true and something that Apple "forgot" to mention when comparing(highlight the "good" things while omitting all the other things) the Nexus 7 with their new iPad so I do not blame Amazon for pointing it out to a wider public. If Apple wants to play this game, they must be ready to get fought back. EDIT: also, I still have no idea why isn't that thing Retina. I mean, they h…

Best two reasons for not being retina: • panel availability at volume and price • power availability. Retina means about four times the power draw for rendering. Both of these will improve with time. Eventually retina will come.

Do you have any actual data to back up the second point? Don't get me wrong, I understand the fill rates necessary, but i keep hearing this with no real data.

After spending the past 6-8 months working with all sorts of embedded GPU's (mainly as an HTPC hobby on embedded boards), I kinda have serious doubts that the power usage is the factor here, and would like to see real data, not assumptions.

You are assuming that higher resolution requires linear scaling of number of cores/shaders/etc, and thus, 4 times the power. If it's displaying using 3D, it's definitely not true (it requires linear scaling of some hardware, but not all hardware, and thus, power usage is not necessarily going to be 4x).

On the 2D side, 2D cores have been so fast for the past "whatever" that it's not clear it would require any more power than normal.

In fact, the only articles i can find that did any real testing show the power usage is only increased about 30% (overall, including both panel and GPU) on a full sized laptop. Their methodology seemed very suspect, so I don't want to quote them here, just point out that there is some alternative claims.

I'm not trying to pick on you in particular, it just seems the common refrain for why the ipad mini is not retina, and i haven't seen a single shred of evidence to back it up.

Re: Amazon.com criticising new iPad on homepage

#130

Post by michaelmior »

smackfu wrote: post #120
michaelmior wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as the "Ultra-fast MIMO Wi-Fi", iPad Mini has that too. (I can only assuming they're referring to 802.11n)

Here's the slide from the Kindle HD announcement: http://www.androidcentral.com/amazon-hails-improved-mimo-wif... At the time it beat the iPad 3 but I don't know if the mini changes that.

Hmm…iPad 3 supports 802.11n (which has MIMO) as well. Perhaps the Fire HD is still faster, but it seems disingenuous to leave the iPad column blank.
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