On October 23rd 2012 Apple will supposedly unveil its newest iDevice to the world.  A 7 inch iPad unit.  I ask you this question though, is that a good thing?

Love it or hate it, the iPad has advanced the way we think about a computer.  Tablets have exploded in popularity thanks to Apple’s mainstream touch.  In 2010 the first generation of this device was release and sales were far bigger than expected.  Steve Job’s himself said that a lot of testing went into the development and a 9.7 inch screen is what worked the best.  This was during a conference call back in October of 2010, anything smaller just didn’t differentiate itself from the phones that are available.  He stated that the screen was just too small for the kind of software that they wanted to run on the iPad.  He also said that the human hand just doesn’t fit well enough to a 7 inch screen.  So, what’s the difference in 2012?

Well the difference is that Steve Jobs is no longer running Apple.  The company is no longer leading the way in tablet development.  I’ve stated many times on my articles and on our weekly podcast that I think Apple is starting to get a little too comfortable in their top position.  The iPhone hasn’t made any huge steps since the iPhone 4 was released 2 years ago, and the iPad 3, in my opinion, is actually a step backwards as it’s bulkier and thicker and only just as fast as the iPad 2.  Sure it’s got retina, but on a 9.7 inch display high resolution isn’t such a big deal.  Ask any knowledgeable tv guy and he will tell you that getting 1080p on a 32 inch tv just isn’t a big deal.  You won’t see any differences unless you hold the device right up to your face.  The iPad is held closer to your face than a tv, but it’s not held an inch from your face as it has to be to see the retina at it’s best.

Back to the issue at hand though.  All signs point to Apple releasing this 7 inch device and basically throwing out everything their old CEO had said.  Steve Jobs was a better salesman than innovator.  Not to say it wasn’t great at innovating, he just was better at selling us the device.  He brought Apple back from the brink of bankruptcy and got their stock higher than almost any other company.  He said no to the 7 inch iPad, and I think the reason for that is he knew that this product would cut sales from Apple themselves.  Do you want an iPad or iPod touch?  Well you can get a 7 inch iPad for $299 or spend $299 on the iPod touch…Hmmmm thats a tough decision.  Do you want a 9.7 display or 7 inch?  Let’s face it world, bigger is better.  For $399 do you want an iPad 2, which is what I own and a fantastic device that runs all apps and features of the iOS 6 (except siri, but her novelty wears off pretty quickly and you just want her to shut up sometimes).  Or do you want to spend $299 on a smaller screen with a slower processor and maybe less battery time (this is only an assumption by me at this time)?  I guess if Apple actually puts the same processor in the 7 inch as the iPad 3 and you get the same battery life out of it, then it will be a good product.  When does Apple give you what you want though?  Every time they release a product everyone ends up saying “I wish they would have given us this, or give us that.”

If Apple releases the iPad Hybrid(it’s a mix of the iPod and iPad) at $199 then they will blow their competition out of the water.  They will release it at $299 however and end up only taking larger sales away from themselves.  It’s going to be interesting to see what kind of quality they give us as well as the iPhone 5 has a lot of people saying it feels and looks kind of cheap.  More on this after the press release on October 23rd.

Here is the exact words from Steve Jobs himself when asked about a 7 inch ipad

If you take an iPad and hold it upright in portrait view and draw an imaginary horizontal line halfway down the screen, the screens on the seven-inch tablets are a bit smaller than the bottom half of the iPad display. This size isn’t sufficient to create great tablet apps in our opinion.

Well, 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 the present size. Apple’s done extensive user-testing on touch interfaces over many years, and we really understand this stuff. There are clear limits of how close you can physically place elements on a touch screen before users cannot reliably tap, flick, or pinch them. This is one of the key reasons we think the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps.

Third, every tablet user is also a smartphone user. No tablet can compete with the mobility of a smartphone, its ease of fitting into your pocket or purse, its unobtrusiveness when used in a crowd. Given that all tablet users will already have a smartphone in their pockets, giving up precious display area to fit a tablet in our pockets is clearly the wrong trade-off. The 7-inch tablets are tweeners, too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad.

Fourth, almost all of these new tablets use Android software, but even Google is telling the tablet manufacturers not to use their current release, Froyo, for tablets, and to wait for a special tablet release next year. What does it mean when your software supplier does not (inaudible) to use their software in your tablet? And what does it mean when you ignore them and use it anyway?

Fifth, iPad now has over 35,000 apps on the App Store. This new crop of tablets will have near zero. And sixth and last, our potential competitors are having a tough time coming close to iPad’s pricing, even with their far smaller, far less expensive screens. The iPad incorporates everything we have learned about building high value products from iPhones, iPods, and Macs. We create our own A4 chip, our own software, our own battery chemistry, our own enclosure, our own everything. And this results in an incredible product at a great price. The proof of this will be in the pricing of our competitor’s products, which will likely offer less for more.

These are among the reasons we think the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA, dead on arrival. Their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small and increase the size next year, thereby abandoning both customers and developers who jumped on the 7-inch bandwagon with an orphan product. Sounds like lots of fun ahead.