February 15, 2012, 8:30 AM — We're riding the crest of another wave of iPad rumors this week so it felt like a good time to do another recap. Everyone seems pretty sure that Apple will have some kind of event to announce new iPads during the first week of March (the bolder sources say March 7th, to be exact).
It looks like we may be talking about more than just a single tablet though. Following in the format of the current iPad will be a new, faster 10" (technically, 9.7") model and '3G' models will be replaced with 'LTE' models. Good news for those of us who live in LTE coverage, I suppose. iPad 3 will jump the screen resolution to a 2048-by-1536-pixel Retina display and will probably have a quad-core A6 chip inside.
So that's interesting but not too surprising, though that kind of screen resolution would certainly be eye-popping. But a more interesting rumor is that Apple may also be planning a smaller tablet. The source of this rumor appears to be The Wall Street Journal, and it all sounds a bit vague to me. WSJ doesn't specify the exact size of this new device but the blogosphere seems to have picked up 8" from somewhere. That of course means it's a bit larger than Amazon's Kindle Fire and a bit smaller than Sony's Tablet S. The Journal suggests this device would have the same screen resolution of the current iPad 2 (1024x768).
Some speculate that a smaller iPad would be a direct response to the Kindle Fire, which is the only non-iPad tablet to really get any kind of significant market share.
Personally I think it's a good idea to introduce a smaller iPad if Apple is serious about iBooks. The iPad is a great device but it's not really a laying down device for many people. If you're someone who reads in bed (and I don't have scientific data but I suspect most readers read in bed at least on some nights) the iPad feels a little ungainly and there's almost too much screen real estate there. You can tweak the margins to get a comfortable line width of course, and some people certainly don't have problems, but we old-timers with tired eyes can have a hard time tracking across the width of an iPad.
A smaller, lighter iPad would make a much nicer e-reader, and of course it'd be slightly more portable. With a 1024x768 resolution it ought to still offer a good video experience. And of course it would (presumably) be a lot cheaper than the 10" iPads.
Bottom line is that the idea of an 8" iPad makes a lot of sense to me. I have a Kindle Fire and it's more comfortable to read from than my 10" tablets, but it feels just a tad small. 8" sounds about perfect for a device you're going to use primarily as an e-reader. Apple can't replace their 10" models; 10" is great for web surfing, RSS reading and most apps, including gaming.
The downside of another screen size is, of course, fragmentation. Right now iOS devs have to worry about only two screen sizes: iPhone and iPad. It's possible that adding a third size might add some complexity to iOS development.
What about you? Would you buy an 8" iPad or do you think Apple should stay focused on a single tablet size?
Read more of Peter Smith's TechnoFile blog and follow the latest IT news at ITworld. Follow Peter on Twitter at @pasmith. For the latest IT news, analysis and how-tos, follow ITworld on Twitter and Facebook.
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