More Than One Way to Skin a Cat

Tim Bray’s “Year’s End View of the Mobile Market” is a great read. I like that he’s an Android guy, I’m an iPhone guy, but yet we’re largely in agreement about where things are heading. I do disagree with one of his points, though:

Apple will totally do a 7” device. Anyone who’s spent quality time reading books or playing games on the Galaxy Tab knows; there’s a great big hole in the ecosystem that needs something bigger than a handset but that still fits in one hand and you can use for four hours in a row sitting up. This argument is over.

There are all sorts of reasons why Apple probably doesn’t want to release a 7-inch iPad. But I say take a step back, and think only about the problem. The problem is that it’s nice, for certain tasks, to be able to hold a tablet in one hand, but you can’t do that with the current iPad. I think Bray’s mistake is assuming that using a 7-inch display is the only way to solve that problem.

Update: Of course, the simpler answer is that Bray may be wrong about the balance of the trade-off between screen size and device weight.

★ Thursday, 30 December 2010