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Apple introduces iPad mini built for Apple Intelligence

(www.apple.com)
317 points diwank | 5 comments | 15 Oct 24 14:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.893s | source
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vjulian ◴[15 Oct 24 20:39 UTC] No.41852864[source]▶
I have an older (but not old) Mini, and I find it almost unusable, as screen elements don’t scale up. For example, Safari browser buttons are stupidly small. Is that still an issue with the Mini?
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1. rconti ◴[15 Oct 24 23:05 UTC] No.41854019[source]▶
Yes. The mini feels like an abandoned product. In landscape mode, the keyboard takes more than half of the screen. UI elements are routinely covered up in various apps. For example, in Flighty, the flights "drawer" cannot be hidden in the way it can on the iPhone. This is probably fine in a larger iPad, but on the Mini, it covers more than half the screen, meaning it HIDES THE AIRPLANE ICON of the flight you're tracking. Apple Maps has a similar behavior with its drawer in portrait mode, but, IIRC, at least that one can be hidden.

I've owned 8 or 10 tablets in my life and never gotten along with any of them. The Mini6 is my latest experiment, and it's my favorite, but I still find myself rarely using it.

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2. kyleee ◴[16 Oct 24 01:17 UTC] No.41854723[source]▶
I wish Steve was still alive to have a rampage through the org and humiliate and fire all those responsible for this type of BS
3. mckn1ght ◴[16 Oct 24 02:14 UTC] No.41854977[source]▶
Have you tried using the floating keyboard? I exclusively use it on my iPad not only for saving the screen real estate but also because I can swype on it (even though I can touch type on the big on-screen keyboard just fine; I still find it more convenient to swype with one of my thumbs, or the pencil https://support.apple.com/en-us/111789
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4. rconti ◴[16 Oct 24 15:23 UTC] No.41860179[source]▶
Thanks! I haven't -- or, at least, not in a long time. Wow, the UX is terrible! I accidentally first dragged my kyeboard into split mode before reading the instructions. Then I've managed to get it into floating but it was hard to re-dock, and the first few times i tried to move it anywhere, i got some unintended feature enabled. Yikes.

I'll have to remember to use it next time i'm bothered by it covering some control. I still haven't made friends with swype, but I do use it occasionally.

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5. mckn1ght ◴[17 Oct 24 15:58 UTC] No.41870862{3}[source]▶
Yes, I remember it being really finnicky when it was first released, and lots of head scratching getting the docked version back. I don't know which iOS version you're using, but I was pleasantly surprised by the newer ability to pinch/reversepinch to shrink/grow it between floating and docked in newer versions, I think that's a recent development.