The iPad mini is, for my money, the perfect iPad as far as form factor is concerned. But man, that 1024 x 768 display just looks like garbage once you’ve gone Retina. So while I have (and love) my iPad mini as an e-reader, I won’t get rid of my Retina iPad until the iPad mini can match it, pixel for pixel.
I doubt I’m alone in this, which is why everyone’s eagerly waiting for the iPad mini 2. Apple obviously wants to put a Retina display in the next-generation tablet, but the question remains: is the technology (and the production yields) there yet to make it a reality? Not in 2013, according to a new report.
Taiwan’s Economic Daily News says that because there are display panel shortages, Apple won’t be able to release a Retina iPad mini later this year alongside the new, improved iPad 5.
Instead, what they seem to see Apple doing is releasing a low-res version of the second-gen iPad mini this year, then perhaps beefing it up with a Retina display during a mid-cycle update in early 2014, similarly to the way the third-gen iPad was replaced within 6 months with the more powerful, Lightning-equipped iPad 4.
Sounds plausible to me, which makes the prospect of buying a low-res iPad mini 2 this year even less palatable than it was before. On the other hand, at least there’ll still be some point to the iPad 5 when it’s released, if only for a few months.
Source: Economic Daily News
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
