[seajewel]

okay, I broke down and ordered. Which is a complete 180 from where I was during the event. I guess I can officially be called an apple fangirl. I won't keep it if I don't like it, and I really might not--retina was supposed to be a dealbreaker for me. i actually spent most of the past few days thinking I would order an iPad 4, but I changed my mind during the past hour. Because I had an iPad 3 and ended up returning it--I had problems with bad tint and in the end decided that it was large and heavy enough that often when I wanted to browse the internet I'd grab my phone instead for quick stuff, even though the screen is way too small (iPhone 4.. still using and won't update for a while still). I was really hoping to hold out until the next iPad, which I figured would be thinner, lighter.. well now with the refresh to the innards, I have no idea when that refresh is going to be so I was going to grab the iPad anyways and just sell/upgrade next year. (iPad seems to hold value pretty well..) but when I thought about it, I decided that iPad 4 will, like the 3, of course, be too heavy for my needs (browsing/reading in bed.. although the size would have been much better for work PDFs) and the iPad mini.. well, yes, it's expensive and the performance specs are not that impressive. but it's around 10oz for a 7.9 in screen, and you *do* get quite a bit more screen real estate at that size along with the aspect ratio. That makes it lighter and bigger than anything in the same class. and I like iOS apps.

I feel kinda like a failure to report this on mobileread haha but I'm not married to the device and not at all adverse to returning if the screen quality is too big of a disappointment. I fully expect to be happy with the size and weight. We'll see, I guess. what I really want is the iPad 5, which I hope will be 20% lighter than the current iPad.. but that doesn't exist yet.

I probably should have considered android more, but my entire workplace uses iPad, Scrivener for iOS is supposedly coming soon, and that alone would tie me to iOS forever* (or at least until an Android vers. comes out, but that's not til later..) the Nook HD+ was very interesting to me (but I hate the way B&N handles side-loading) and I was also curious about the rumored Nexus 10, but honestly, I just look at the weight of the iPad mini and nothing really compares for the screen size you get.

*I almost want a Mac just to use Scrivener 2.0. and I have always hated OsX since my college made us use it. That's how much I love Scrivener.