Very good point on the need for a repetitive study system to be always available. The bit about iPad being too small comes from asking something like "why aren

Very good point on the need for a repetitive study system to be always available. The bit about iPad being too small comes from asking something like "why aren't textbooks the size of fictional paperbacks?" I suppose it could be just historical accident or the need for enough page mass that the book lays flat and open. But seems to me that the answer also includes something along the lines of different types of information being better shown at different sizes, with richer learning material needing more room. When the target users already carry a bag all the time, should portability of a textbook replacement be so overriding a concern that the area for showing and writing information is slashed by something like half (iPad screen to college notebook ratio) up front? Shouldn't form follow function a little more than that? The really old college textbooks (1950's and earlier) I have are actually smaller than modern versions, with text areas comparable or smaller than an iPad screen. So perhaps the question can be reformulated as "why did textbooks get bigger over the past century?" Or maybe there is just a lot less reasoning behind their sizes than I'm presupposing.