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> Steve once said netbooks were dead, then released a laptop in exactly that form factor (11 in MBA). Clearly there was market demand for it, and I assume their

> Steve once said netbooks were dead, then released a laptop in exactly that form factor (11 in MBA). Clearly there was market demand for it, and I assume their must be demand for both sizes here as well. Just a point of clarification on netbooks. Netbooks were a flop because they were bulky, slow, hard to type on, had terrible screens, and came with minuscule trackpads. The air was none of those things, and was the progenitor of a new class of laptop that would be known as "Ultrabooks".

sangnoir 8y ago
Another example was when Steve said 7-inch tablets were "too small" and you'd need to file-down your fingers to use them (not sure what you'd need to operate 3.5-inch iPhones then). He said this while Apple had the 8-inch iPad mini in development. SJ was a salesman - he'd say untrue things to make his product look good, like trash-talking 5.5-inch phones(!) and saying "no-one wants 'Hummer' phones" while - you guessed it - Apple had larger phones in the pipeline, because the demand was there.
- eisa01 8y ago
  The iPad Mini has 4:3 screen ratio, so quite a bit larger and more useful screen than the 7" 16:9 Android tablets Same with the netbooks, weren't those often 9" 16:9 with terrible Atom CPU and slow HD?
  - philwelch 8y ago
    It's kind of shitty and deceptive to measure screen size by the diagonal. You could have literally a single row of pixels 15 inches wide; does that mean you have a 15 inch display?
    - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
      How would you recommend we measure screen size? Length x Width I assume is the obvious one, but that’s harder to compare. I suppose you could argue comparing diagonals isn’t a good benchmark either, but it works well enough when screens tend to have similar aspect ratios, as they mostly do.
      - int_19h 8y ago
        HxW would be easier to compare if anything. Today you have to look at the aspect ratio to even figure out what the diagonal really means (and the difference between, say, 2:3 and 16:9 is huge).
      - philwelch 8y ago
        Square inches is also a single dimension.
        Wowfunhappy 8y ago
        Ooh, I really like that one! Measuring area makes a lot more sense.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  Do you think Apple already had larger phones in the pipeline at the time of Steve Jobs’s death? I think the slightly larger iPhone 5 probably was, but not the iPhone 6 or 6+.

sangnoir 8y ago

Another example was when Steve said 7-inch tablets were "too small" and you'd need to file-down your fingers to use them (not sure what you'd need to operate 3.5-inch iPhones then). He said this while Apple had the 8-inch iPad mini in development. SJ was a salesman - he'd say untrue things to make his product look good, like trash-talking 5.5-inch phones(!) and saying "no-one wants 'Hummer' phones" while - you guessed it - Apple had larger phones in the pipeline, because the demand was there.

eisa01 8y ago
The iPad Mini has 4:3 screen ratio, so quite a bit larger and more useful screen than the 7" 16:9 Android tablets Same with the netbooks, weren't those often 9" 16:9 with terrible Atom CPU and slow HD?
- philwelch 8y ago
  It's kind of shitty and deceptive to measure screen size by the diagonal. You could have literally a single row of pixels 15 inches wide; does that mean you have a 15 inch display?
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    How would you recommend we measure screen size? Length x Width I assume is the obvious one, but that’s harder to compare. I suppose you could argue comparing diagonals isn’t a good benchmark either, but it works well enough when screens tend to have similar aspect ratios, as they mostly do.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      HxW would be easier to compare if anything. Today you have to look at the aspect ratio to even figure out what the diagonal really means (and the difference between, say, 2:3 and 16:9 is huge).
    - philwelch 8y ago
      Square inches is also a single dimension.
      - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
        Ooh, I really like that one! Measuring area makes a lot more sense.
Wowfunhappy 8y ago
Do you think Apple already had larger phones in the pipeline at the time of Steve Jobs’s death? I think the slightly larger iPhone 5 probably was, but not the iPhone 6 or 6+.