5 ms·
Congrats to Steve and the Apple team. The iPad 2 is a phenomenal product. 33% thinner design in less than a year since it was first released. And crazy cool
by dave1619 16y ago
Congrats to Steve and the Apple team. The iPad 2 is a phenomenal product. 33% thinner design in less than a year since it was first released. And crazy cool covers as a bonus.
- kaerast 16y agoOr was the first version 33% thicker than it needed to be to give them an easy win in version 2?
- hartror 16y agoThis isn't entirely a crazy idea. Seeing as they were already setting the bar for tablets they could afford to make it thicker that they needed to. In all likelihood it was more of an economic consideration, larger components being cheaper, but knowing they had the ability to make it thinner and lighter later would have been part of the medium term plans.
- jpark 16y agoActually, at very high volumes (where the non-recurring engineering cost is sufficiently amortized), the larger equivalent component is more expensive, since you are using more material to manufacture the component. Obviously, other factors, like process yield can be a factor here as well, since a lower process yield for the smaller component would increase its price.
- hartror 16y agoOther factors include things like larger components might use cheaper materials and factories need to be tooled up to produce newer components.
- ugh 16y agoCompetitors’ tablets aren’t any thinner. That’s what you would expect if Apple had made the first iPad purposefully thicker than they could have done. They probably didn’t spend much time optimizing the thickness the first time around. I would guess that they made a ton of dummy mockups, figured out some sort of maximum thickness to still get a compelling product and designed the first iPad with that goal in mind. Could they have released a thinner iPad last year? Probably, but it might well have taken them a few months longer. It’s simply a matter of priorities. You can’t do everything. I don’t for one second believe that they already had the design for a thinner iPad drawn up and added some thickness in the last minute just to make their job easier.
- uptown 16y agoI knew a guy that used to apply this principle to coding. He'd put a bunch of while loops counting from one to a gazillion that could be removed at a later time during "optimization".
- jpr 16y agoHow did he make sure that the compiler wouldn't optimize them away?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- ajays 16y agoYou mean, 50% thicker than it needed to be....
- robin_reala 16y agoWell, the camera was left out of the first version for that reason (presumably). Remember the slot left in the back of the bezel that took a standard iPod sized camera module?
- artsrc 16y agoWhen does a thinner iPad matter? When holding an iPad up as a book a lighter iPad matters, and it is 15% lighter. When you pack it away the iPad gets thicker anyway because you stick a case around it.
- GHFigs 16y agoI'm going to take a wild guess and say Apple's Smart Cover is 33% as thick as the previous iPad.
- whatusername 16y ago33% thinner is an engineering achievement.
- jsz0 16y agoBeing thinner should allow for a better grip -- especially for little hands. My totally unscientific reasoning is the more efficiently you can transfer the weight into your fingers (being spread wider) the more comfortable it will be to hold the weight. This can also help with wrist fatigue if it allows you to find a more comfortable resting position. Lastly the sharper angle on the back should make it easier to lift when sitting flat on a surface. Perhaps all small things but for hours of usage it can add up.