7 ms·

There's so much about this which is disingenuous. I'm not surprised by this, but it's worth pointing out some of the tricks Amazon are employing here: 1. Much

There's so much about this which is disingenuous. I'm not surprised by this, but it's worth pointing out some of the tricks Amazon are employing here: 1. Much More for Much Less. Much More is obviously the kindle fire HD, and Much Less is the iPad Mini. Heck, if you remove the 'f' of 'for' you get to the central point here which is to turn the choice into 'Much More or Much Less'. 2. Kindle Fire HD branding is used (sexy typeface, orange gradient), iPad mini has some weird typeface which a cynic might argue has been deliberately spaced to make it look antiquated and unprofessional. 3. The Kindle Fire is "stunning" and the iPad Mini is "standard". 4. Just because the iPad Mini display is high definition and has 30% more pixels than the iPad Mini, it doesn't mean that the iPad Mini is a "low resolution" display. 5. Because the iPad Mini has a bigger screen in the same overall form factor, they make the same point a different way ("30% more pixels than the Mini" => "216 pixels per inch"). If the Kindle had a bigger screen but lower PPI they'd put the screen size in here. 6. "Watch HD movies and TV" "No HD movies or TV". The phrasing here is very clever. To a technically competent individual it parses as "no HD content on iPad Mini, only standard definition". But the "and TV"/"or TV" phrasing means that an average consumer might assume that you can't get any TV shows on iPad Mini. 7. The screen of the Kindle Fire is odd looking. The iPad Mini behind it is on its default home screen. I'm guessing that the Kindle Fire has deliberately been shown all in black (with the bg the same colour as the bezel) because it makes it unclear where the bezel ends and the screen begins. (I don't know if this is the default setting of the Kindle Fire HD or not). 8. The iPad Mini has been photoshopped horribly. For a start I have no idea which iOS that is, but it's not the one which ships with the iPad Mini or the one which Apple are using in any of their promotional shots. If you overlay one of Apple's promotional shots on top and adjust the size and opacity, you'll see that the iPad Mini has been warped so that the icons seem slightly smaller and the positioning is off. 8. Ultra-fast MIMO Wi-Fi vs. A BLANK SPACE. Not even trashing the fact that there is Wifi in the iPad but it's not as fast. It looks like they just gave up at this point. Again, I'm not blaming Amazon for any of this. It's just interesting to see how much thought has gone into basically attempting to deceive consumers.

axx 14y ago
Don't tell us about "false marketing" on amazons side. Did you notice how Phil Schiller showed the iMac on Stage? He always talked about how thin it is and how incredible but he never showed the thicker part of the iMac. Also noticed that Apple ALWAYS showed every iMac from the side on there website? Since the new iMac, there is only a 20° angle to the iMac, so you can only see the thin border, but not the thicker part behind it. Oh, btw: have fun with your iPad mini.
- thornofmight 14y ago
  This apparently worked. I've only heard about the new iMac from apple.com and until reading this post I had no idea that it wasn't as thin as it appeared. I was so amazed when I saw it.
- Shivetya 14y ago
  Check out the iMac gallery on the Apple Store, the fifth and sixth pictures show a side view. I would expect the show they put on to only provide the best views of their products but at least you can find better pictures on their site.
  - JeremyBanks 14y ago
    I'm pretty sure they've included side views in their main product galleries before. I've looked at the previous lines, but I was surprised (and entirely lost interest in the product when it was clear they weren't willing to present it honestly) when this gallery was so misleadingly shot. Steve Would Never Have Let It Happen®. Seriously, their main selling point is "it's so thin" and they won't even show us how thin it is? That's not clever marketing, that's idiotic.
    - bradwestness 14y ago
      It's also a weird marketing tack to take since "thinness" doesn't really matter on a desktop system. It's another example of Apple's impressive ability to shift the conversation (as polshaw mentioned above) when their products don't come out on top in traditional specs.
pherk 14y ago
Why such a great support to Apple even when it is so evident that the mini iPad is a first generation product? I think it has become fashionable to praise Apple even when it falls short and bash others even when they exceed expectations. This is analogous to transforming from fanboyism to fanaticism. I hail from a place where the worth of 200$ or 300$ for a tablet cannot be justified, where we demand true value for money. So I guess I can look at these without any bias. I am quite confident that Apple's iPad mini will have better resolution (more pixels, to be clear) in its next version. And you will find yourself saying "yes, more pixels is better". Perhaps, Amazon is not the greatest competitor that Apple will face. Perhaps, it would be Samsung or Google. Amazon's products will not match Apple's perceived quality. Yet, these things do not change the fact that Amazon's price point would drive down the profitability of Apple products. And that, Amazon's price point will look attractive to certain segment of people (at least those like me, who believe in value for money).
- macspoofing 14y ago
  >Why such a great support to Apple even when it is so evident that the mini iPad is a first generation product? It's not really a first gen product. It's an iPad with the same aspect ratio, but a smaller screen.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  > I hail from a place where the worth of 200$ or 300$ for a tablet cannot be justified, where we demand true value for money. So I guess I can look at these without any bias. No, you just have a different bias. If a $100 difference in price is a lot to you but it's not a lot to me, then your definition of value and mine are likely to be very different. Value for money is tied into a whole load of things including how hard I had to work to get that money, what else that money might be spent on, what the improvement you get for that money is worth and so on. These things are all relative - when it comes to matters of opinion, it's best not to claim no bias, it's easier just to state your positions and assumptions and let others factor them in.
Kerrick 14y ago
> I'm guessing that the Kindle Fire has deliberately been shown all in black (with the bg the same colour as the bezel) You need to calibrate your monitor. The screen shown on the Fire is dark grey, but not black. I can clearly see where the screen ends on the top, right, and left. The bottom is a subtle gradient to black, though.
goatforce5 14y ago
> Again, I'm not blaming Amazon for any of this. It's just interesting to see how much thought has gone into basically attempting to deceive consumers. It says things that are strictly true and presents the Fire in the best possible light, while leaving off anything that might balance out the comparison. There's probably some weird parallel to Hacker News called Copywriting News where they're praising the people who created this promo.
- riffraff 14y ago
  >There's probably some weird parallel to Hacker News called Copywriting News where they're praising the people who created this promo. I want Copy News so much now :(
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- codeulike 14y ago
  "It says things that are strictly true and presents the Fire in the best possible light, while leaving off anything that might balance out the comparison." Sounds like every advertisement ever made.
polshaw 14y ago
I hope you are aware that apple does this too (and far better). I say this because I wouldn't see this type of post after an apple keynote. They are MASTERS of setting the conversation points. Take the iPhone4 launch. A new phone with a slightly higher resolution screen, but significantly smaller than the existing competition. Their framing, with retina branding, switched the existing conversation from screen size, not to resolution even (where apple had a minor lead, that would be soon overtaken) to PPI! There was almost no discussion of PPI before this. Apple competitors were now framed as 'worse' if they included a screen with the same resolution but bigger! Insane! Now fast-forward to 2012, and we have a new iPad marketed as 35% bigger screen (again they have found a metric that maximises the difference, which would normally be framed as the 7" vs 7.9"), no mention of resolution. Apple would never even show a competitor on their site, because they are the market leader.. but see Mac vs PC for what happens when they are not.
- axx 14y ago
  Good point on the Mac vs PC part.
- jusben1369 14y ago
  "Apple would never even show a competitor on their site, because they are the market leader.." - One thing that struck me from the iPad Mini announcement was just how much time they spent comparing it to the competition - a sure sign that they really do think there is competition now. Then they disappoint on the iPad numbers in their latest earnings - chalk that up to people waiting for iPad Mini's but that seems like only half the story - and I think we've got a real interesting battle on our hands. I wonder if Google was brilliant or lucky pricing the Nexus 7 at $199. They created this dilemma for Apple. They can't have the Mini cannabalize the more profitable iPad (the % of which must increase measurably by every $20 price differential) so they can't get close to $199. Amazon and Google smell blood in the water. iOS and the ecosystem is clearly superior to its Android brethren right now. However, a 65% premium for a device many acknowledge is a web surfer/facebook/email checker feels too rich. These guys will get a solid toehold in the market and in 2 - 3 years from now there will be an S III equivalent to the larger iPad's.
neya 14y ago
I recently read an article on HN wherein a user posted asking all of us to be 'civil'. This is the reason why HN isn't so civil. You like a product, you try to support as if you created it and as if the company cares for you, while in reality the company doesn't care about you and you're just doing free marketing for them. Not to say that you can't defend what you like, but most of what you've written here is very very subjective. One could argue otherwise too, and which is what is happening right here - You're adding subjectivity to your claims and provoking a 'fanboy' war. This is unacceptable. For example, if I were to counter you, I would then say the entire of Apple's presentations and Marketing is just plain BS. For example they frequently market saying "The world's best Operating System (referring to Mac OS)" or "The fastest phone ever" etc. while these are not true. The iPhone for instance, still runs on a dual core processor. How the fuck can it be the 'fastest' while high-performance quadcore chips were long released even before this phone came into existence? Where were you during Apple's presentations? I never saw you arguing "Hey that's not true, this is disingenuous" while they marketed their products in a similar fashion. So may I kindly request you to cut the crap and stop the bias and avoid provoking people into such techno-wars? Thanks
- coolnow 14y ago
  There will always be fanboys, but the sheer amount of Apple fanboys on HN is amazing. For a community with a supposedly higher intellect than others, to resort to petty comparisons and worshiping of a corporate giant is seriously pathetic.
- rimantas 14y ago
  > How the fuck can it be the 'fastest' while > high-performance quadcore chips were long released > even before this phone came into existence? Indeed how? How was scrolling on the first iPhone smoother than on current android devices running on said quad core chips? How about understanding that processor power is not all there is? > So may I kindly request you to cut the crap and stop the bias and avoid > provoking people into such techno-wars? And how about you following your own advice?
  - neya 14y ago
chucknelson 14y ago
Does anyone know where this "No HD movies or TV" thing is coming from? Can the iPad mini not play 720p content or something? A link to where this is stated would be helpful.
- chaz 14y ago
  I wrote this comment on a prior discussion about this: > SD vs HD, is dependent upon who you ask. The CEA, which represents the TV makers, says that anything with at least 720 lines is HDTV, thus enabling 1024x768 to be called HDTV. ATSC, which develops broadcast standards, says that HDTV should be 720 or 1080 lines at 16:9 aspect ratio, which implies 1280x720 or 1920x1080. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4710875 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4710875
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  I'm sure it can play an HD movie if that's the file you have, just the screen resolution is such that it won't appear as HD to your eyes. But this post is a wonderful example of the sort of doubt Amazon will be very happy to have spread as a result of the ads.
  - chucknelson 14y ago
    So Amazon is just saying that 720p is not HD enough? They have decided to define HD as high-dpi screens only all of a sudden? I guess it goes with their branding, but yeah, totally misleading.
    - smackfu 14y ago
      iPad mini can't play 720p either (1280x720) without scaling or cropping since the screen is only 1024x768.
- engtech 14y ago
  They're probably using 1080P as the definition of HD. The last time I looked at buying a movie in iTunes, the max resolution they sold was 720P.
TopTrix 14y ago
At first place, I thought you are Apple representative. Why are you so aggressive? These are the marketing tactics and do you thing Apple have never done this before?
macspoofing 14y ago
You're overthinking it. Amazon is basically saying the iPad Mini is underpowered and more expensive. Yeah, what else is new? If Apple competed on tech specs and price, they wouldn't have sold a single Mac in the last 15 years. Price and specs is not why people will be buying the mini.
- jrockway 14y ago
  Why will people be buying the Mini?
  - roc 14y ago
    Because it's Apple. People know Apple, they know how it will perform, they know it will run the Apps their friends talk about, they know the Apple stores are there if they need service, etc. The iPad Mini, instead of being a bold play to kill the 7" tablet competitors is (unsurprisingly, perhaps) merely a smaller iPad. Maybe a somewhat cheaper iPad, but not an appreciably cheaper tablet at it's size. And instead of shooting to further lower the price as advances roll down, it will almost certainly remain a smaller iPad, rather than a cheaper tablet; picking up the "retina" display and increasingly faster internals, rather than further cutting price. [1] [1] Except maybe that odd $29 'bulge'. Apple doesn't seem to keep those around. e.g. IIRC the last-gen iPod Touch rocked a $229 price on entry, but as soon as they could they knocked it down to $199 and intro'd the new model at $299.
    - jrockway 14y ago
      Don't most smartphone users have an Android phone? And wouldn't they therefore want to reuse the apps they've already paid for when they switch to a tablet?
      - bruceboughton 14y ago
        Apple devoted a whole segment of their iPad mini pitch to showing that Android tablet apps are often just upsized versions of the same UI as for phones, whereas iPad apps tend to be more often designed for the iPad screen. Whether you believe this or not, this is what Apple are telling consumers about app reuse on Android vs iOS.
michaelmior 14y ago
As far as the "Ultra-fast MIMO Wi-Fi", iPad Mini has that too. (I can only assuming they're referring to 802.11n)
- smackfu 14y ago
  Here's the slide from the Kindle HD announcement: http://www.androidcentral.com/amazon-hails-improved-mimo-wifi-kindle-fire-hd http://www.androidcentral.com/amazon-hails-improved-mimo-wif... At the time it beat the iPad 3 but I don't know if the mini changes that.
  - michaelmior 14y ago
    Hmm…iPad 3 supports 802.11n (which has MIMO) as well. Perhaps the Fire HD is still faster, but it seems disingenuous to leave the iPad column blank.
    - ssmoot 14y ago
      I could be mistaken, but: 802.11n supports MIMO, it doesn't imply it. MIMO is basically multiple antennas (I think). In real world applications I think the real benefit is increased range. In an office setting, I could definitely see that being useful.
  - sigzero 14y ago
    That probably was not against the latest iPad released the same time as the mini.
bradwestness 14y ago
I'm not really shocked by the slant to the advertisement. However it's interesting because Amazon is the world's largest online retailer, and they're using their advantage in that area to push their products, now that they make products. Seems like a poor path to go down if you want manufacturers to keep selling products through your store.
jrockway 14y ago
1. Much More for Much Less. Much More is obviously the kindle fire HD, and Much Less is the iPad Mini. Heck, if you remove the 'f' of 'for' you get to the central point here which is to turn the choice into 'Much More or Much Less'. You are reading way too deeply into this. Unless you have some research to back up your assertion that people frequently misread "for" as "or", it's hard to believe. 5. Because the iPad Mini has a bigger screen in the same overall form factor, they make the same point a different way ("30% more pixels than the Mini" => "216 pixels per inch"). If the Kindle had a bigger screen but lower PPI they'd put the screen size in here. To be fair, Apple started the density wars. Nobody knew what the acronym PPI meant until Apple started calling it a "Retina" display. It's strange that they can't continue to compete in this category, especially given the high price of their device. 7. The screen of the Kindle Fire is odd looking. The iPad Mini behind it is on its default home screen. I'm guessing that the Kindle Fire has deliberately been shown all in black (with the bg the same colour as the bezel) because it makes it unclear where the bezel ends and the screen begins. (I don't know if this is the default setting of the Kindle Fire HD or not). The bezel and the UI are different colors, the bezel is shiny while the UI is pure black at the top and has a silverish-black gradient behind the content. I have no trouble seeing where the (large!) bezel ends and the screen begins. 8. Ultra-fast MIMO Wi-Fi vs. A BLANK SPACE. Not even trashing the fact that there is Wifi in the iPad but it's not as fast. It looks like they just gave up at this point. What kind of Wi-Fi does the iPad have? If not MIMO, this seems to be a valid comparison point. (I would have preferred something more meaningful, like "3x3" or "450Mbps 802.11n", but I have an idea about what they mean.)
- eykanal 14y ago
  > It's strange that they can't continue to compete in this category, especially given the high price of their device. Given that Amazon posted a net loss this past quarter in part due to manufacturing expenses, I wouldn't call their strategy "effectively competing".
  - Kylekramer 14y ago
    While I am sure Amazon stockholders and financial types care very much about a net loss, the consumer market does not. They are very effectively competing in the market for tablets. Whether the way they are competing is good for business is an entirely separate matter.
smackfu 14y ago
Some of this is valid but a lot of it seems like a reach, like you were trying to pad out your list.
gws 14y ago
> 1. Much More for Much Less. Much More is obviously the kindle fire HD, and Much Less is the iPad Mini I guess they actually mean you can get much more benefits for much less money
taylonr 14y ago
Aren't points 1-8 commonly referred to as "advertising"?
Shorel 14y ago
> Much Less is the iPad Mini Not even likely. "Much less" is only about money: $199 vs $329
cma 14y ago
In the Apple keynote the nexus 7 looked a lot crappier than in real life; the bezel was all washed out grey instead of black etc.
dman 14y ago
Because Apple showed great sensitivity in their Vista commercials ?
CamperBob2 14y ago
This your first ad?

axx 14y ago

Don't tell us about "false marketing" on amazons side. Did you notice how Phil Schiller showed the iMac on Stage? He always talked about how thin it is and how incredible but he never showed the thicker part of the iMac. Also noticed that Apple ALWAYS showed every iMac from the side on there website? Since the new iMac, there is only a 20° angle to the iMac, so you can only see the thin border, but not the thicker part behind it. Oh, btw: have fun with your iPad mini.

thornofmight 14y ago
This apparently worked. I've only heard about the new iMac from apple.com and until reading this post I had no idea that it wasn't as thin as it appeared. I was so amazed when I saw it.
Shivetya 14y ago
Check out the iMac gallery on the Apple Store, the fifth and sixth pictures show a side view. I would expect the show they put on to only provide the best views of their products but at least you can find better pictures on their site.
- JeremyBanks 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure they've included side views in their main product galleries before. I've looked at the previous lines, but I was surprised (and entirely lost interest in the product when it was clear they weren't willing to present it honestly) when this gallery was so misleadingly shot. Steve Would Never Have Let It Happen®. Seriously, their main selling point is "it's so thin" and they won't even show us how thin it is? That's not clever marketing, that's idiotic.
  - bradwestness 14y ago
    It's also a weird marketing tack to take since "thinness" doesn't really matter on a desktop system. It's another example of Apple's impressive ability to shift the conversation (as polshaw mentioned above) when their products don't come out on top in traditional specs.

pherk 14y ago

Why such a great support to Apple even when it is so evident that the mini iPad is a first generation product? I think it has become fashionable to praise Apple even when it falls short and bash others even when they exceed expectations. This is analogous to transforming from fanboyism to fanaticism. I hail from a place where the worth of 200$ or 300$ for a tablet cannot be justified, where we demand true value for money. So I guess I can look at these without any bias. I am quite confident that Apple's iPad mini will have better resolution (more pixels, to be clear) in its next version. And you will find yourself saying "yes, more pixels is better". Perhaps, Amazon is not the greatest competitor that Apple will face. Perhaps, it would be Samsung or Google. Amazon's products will not match Apple's perceived quality. Yet, these things do not change the fact that Amazon's price point would drive down the profitability of Apple products. And that, Amazon's price point will look attractive to certain segment of people (at least those like me, who believe in value for money).

macspoofing 14y ago
>Why such a great support to Apple even when it is so evident that the mini iPad is a first generation product? It's not really a first gen product. It's an iPad with the same aspect ratio, but a smaller screen.
Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
> I hail from a place where the worth of 200$ or 300$ for a tablet cannot be justified, where we demand true value for money. So I guess I can look at these without any bias. No, you just have a different bias. If a $100 difference in price is a lot to you but it's not a lot to me, then your definition of value and mine are likely to be very different. Value for money is tied into a whole load of things including how hard I had to work to get that money, what else that money might be spent on, what the improvement you get for that money is worth and so on. These things are all relative - when it comes to matters of opinion, it's best not to claim no bias, it's easier just to state your positions and assumptions and let others factor them in.

Kerrick 14y ago

> I'm guessing that the Kindle Fire has deliberately been shown all in black (with the bg the same colour as the bezel) You need to calibrate your monitor. The screen shown on the Fire is dark grey, but not black. I can clearly see where the screen ends on the top, right, and left. The bottom is a subtle gradient to black, though.

goatforce5 14y ago

> Again, I'm not blaming Amazon for any of this. It's just interesting to see how much thought has gone into basically attempting to deceive consumers. It says things that are strictly true and presents the Fire in the best possible light, while leaving off anything that might balance out the comparison. There's probably some weird parallel to Hacker News called Copywriting News where they're praising the people who created this promo.

riffraff 14y ago
>There's probably some weird parallel to Hacker News called Copywriting News where they're praising the people who created this promo. I want Copy News so much now :(
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
codeulike 14y ago
"It says things that are strictly true and presents the Fire in the best possible light, while leaving off anything that might balance out the comparison." Sounds like every advertisement ever made.

polshaw 14y ago

I hope you are aware that apple does this too (and far better). I say this because I wouldn't see this type of post after an apple keynote. They are MASTERS of setting the conversation points. Take the iPhone4 launch. A new phone with a slightly higher resolution screen, but significantly smaller than the existing competition. Their framing, with retina branding, switched the existing conversation from screen size, not to resolution even (where apple had a minor lead, that would be soon overtaken) to PPI! There was almost no discussion of PPI before this. Apple competitors were now framed as 'worse' if they included a screen with the same resolution but bigger! Insane! Now fast-forward to 2012, and we have a new iPad marketed as 35% bigger screen (again they have found a metric that maximises the difference, which would normally be framed as the 7" vs 7.9"), no mention of resolution. Apple would never even show a competitor on their site, because they are the market leader.. but see Mac vs PC for what happens when they are not.

axx 14y ago
Good point on the Mac vs PC part.
jusben1369 14y ago
"Apple would never even show a competitor on their site, because they are the market leader.." - One thing that struck me from the iPad Mini announcement was just how much time they spent comparing it to the competition - a sure sign that they really do think there is competition now. Then they disappoint on the iPad numbers in their latest earnings - chalk that up to people waiting for iPad Mini's but that seems like only half the story - and I think we've got a real interesting battle on our hands. I wonder if Google was brilliant or lucky pricing the Nexus 7 at $199. They created this dilemma for Apple. They can't have the Mini cannabalize the more profitable iPad (the % of which must increase measurably by every $20 price differential) so they can't get close to $199. Amazon and Google smell blood in the water. iOS and the ecosystem is clearly superior to its Android brethren right now. However, a 65% premium for a device many acknowledge is a web surfer/facebook/email checker feels too rich. These guys will get a solid toehold in the market and in 2 - 3 years from now there will be an S III equivalent to the larger iPad's.

neya 14y ago

I recently read an article on HN wherein a user posted asking all of us to be 'civil'. This is the reason why HN isn't so civil. You like a product, you try to support as if you created it and as if the company cares for you, while in reality the company doesn't care about you and you're just doing free marketing for them. Not to say that you can't defend what you like, but most of what you've written here is very very subjective. One could argue otherwise too, and which is what is happening right here - You're adding subjectivity to your claims and provoking a 'fanboy' war. This is unacceptable. For example, if I were to counter you, I would then say the entire of Apple's presentations and Marketing is just plain BS. For example they frequently market saying "The world's best Operating System (referring to Mac OS)" or "The fastest phone ever" etc. while these are not true. The iPhone for instance, still runs on a dual core processor. How the fuck can it be the 'fastest' while high-performance quadcore chips were long released even before this phone came into existence? Where were you during Apple's presentations? I never saw you arguing "Hey that's not true, this is disingenuous" while they marketed their products in a similar fashion. So may I kindly request you to cut the crap and stop the bias and avoid provoking people into such techno-wars? Thanks

coolnow 14y ago
There will always be fanboys, but the sheer amount of Apple fanboys on HN is amazing. For a community with a supposedly higher intellect than others, to resort to petty comparisons and worshiping of a corporate giant is seriously pathetic.
rimantas 14y ago
> How the fuck can it be the 'fastest' while > high-performance quadcore chips were long released > even before this phone came into existence? Indeed how? How was scrolling on the first iPhone smoother than on current android devices running on said quad core chips? How about understanding that processor power is not all there is? > So may I kindly request you to cut the crap and stop the bias and avoid > provoking people into such techno-wars? And how about you following your own advice?
- neya 14y ago

chucknelson 14y ago

Does anyone know where this "No HD movies or TV" thing is coming from? Can the iPad mini not play 720p content or something? A link to where this is stated would be helpful.

chaz 14y ago
I wrote this comment on a prior discussion about this: > SD vs HD, is dependent upon who you ask. The CEA, which represents the TV makers, says that anything with at least 720 lines is HDTV, thus enabling 1024x768 to be called HDTV. ATSC, which develops broadcast standards, says that HDTV should be 720 or 1080 lines at 16:9 aspect ratio, which implies 1280x720 or 1920x1080. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4710875 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4710875
Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
I'm sure it can play an HD movie if that's the file you have, just the screen resolution is such that it won't appear as HD to your eyes. But this post is a wonderful example of the sort of doubt Amazon will be very happy to have spread as a result of the ads.
- chucknelson 14y ago
  So Amazon is just saying that 720p is not HD enough? They have decided to define HD as high-dpi screens only all of a sudden? I guess it goes with their branding, but yeah, totally misleading.
  - smackfu 14y ago
    iPad mini can't play 720p either (1280x720) without scaling or cropping since the screen is only 1024x768.
engtech 14y ago
They're probably using 1080P as the definition of HD. The last time I looked at buying a movie in iTunes, the max resolution they sold was 720P.

TopTrix 14y ago

At first place, I thought you are Apple representative. Why are you so aggressive? These are the marketing tactics and do you thing Apple have never done this before?

macspoofing 14y ago

You're overthinking it. Amazon is basically saying the iPad Mini is underpowered and more expensive. Yeah, what else is new? If Apple competed on tech specs and price, they wouldn't have sold a single Mac in the last 15 years. Price and specs is not why people will be buying the mini.

jrockway 14y ago
Why will people be buying the Mini?
- roc 14y ago
  Because it's Apple. People know Apple, they know how it will perform, they know it will run the Apps their friends talk about, they know the Apple stores are there if they need service, etc. The iPad Mini, instead of being a bold play to kill the 7" tablet competitors is (unsurprisingly, perhaps) merely a smaller iPad. Maybe a somewhat cheaper iPad, but not an appreciably cheaper tablet at it's size. And instead of shooting to further lower the price as advances roll down, it will almost certainly remain a smaller iPad, rather than a cheaper tablet; picking up the "retina" display and increasingly faster internals, rather than further cutting price. [1] [1] Except maybe that odd $29 'bulge'. Apple doesn't seem to keep those around. e.g. IIRC the last-gen iPod Touch rocked a $229 price on entry, but as soon as they could they knocked it down to $199 and intro'd the new model at $299.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    Don't most smartphone users have an Android phone? And wouldn't they therefore want to reuse the apps they've already paid for when they switch to a tablet?
    - bruceboughton 14y ago
      Apple devoted a whole segment of their iPad mini pitch to showing that Android tablet apps are often just upsized versions of the same UI as for phones, whereas iPad apps tend to be more often designed for the iPad screen. Whether you believe this or not, this is what Apple are telling consumers about app reuse on Android vs iOS.

michaelmior 14y ago

As far as the "Ultra-fast MIMO Wi-Fi", iPad Mini has that too. (I can only assuming they're referring to 802.11n)

smackfu 14y ago
Here's the slide from the Kindle HD announcement: http://www.androidcentral.com/amazon-hails-improved-mimo-wifi-kindle-fire-hd http://www.androidcentral.com/amazon-hails-improved-mimo-wif... At the time it beat the iPad 3 but I don't know if the mini changes that.
- michaelmior 14y ago
  Hmm…iPad 3 supports 802.11n (which has MIMO) as well. Perhaps the Fire HD is still faster, but it seems disingenuous to leave the iPad column blank.
  - ssmoot 14y ago
    I could be mistaken, but: 802.11n supports MIMO, it doesn't imply it. MIMO is basically multiple antennas (I think). In real world applications I think the real benefit is increased range. In an office setting, I could definitely see that being useful.
- sigzero 14y ago
  That probably was not against the latest iPad released the same time as the mini.

bradwestness 14y ago

I'm not really shocked by the slant to the advertisement. However it's interesting because Amazon is the world's largest online retailer, and they're using their advantage in that area to push their products, now that they make products. Seems like a poor path to go down if you want manufacturers to keep selling products through your store.

jrockway 14y ago

1. Much More for Much Less. Much More is obviously the kindle fire HD, and Much Less is the iPad Mini. Heck, if you remove the 'f' of 'for' you get to the central point here which is to turn the choice into 'Much More or Much Less'. You are reading way too deeply into this. Unless you have some research to back up your assertion that people frequently misread "for" as "or", it's hard to believe. 5. Because the iPad Mini has a bigger screen in the same overall form factor, they make the same point a different way ("30% more pixels than the Mini" => "216 pixels per inch"). If the Kindle had a bigger screen but lower PPI they'd put the screen size in here. To be fair, Apple started the density wars. Nobody knew what the acronym PPI meant until Apple started calling it a "Retina" display. It's strange that they can't continue to compete in this category, especially given the high price of their device. 7. The screen of the Kindle Fire is odd looking. The iPad Mini behind it is on its default home screen. I'm guessing that the Kindle Fire has deliberately been shown all in black (with the bg the same colour as the bezel) because it makes it unclear where the bezel ends and the screen begins. (I don't know if this is the default setting of the Kindle Fire HD or not). The bezel and the UI are different colors, the bezel is shiny while the UI is pure black at the top and has a silverish-black gradient behind the content. I have no trouble seeing where the (large!) bezel ends and the screen begins. 8. Ultra-fast MIMO Wi-Fi vs. A BLANK SPACE. Not even trashing the fact that there is Wifi in the iPad but it's not as fast. It looks like they just gave up at this point. What kind of Wi-Fi does the iPad have? If not MIMO, this seems to be a valid comparison point. (I would have preferred something more meaningful, like "3x3" or "450Mbps 802.11n", but I have an idea about what they mean.)

eykanal 14y ago
> It's strange that they can't continue to compete in this category, especially given the high price of their device. Given that Amazon posted a net loss this past quarter in part due to manufacturing expenses, I wouldn't call their strategy "effectively competing".
- Kylekramer 14y ago
  While I am sure Amazon stockholders and financial types care very much about a net loss, the consumer market does not. They are very effectively competing in the market for tablets. Whether the way they are competing is good for business is an entirely separate matter.

smackfu 14y ago

Some of this is valid but a lot of it seems like a reach, like you were trying to pad out your list.

gws 14y ago

> 1. Much More for Much Less. Much More is obviously the kindle fire HD, and Much Less is the iPad Mini I guess they actually mean you can get much more benefits for much less money

taylonr 14y ago

Aren't points 1-8 commonly referred to as "advertising"?

Shorel 14y ago

> Much Less is the iPad Mini Not even likely. "Much less" is only about money: $199 vs $329

cma 14y ago

In the Apple keynote the nexus 7 looked a lot crappier than in real life; the bezel was all washed out grey instead of black etc.

dman 14y ago

Because Apple showed great sensitivity in their Vista commercials ?

CamperBob2 14y ago

This your first ad?