John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Rumor Mill Ramps Up Production of Cheaper and Smaller iPads

The Apple rumor mill has kicked into overdrive in advance of next week’s iPad event, pushing out a pair of speculative reports this morning about what lies in the company’s product pipeline.

The most plausible: Taiwanese trade mag Digitimes’ claim that Apple plans to sell a cheaper, 8 gigabyte iPad 2 alongside the iPad 3 in a play for the lower end of the tablet market being staked out by Amazon’s Kindle Fire. I’ve heard nothing about such a plan, but it makes good sense. A new, low-capacity iPad 2 — priced at, say, $299 or even $349 — could wreak havoc on the low-end tablet market, clearing out a raft of struggling competitors and making the choice between Kindle Fire and iPad a much more difficult one for those consumers weighing the two.

The second report, also from Digitimes, is far less credible and resurfaces long-running rumors that Apple is gearing up to produce a “mini” iPad, a 7.85-inch device to compete with the Kindle Fire and Nook, which have created some demand for tablets with 7-inch displays. It’s widely known that Apple has experimented with an 8-inch iPad that would have a screen resolution similar to the iPad 2. But that doesn’t mean the company intends to ever bring the device to market.

As I’ve noted here before, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was a harsh critic of 7-inch tablets.

“One naturally thinks that a 7-inch screen would offer 70 percent of the benefits of a 10-inch screen,” Jobs said during a 2010 earnings call. “Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. … The reason we [won’t] make a 7-inch tablet isn’t because we don’t want to hit [a lower] price point, it’s because we think the screen is too small to express the software.”

Twitter’s Tanking

December 30, 2013 at 6:49 am PT

2013 Was a Good Year for Chromebooks

December 29, 2013 at 2:12 pm PT

BlackBerry Pulls Latest Twitter for BB10 Update

December 29, 2013 at 5:58 am PT

Apple CEO Tim Cook Made $4.25 Million This Year

December 28, 2013 at 12:05 pm PT

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