- Jun 25, 2004
- 5,530
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- 106
Over the Thanksgiving holiday I was gifted my first Apple product, an iPad Mini, by my grandmother-in-law. On the box was a note saying (roughly) "Now I can talk to you guys over the computer". I rolled my eyes at this as we have Skyped with her in the past, but the grandparents are an Apple family and if it isn't Facetime, it probably doesn't count.
Firing the iPad up for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised by the screen, despite its resolution. Contrast and colors are decent. My Nexus 7 2012 has more screen real estate for videos, though the Mini is lighter and thinner, with smaller bezels. It isn't a very good aspect ratio for watching videos, and I don't think it supports USB OTG (?) which would make my portal hard drives and flash drives rather useless.
During setup my wife opted out of most of what it offered. After passing on iCloud, she got an email saying "Thank you for signing up for iCloud". She was a bit peeved at that, which made me laugh. She's pretty insistent about keeping background data mining out of her life, which includes things like using 3rd party browsers, anti-tracking plugins, leaving location services off on our devices, etc.
Facetime impressed us. The clarity of video and audio are significantly better than that of Skype, which is already in another league from anything else we've tried (looking at you, Hangouts Video). Unfortunately only around half of our relatives have Apple products, and we only have the one device with which to Facetime. I'm under the impression that Facetime can't be installed on Android, ChromeOS or Windows devices, which makes it pretty inconvenient.
We checked the app store for games, having heard that iOS has a much better selection, but didn't find anything immediately interesting. Not to say there won't be any games we'll like, just haven't found them yet. As a rule, we don't spend more than maybe $2-3 on apps, and most of the ones we buy on Android we get using free Play credit from opt-in surveys. iOS games/apps look to be considerably more expensive on average. She tends to enjoy digital versions of board games, such as Carcassonne, of which there are some high quality free or very cheap versions of in the Android app store.
One that she had been excited about was Cat Spanish by Memrise, but after about 15 minutes she was prompted to spend $8 to continue using the app. It looks to be a very high quality app, but I can't imagine spending $8 on it.
We loaded up Hearthstone and collected our free packs for playing a game on an iPad, but overall I'm dissuaded from using the mini for it because of how slowly the game runs (~10-15fps). Wondering if all iPads ran the game this slowly, I decided to see which model of iPad Mini she had gifted us. Apparently Best Buy was having a sale for the 2012 model, and she picked it up at an "incredibly low" $230.
~
Overall, the Mini strikes me as a very nice 2012 device, but I'm shocked Apple is selling devices from 2012. The one game I was interested in is nearly unplayable. It's a little smoother overall than my Nexus 7 2012 and has excellent build quality, but still feels like a lesser device compared to my brother's 7 2013, which can be had for $80+ less. Overall, the tablet feels just as redundant as my Nexus, which was also a gift. I'd sell it, but we're basically obligated to use it for Facetime with her folks, so I'd like to make the best of it.
I like the idea of having access to the iOS app store, but so far I don't know what I'd use from it. Please, give me some recommendations for games/apps. Some of the apps I use often on my phone are emulators, torrenting apps, Torque (interfacing with my car), and the Google app suite. I use Pulse for magazines/news, but given that the iPad's screen is so bright even on its lowest setting, I probably won't use it for reading in bed. Mostly, I think I'll want some games for my wife that can be played offline in the car.
Firing the iPad up for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised by the screen, despite its resolution. Contrast and colors are decent. My Nexus 7 2012 has more screen real estate for videos, though the Mini is lighter and thinner, with smaller bezels. It isn't a very good aspect ratio for watching videos, and I don't think it supports USB OTG (?) which would make my portal hard drives and flash drives rather useless.
During setup my wife opted out of most of what it offered. After passing on iCloud, she got an email saying "Thank you for signing up for iCloud". She was a bit peeved at that, which made me laugh. She's pretty insistent about keeping background data mining out of her life, which includes things like using 3rd party browsers, anti-tracking plugins, leaving location services off on our devices, etc.
Facetime impressed us. The clarity of video and audio are significantly better than that of Skype, which is already in another league from anything else we've tried (looking at you, Hangouts Video). Unfortunately only around half of our relatives have Apple products, and we only have the one device with which to Facetime. I'm under the impression that Facetime can't be installed on Android, ChromeOS or Windows devices, which makes it pretty inconvenient.
We checked the app store for games, having heard that iOS has a much better selection, but didn't find anything immediately interesting. Not to say there won't be any games we'll like, just haven't found them yet. As a rule, we don't spend more than maybe $2-3 on apps, and most of the ones we buy on Android we get using free Play credit from opt-in surveys. iOS games/apps look to be considerably more expensive on average. She tends to enjoy digital versions of board games, such as Carcassonne, of which there are some high quality free or very cheap versions of in the Android app store.
One that she had been excited about was Cat Spanish by Memrise, but after about 15 minutes she was prompted to spend $8 to continue using the app. It looks to be a very high quality app, but I can't imagine spending $8 on it.
We loaded up Hearthstone and collected our free packs for playing a game on an iPad, but overall I'm dissuaded from using the mini for it because of how slowly the game runs (~10-15fps). Wondering if all iPads ran the game this slowly, I decided to see which model of iPad Mini she had gifted us. Apparently Best Buy was having a sale for the 2012 model, and she picked it up at an "incredibly low" $230.
~
Overall, the Mini strikes me as a very nice 2012 device, but I'm shocked Apple is selling devices from 2012. The one game I was interested in is nearly unplayable. It's a little smoother overall than my Nexus 7 2012 and has excellent build quality, but still feels like a lesser device compared to my brother's 7 2013, which can be had for $80+ less. Overall, the tablet feels just as redundant as my Nexus, which was also a gift. I'd sell it, but we're basically obligated to use it for Facetime with her folks, so I'd like to make the best of it.
I like the idea of having access to the iOS app store, but so far I don't know what I'd use from it. Please, give me some recommendations for games/apps. Some of the apps I use often on my phone are emulators, torrenting apps, Torque (interfacing with my car), and the Google app suite. I use Pulse for magazines/news, but given that the iPad's screen is so bright even on its lowest setting, I probably won't use it for reading in bed. Mostly, I think I'll want some games for my wife that can be played offline in the car.
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