Apple’s iPad Mini: iFrustrated

Apple’s iPad mini is frustrating to use.

My first impression is, “wow, this thing is slow! where’s my laptop?”

From the unresponsive touchscreen during web browsing, to the slow response time when typing, the iPad mini feels like a knock off tablet that you’d find at a flea market, with far more inferior specs than the iPad mini’s dual core A9 1ghz, 512mb RAM, and the IPS lcd. How times have changed…and left the iPad in the dust.

Perhaps, the latest iOS 8 is to blame for the largely SLOW and frustrating user experience. But, with competitors fielding eight-core (Exygnos) tablets, with better battery life, and faster hardware than the iPad mini, I’m convinced the iPad’s aging hardware is holding it back. Putting aside the differences between Android and iOS, for the price of an iPad mini, you can find a much better performing device.

Let’s start with the iPad’s extremely slow user experience. With multiple tabs open, Safari feels unresponsive when I click on another tab. It’s almost like the thread for the tab must be taken out of a sleep queue. It’s frustrating to wait the second or two for a previously loaded tab, to reload. Also, notice how a background tab doesn’t continue loading? Secondly, this is what typing feels like on the iPad mini: Th (pause 1 second) is a (pause .5 second) tes(pause)t sent(pause)ence. Stop the madness! Similarly, scrolling response time was so atrocious that I began thinking the screen protector was affecting it. It wasn’t.

Clearly, Apple’s famously intuitive user experience is no more. I remember how magical the iPhone 3GS and iPods felt in the hand, effortlessly loading pages and divining your gestures. However, Apple hardware is lagging, literally. When these products were introduced, they were simply the best. But the market has changed and Apple products, especially the iPad mini, are riding on their reputations but not on their actual merits.

Don’t believe me? Try out one of Samsung’s, Acer’s, Android or Windows tablets running on the Intel clovertrail cpu’s. I think you’ll be surprised by what you find.