From the standpoint of a mobile developer and a user of one of Samsung's 7" tablets, the 7" form factor is too big for phone apps to really feel right on it, and too small for the big tab apps to be naively scaled down and feel right. So any Apple tablet at that size will suffer from a lack of good software until everyone catches up.
On the plus side, with the entry of an Apple device, there will be a much greater incentive to create workable design paradigms for the form factor, and both Android and iOS devices this size will benefit.
You're assuming that an iPad mini screen would be roughly as usable as a nexus 7 screen, but if the rumours are correct they would be very different. The Nexus 7 has a 'letterbox' widescreen aspect ratio compared to the iPad's chunkier 4x3 screen. Also the iPad screen would be 40% bigger. These are not small differences.
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From the standpoint of a mobile developer and a user of one of Samsung's 7" tablets, the 7" form factor is too big for phone apps to really feel right on it, and too small for the big tab apps to be naively scaled down and feel right. So any Apple tablet at that size will suffer from a lack of good software until everyone catches up.
On the plus side, with the entry of an Apple device, there will be a much greater incentive to create workable design paradigms for the form factor, and both Android and iOS devices this size will benefit.
You're assuming that an iPad mini screen would be roughly as usable as a nexus 7 screen, but if the rumours are correct they would be very different. The Nexus 7 has a 'letterbox' widescreen aspect ratio compared to the iPad's chunkier 4x3 screen. Also the iPad screen would be 40% bigger. These are not small differences.