What's the right size for a tablet?

I originally wrote this way back in December of 2011, but it holds today.

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With the advent of the Kindle Fire, rumors are starting to swirl that Apple will make a similarly sized iPad.  I hope this doesn't turn out to be true. If anything, I hope they go a little larger; here's why:

I have (and use for hours every day) an iPad 2, an iPhone 4S and a third generation Kindle (not the Fire).

The iPhone is always on me. I am of the generation that doesn't mind the belt holster look; it helps me recall my slide rule days. Honest to God, I used to wear a slide rule in a leather holster in the 7th grade. I have read that the average smart phone is rarely more than 5 feet away from the owner, and that is certainly true for me. With my new eyes, I can see it fine. And even though I have guitar playing fingernails, I generally type with a stylus. More and more, I am using Siri and the other voice input functions of the newest iPhone.




I carry the iPad around with me. I take it to lunch. I take it to bed with me. I evidently have a deep personal relationship with my iPad! But like virtually every other iPad user I have seen, I keep mine in a case that then folds open and props the iPad at various angles. So it's quite comfortable to use it sitting down or lying in bed. I take it to meetings and type (or handwrite) my notes on it.

The closest I can come to personal experience with the Kindle Fire is my Kindle ebook reader. It's actually smaller than the Fire, with a 6" screen. It's very light and compact. But interestingly. it is more work to hold it than to let the iPad rest on my lap. Still, I like it for two reasons: I actually read whole books rather than letting my ADHD get the better of me, and I can read it in bright sun.

But here's the thing: even this smaller unit is too big to stick in a pocket. And even if I could, I'd be worried about breaking it.

So I don't get the point of a 7" tablet. You sacrifice a lot of screen real estate and end up with a unit that you still need to carry around. Maybe if I used a purse, I could see the attraction of slipping it in there, but otherwise? Otherwise, I would use my iPhone. In a pinch I can read Kindle books and surf the web on my iPhone. It isn't ideal, but as they say, the best camera is the one you have on you. This is true for web activities as well. The best web device is the one you have on you. And in the iPhone's case, it's also the camera. It's a guitar tuner and metronome. It's a GPS.

So my vote would be for a 10 or 11 inch iPad. If you could do that and keep the weight close to the same then I would be thrilled. Magazines would look gorgeous. Videos would be better. I could put it on my music stand and display full pages of musical scores that I could actually read. None of that would be true with a 7" tablet, and yet it would be too big for a pocket.

Now I can foresee the day when flexible displays allow a unit to fold up like a book. In that case, if I could safely keep that in a rear pocket of the pants, by all means give me a 9 1/2 inch display that I can quickly open up. While we're at it, make it a phone in the closed position.

Better still, and inevitable, will be the contact lens screen. But for the time being, if I have to carry it I'd rather have a bigger display.