I tweeted last week about the seemingly odd decision by
Apple to give
iPad a 4:3 screen. 4:3 has the connotation of being old and antiquated. People associate 4:3 with their old, analog, CRT televisions. 4:3 is the past. 16:9 is much more 21st century. People associate 16:9 with their sleek new wide-screen, high definition, LCD TVs. Why then did
Apple choose to put a 4:3 screen on the iPad?
This TiPb article sums it up well. One of the major functions of the thing is to watch movies. Movies are generally 16:9, which means they will be letter-boxed when viewed on iPad, wasting a large chunk or screen real estate. On the other hand, the iBook reader app would be significantly more awkward to use on a 16:9 screen than on a 4:3 screen. So the generally accepted theory is that the 4:3 aspect ratio was a trade off. I'm inclined to agree.
It just goes to support what I've said so many times before. Multi-purpose devices necessarily perform each of their purposes less well than does a dedicated device. I would much rather have both a 16:9 video-pad and an e-ink based e-reader like Kindle than a single device that letter-boxes my movies and forces me to read on a back-lit LCD.
February 7 by 
Nowhere Man
