The iPad Mini's screen doesn't have the same "resolutionary" Retina display as its bigger brother, but don't worry: the Apple snobs appear to have gotten over that. After spending time with his new baby-tablet, The New York Times's Nick Bilton gave in, calling the gadget his new "Desert Island Device." (It replaced his iPhone, by the way.) The inferior screen had worried Bilton like it had others, but no longer: "I used it for two weeks and my concerns about the screen’s quality are completely irrelevant." It's not that Bilton prefers the "fuzzy" screen, as he called it. But the portability of the lightweight Mini outweighs that for him, making this tablet, in his opinion, really the best tablet Apple has ever made.
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Considering all the fawning over the Retina display on the iPad proper, it's pretty amazing to see reviewers toss that upgrade for something that Steve Jobs forbid the company to create. Bilton's not the only one to prefer the new cousin, even if it is technically worse. Noted Apple-phile Jonathan Gruber said he hadn't touched the fourth-generation iPad that Apple released this year as well "I’ve gone small and fuzzy," he wrote. When the Retina display first came out, Gruber called it "pure joy" for his "dream iPad." But a funny thing happened on the way out of the hype cycle: Apple put out something the masses were supposed to like more than the techies, and that just made everyone like it even more. Call it a holiday miracle, but the Apple snobs may be snobs no more.