近来，关于苹果（Apple）正在打造一款小尺寸iPad的传言甚嚣尘上。投资公司Sterne Agee的分析师吴肖（音译）是资深苹果观察员，本周二，他拉开了新一轮猜测的序幕。吴肖对投资者表示，“迷你”版iPad的推出只不过是时间问题。小尺寸版iPad推出的确切时间难以预测，但不会是近期。

    吴说的很可能没错。不过，值得一提的是，史蒂夫•乔布斯生前就曾公开发表过对“迷你”版平板电脑的看法。早在2010年10月，乔布斯罕见地出席了苹果公司的季度营收电话会议，猛烈抨击了谷歌（Google）的Android移动平台。随后，他话锋一转，谈到平板电脑，说了下面一席话（特别强调）：

    我想谈谈将在未来几个月内铺天盖地进入市场的平板电脑。首先，其中有可能成功的产品似乎屈指可数，其实算不上铺天盖地。第二，这些产品几乎全都选用7英寸屏幕，而iPad采用的是近10英寸的屏幕。我们就从这儿开始吧。人们自然会认为，7英寸屏幕相当于10英寸屏幕的70%。不幸的是，事实远远不是这样。屏幕的尺寸是对角线，因此，一块7英寸屏幕的面积只相当于iPad10英寸屏幕的45％。你没听错，只有45％。

    如果把iPad竖起来放在身前，然后想象着在其屏幕中间画一条水平线，那么7英寸平板电脑的屏幕要比这条中轴线还要靠下。我们认为，这种尺寸的屏幕根本无法让平板电脑应用程序获得理想的效果。

    当然，也许可以增加屏幕分辨率，从而在一定程度上弥补尺寸的不足。但这毫无意义，除非同时给这种平板电脑配上砂纸，用户可以用它来打磨自己的手指，把手指的尺寸缩小到原来的四分之一。多年以来，苹果在触摸界面领域进行了大量用户试验，我们对此早已了然于心。在保证用户能流畅地点击、滑动和触摸元素的前提下，触摸屏上各种元素之间的距离肯定是有下限的。正是因为这个原因，我们认为10英寸屏是平板电脑必须的最小尺寸，只有这样，才能保证应用程序的理想效果。

    但话又说回来，众所周知，乔布斯在2004年也曾经过否认苹果正在开发手机，但实际上苹果当时正在开发iPhone。所以，乔布斯一年半前的这番演讲很难让苹果的竞争对手们放心（他们在平板电脑领域至今仍无法与苹果抗衡）。吴表示，价格更低的迷你版iPad将是“竞争对手们最大的梦魇”。

    译者：项航

    Rumors that Apple is building a smaller iPad have been picking up steam for some time. On Tuesday, Sterne Agee analysts Shaw Wu, a veteran Apple watcher, kicked off a new round of speculation when he told investors that an iPad "mini" was a question of when, not if. Wu said that the exact timing of the smaller tablet was difficult to predict and not "imminent."

    Wu may well be right. Still, it's worth remembering what the late Steve Jobs said publicly about "mini" tablets. Back in October 2010, he made an unusual appearance in the Apple's (AAPL) quarterly earnings conference call to deliver withering tirade against Google's (GOOG) Android mobile platform. Then he switched to tablets and said the following (emphasis added):

    I'd like to comment on the avalanche of tablets poised to enter the market in the coming months. First, it appears to be just a handful of credible entrants, not exactly an avalanche. Second, almost all of them use seven-inch screens as compared to iPad's near 10-inch screen. Let's start there. One naturally thinks that a seven-inch screen would offer 70% of the benefits of a 10-inch screen. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. The screen measurements are diagonal, so that a seven-inch screen is only 45% as large as iPad's 10-inch screen. You heard me right; just 45% as large.

    If you take an iPad and hold it upright in portrait view and draw an imaginary horizontal line halfway down the screen, the screens on the seven-inch tablets are a bit smaller than the bottom half of the iPad display. This size isn't sufficient to create great tablet apps in our opinion.

    Well, one could increase the resolution of the display to make up for some of the difference. It is meaningless, unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one quarter of the present size. Apple's done extensive user-testing on touch interfaces over many years, and we really understand this stuff. There are clear limits of how close you can physically place elements on a touch screen before users cannot reliably tap, flick or pinch them. This is one of the key reasons we think the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps.

    Then again, Jobs famously denied Apple was working on a phone back in 2004 just as Apple was, well, working on a phone. So it's unlikely that Jobs' 18-month-old tirade gives Apple rivals, who have been unable to compete in tablets so far, any comfort. Wu said a smaller iPad, at a lower price point, would be "the competition's worst nightmare."