Yup, size does matter.  My friend Roger and I talked about this a while ago and have video to show for.  I haven’t gotten around to editing the video content on iMovie but hopefully soon.

It seems that the Apple-Samsung trial is simply highlighting something which we already knew about Apple.  What they may share publicly may not always end up being the case.  Apple is known to counter earlier claims and then release something that contradicts earlier statements.

Steve Jobs on the iPod and video:

“We want it to make toast.”

“We’re toying with refrigeration, too.”

I’m not convinced people want to watch movies on a tiny little screen”

“To paraphrase Bill Clinton, ‘It’s the music, stupid, it’s the music!’ Music’s been around for a long time, will continue to be, it’s huge.”

In 2005, two years after the above comments were made, Apple released the 5th Generation iPod with a 2.7 inch screen for video.  In 2007, Apple released a 3rd Generation iPod nano with a 2.0 inch screen for video. 

Steve Jobs on 7” tablets in 2010:

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.

…

These are among the reasons we think the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA, dead on arrival. Their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small and increase the size next year, thereby abandoning both customers and developers who jumped on the 7-inch bandwagon with an orphan product. Sounds like lots of fun ahead.  (Source: CNET)

When Steve/Apple made these comments, I didn’t believe Cupertino.  I purchased an iPad Gen-1 based on Steve Jobs’ living room chair demontration and after some use, I found the form factor to be just right to displace content consumption (video, digital books, music) away from a laptop.  Boy, did it ever.  Almost overnight, I was browsing, reading, viewing and listening to all my content off the iPad vs. my Macbook.

However, something did not happen.  I did not take my iPad with meeverywhere.  Relegated to the living room, Starbucks, backyards, the hammock, my bed, a couch, and the front porch, I was iPad-friendly in these instances but I simply did not find 9.7 inches a friendly force while commuting to and from locations.  On transit,  I was starting to lust for a smaller form factor that could be carried in cargo pants and which made it easy to hold up and read in crammed environments. In iPad terms, that was a whale of a form factor that simply didn’t work.  Also, the iPad was still too much of a novelty with a high price point.  I didn’t feel like walking around with such a costly device while reading signs on transit services warning me to keep an eye out for my smartphone and other “valuable” devices.

So I got a Kindle DX.  Smaller, far more portable, and useful for “reading” while on the go, this completely filled my need to reader portability.  As a result, I find myself using the Kindle far more often for reading (the device is WiFi only and browsing is horrendous on this unit so scratch that option). 

Now there are rumours of Research in Motion and Amazon coming out with their own “iPad-sized” Kindle Fire and Playbook models while rumours swirl about Apple finally coming out with an iPad mini in the 7” form-factor.  It seems this may be slightly true if the following internal Apple email string validates a future truth.

There’s no doubt, Apple got it wrong on size.  Every form factor fits a specific need.  For me, a smaller iPad (like the current Playbook) is the ultimate form-factor for reading on the go and its release could kill original (non-Android) Kindle devices that deliver single-purpose functionality in a 7” form factor.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens.

However, in the eyes of RIM, Samsung, Apple and Amazon, it looks seems as if sizes does matter so we can expect 7” and 9-10”competing tablets to keep us happy in 2012 and beyond.