ipad mini needs

Rumors of an upcoming iPad Mini are abundant.

As usual, all the tech bloggers are very concerned with things such as pricing, market position, technical feasibility, etc. What a bunch of boring guys.

Now, bear with me for just a few moments, because all I want to do is tell you why I’d like an iPad Mini:

1. to read pdfs; using every now and then my wife’s iPad I realize that it is the best way to read magazines and study/annotate scientific articles. A smaller iPad would be just fine for me because otherwise I would end up just leaving it at home.
2. to collect my photos in a portfolio (which means at least 32 Gb for me).
3. to mess around with snapshots (I won’t say “edit” because I feel that real editing can only be done with a bigger computer); I have had recently so much fun playing with Snapseed and Diptic on my iPhone that I think using them on a larger display would only make things even more fun. What I’m thinking is iPhone shots, not Nikon D7000 shots, instantaneously zapped to the iPad Mini via iCloud.
4. Aperture/Lightroom library editing on the go; there are these apps (Pixelsync and Photosmith) that allow you to do what I think is the most tiresome yet essential activity in photo editing — pruning the bad apples, deciding what’s a keeper. I would like to use one of these apps while I’m watching The Wire on the couch.

So that’s all I want to do on an iPad¹. And if I could do these things on a much cheaper device (€200-250) then I would seriously consider buying one.

The only thing that could be a deal-breaker: non-retina screen. After having used the iPhone 4S retina screen I would have troubles adjusting to a lesser quality screen, especially considering that 60% of what I’d do is reading.