iPad Air vs. Retina iPad Mini: Which tablet is right for you?

The iPad Air is here. The new iPad Mini will follow later this month. But how can you choose between two tablets with nearly identical specs?

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

Apple's newest iPad, the iPad Air, is finally here -- it's available online and in stores in 42 countries and territories starting today. But before you rush out and order one, remember: this isn't the only iPad. In late November, the second updated Apple tablet of 2013, the iPad Mini with Retina Display, will be released as well.

So, which iPad should you get?

Let's assume you're already reading this article because you want to buy a new iPad versus another tablet. The decision becomes this: iPad Air or Retina Mini? Based on what we've seen so far, the decision's never been harder to make. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

First off: don't get the iPad 2
I can make this real easy for you: don't get the iPad 2. It's $399 for 16GB of storage. It first came out in March 2011. And, you can buy a far faster, Retina-enabled new iPad Mini for the same price. Last year's iPad Mini, now at $299, is a more attractive proposition; it also has newer cameras. Keep in mind, though, that the extra $100 should buy you much better performance to go with that improved screen.

iPad Mini, iPad Air, fourth-gen iPad: a gradual progression.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET )

Retina Mini and Air: two different-sized peas in the same pod
Both the iPad Air and iPad Mini with Retina Display have, from what we can see, entirely identical specs. Both have A7 processors. Both have the same-resolution Retina Display. Both start with 16GB of storage. Both have 5MP rear cameras and improved front-facing cameras. Both have, according to Apple, up to 10 hours of promised battery life. Neither has Touch ID. They even have the same colors.

These are the same iPad, in two slightly different sizes: 9.7-inch, and 7.9-inch. Both have 2,048x1,536-pixel resolutions, at 264 vs. 326 pixels per inch. For comparison, either one tops the pixel density of last year's Mini (163). Can you tell the difference between those pixel densities? My guess is no. It will mean some in-app text is inevitably smaller on the Mini.

The key differences: Price and size
The iPad Air weighs a pound, and has a 9.7-inch screen. It starts at $499. The iPad Mini with Retina Display weighs 0.73 pound and has a 7.9-inch screen. It's also a hundred dollars less, starting at $399.

Those are, really, the only hardware differences that we can see. The iPad Mini should perform the same, although we haven't tested one at CNET (Apple says the Retina Mini will be available in late November): there's always a chance that the Mini doesn't have quite as good a battery life as the Air, which topped 12 hours on our tests. But assuming it matches Apple's claims, you're really saving $100 by getting a physically smaller display with higher pixel density.

Is your eyesight bad? Get the iPad Air. I've used an iPad Mini for a year, however, and its screen is plenty large for reading books or magazines.

Productivity? Lean to Air
I've been able to get a lot of work done on an iPad Mini. It's not as ideal for every task, but it works. If you're a hard-core write-on-an-iPad person, the Air's physically larger size and virtual keyboard might make more sense. But you can do everything else fine on a Mini. It's just more compact. For me, that e-reader-plus-extra feel of the Mini made it a perfect companion.

Mini: seem right to you?

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

Saving $100: does that sound good to you? Go Mini
The Retina Mini offers a very similar product, for $100 less at the same storage configurations. Saving $100 on a Mini means you essentially can get a 32GB Retina Mini for $499, or get the 16GB LTE version for $30 more than a Wi-Fi Air. Or, that savings can go toward a keyboard case or other accessory. Or, you just save $100.

iPad Mini and fourth-gen iPad keyboard cases: big difference in size. It'll be similar with Mini and Air.

(Credit: Scott Stein/CNET)

Do you use a keyboard case? Go Air
The iPad Mini keyboard accessories I've used just don't feel comfortable: they compress keys and remove keys to fit the dimensions of the Mini. Older, "large" iPads have excellent keyboard accessories, wide and normally spaced with a very comfortable feel. I haven't used any iPad Air keyboards yet, but they're bound to be more generous than Mini keyboards. You could always prop a Mini up and use a full-size Bluetooth keyboard, but it'll feel a little more clunky.

If you're a big keyboard typer, get the Air.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Is bigger better?
My advice is, get thee to an Apple Store and just look at the size of the Mini and 9.7-inch iPad screens. See if that 7.9-inch screen works for you. You don't need to see the Retina version to understand if the display feels too small for your everyday needs.

I like smaller travel tech: I gravitate toward the Mini, especially since it seems to have no compromises. Some people prefer the 11-inch MacBook Air to the 13-inch. I think it's a similar analogy here: it depends on how small you want your bag to be.

Is there a wrong decision? 
Here's the best news: you can't really go wrong. They should both be fast, have up-to-date displays, and are closer in size and weight to each other than ever before. So, you save a hundred dollars and get a physically smaller screen, or you don't. If you can't get a Retina Mini or don't want to wait, I don't think you'll regret getting the iPad Air much. Ask a 13-inch MacBook Air owner how they feel about not owning an 11-inch. It's a fine difference, and perhaps too fine to obsess over.

These two products are closer than ever: the gap between last year's 1.4-pound fourth-gen Retina iPad and 0.68-pound non-Retina Mini was immense. This year, there's barely a gap at all.

But just remember, the Retina Mini is on the way, and isn't here yet. Don't forget about it. I'd get the Retina Mini if I had a choice. You, though, may not agree.

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Motorola Wants Everyone To Build Smartphones Like Lego Kits

Introducing Project Ara, an experiment from Motorola aimed to creating smartphones made out of modular open source hardware.

Google has teased us before. Rumors swirled for months that Motorola would introduce a customizable smartphone that would let consumers decide what kind of hardware—a bigger battery, choice of processor, a better camera—they wanted. The notion of a consumer-grade open hardware platform quickened the heartbeats of geeks across the globe.

What we got instead was the Moto X, a smartphone that can be “customized” bypicking your colors, getting an engraving on the back and adding a personalized message to the startup screen. This was not the revolution in smartphone hardware we wanted.

Still, Motorola’s engineers were paying attention. Today the company announced Project Ara, an open hardware platform where users can pick and choose what type of components they want to build their smartphones.

The Module Connects To The Endoskeleton

Motorola has been thinking about Project Ara for a year. It started the campaign with a project called “Sticky,” a truck wrapped in Velcro and loaded with rooted and hackable Motorola smartphone components and 3D printing equipment. The truck would hold “MakeAThon” events with engineers who would take the raw components and build their own smartphones. 

Project Ara aims to take that concept to its logical conclusion. According to Motorola, Project Ara is a “free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones.”

The devices are built out of what Motorola calls endoskeletons and modules. The “endo” is the frame of the device, while the modules are the hardware, which could be just about anything that a hardware developer could dream up. Want a smartphone that specializes in barometric readings and air humidity? If someone designs and builds a module focused on sensor capabilities, you could add it to an endoskeleton—although with other modules like a CPU, storage, a camera, a radio and so forth.

To build modules for Project Ara, Motorola will make an alpha release of a “Module Developer Kit,” or MPK, within the next few months.

The Real Life Phonebloks

When I first saw Phonebloks, I thought it was a joke. An interesting one, but still a joke. Phonebloks was a video created by Dave Hakkens, a Dutch designer who envisioned a smartphone that consisted of a universal motherboard and hardware blocks that could be placed on to it like Legos to give you a highly customized smartphone. 

The video concept of Phonebloks (below) in intriguing indeed. Alas, most people dismissed it as the pipedream of a designer with too much time on his hands. 

Motorola didn’t see the video and dismiss it. The company met with Hakkens and tapped into the growing community of Phonebloks realists. And now we have Project Ara, the potential fulfillment of Hakkens’ vision.

If you know about how computers are made, it was easy to ditch Phonebloks as some weird dream. Hardware at the smartphone level is highly customized to run with mobile operating systems it is built for. If you want a camera in your smartphone, it has to be able to work with Android or iOS or Windows Phone and be compatible with the computer processor and the graphics processor and a variety of other hardware and software elements.

An open hardware platform where users could add whatever components they want willy nilly? It's a quality-assurance nightmare.

Project Ara will likely run into the problem of compatibility as open source hardware developers build new modules for the experiment. As the creator of the project, Motorola is going to have to introduce certain standards and practices to the platform to make sure all the components of an Ara smartphone play nicely with each other. The biggest mountain Ara may have to climb will likely involve getting open source module builders on the same page.

Let’s be clear: Ara is an experiment. One that could’ve been cooked up on a university campus somewhere, where students tinker with their own open-sourced-hardware smartphones, but never bring a real device to market. Students at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass., have done similar projects.

But if Motorola can actually create a viable commercial project out of Ara, it would be the epitome of the do-it-yourself maker movement—not to mention a fulfillment of the dream sparked by those early Moto X rumors.

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Smoking really does make you look older, a twin study confirms

Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery/American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

The twin on the right is a smoker; the twin on the left is a nonsmoker.

You know smoking doesn’t do any favors for your face – or your lungs, or your heart, or just about any other part of your body, for that matter! – but a new study of twins hints at the ways the habit makes you look older than you really are.

In what is perhaps the best detail of the study, researchers used the annual Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio (the "Largest Annual Gathering of Twins in the World!") to round up the 79 identical pairs they include in the report. A panel of three plastic surgery residents compared the faces of the twins, one of which had been smoking for at least five years longer than the other.

They identified a few major areas of accelerated aging in the faces of the smoking twins: The smokers' upper eyelids drooped while the lower lids sagged, and they had more wrinkles around the mouth. The smokers were also more likely to have jowls, according to the study, which was published today in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

Plastic and Reconstructive Surge / American Society of Plastic Surg

Both twins are smokers. The twin on the right smoked 14 years longer than his brother.

Smoking reduces oxygen to the skin, which also decreases blood circulation, and that can result in weathered, wrinkled, older-looking skin, explains Dr. Bahman Guyuron, a plastic surgeon in Cleveland, Ohio, and the lead author of the study.

The logic of research like this and others like it is this: If threats of cancer, heart and lung disease, or the dangers of second- and third-hand smoke aren’t enough to get people to stop smoking, or to never start in the first place, then why not try appealing to people’s vanity? (The same tactic has been used in an attempt to warn young people away from tanning.)

But if you’re currently a smoker, the point of this research is not to make you feel bad. Because stopping or cutting back on the habit now can make a difference -- in all aspects of your health, including the skin damage to your face. Even the twins who smoked just five fewer years than their siblings had younger-looking faces, the study shows. 

“We tell people, as soon as they stop smoking, the repair to not only to their skin but their lungs, their heart vessels -- it starts to repair itself,” says Dr. Robin Ashinoff, medical director of of dermatologic surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey.  

Plastic and Reconstructive Surge / American Society of Plastic Surg

The twin on the left is a nonsmoker and the twin on the right smoked for 29 years.

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New Google Glass is on the way

(CNN) -- A new version of Google Glass, the company's breakthrough entry into the world of wearable tech, is on the way. Current testers, or "Explorers," in Google's parlance, will get a chance to swap out their current models for the new ones, the company said in a Google+ post.

 The new Google Glass hardware will work with eyeglasses or shades, and include an ear bud to replace the speaker in the current model. The bone-conduction speaker, which, similar to some hearing aids, literally sends sound waves through the skull to the ear, has been called faulty by some testers. The swap begins Friday and testers will have 60 days to decide if they want new Glass. The roughly 10,000 current testers also be able to invite up to three friends into the program, which requires testers to fork over the current $1,500 price of the glasses.

 "Over the next few weeks, all Explorers will have the opportunity to invite three friends to join the program," the post said. "They'll be able to buy Glass online and can have it shipped to their home, office, treehouse or igloo. We're counting on you to get Glass to the people you think will make great Explorers."

 Google has not said when Glass will go on sale to the general public, though it is expected to be some time next year. Google Glass, worn like regular glasses, has a high-resolution display and lets wearers use voice commands to shoot photos or videos and access features like e-mail, text messaging, Google Maps, Google search and a handful of other apps. It's not clear what hardware changes will be made to make the new Glass work better with other eyeglasses, though some in the tech press were speculating that users will be able to insert prescription lenses into it.

It's possible to wear both Glass and eyeglasses currently, though many users who have tried have called it awkward. The post didn't say how the overall design of Glass will be tweaked in the next version. Looking a little bit like something out of an '80s sci-fi movie, some have said the device looks ... well ... goofy, at least on the sometimes geekish early adopters who have been sporting them.

Glass has been a groundbreaker in wearable tech, a movement that's shaping up to be the coming wave in the technology world. Samsung has weighed in with Galaxy Gear, a smartwatch that works with its Android smartphones. Google and Apple are believed to be joining the smartwatch market soon, and Pebble and Sony are just a couple of the other names that have wristwatch tech for sale.

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