Back in the old days (of less than a decade ago), for any device that had a screen, users most lusted for the largest size they could get. Cost and space considerations might prohibit such a purchase, but “bigger is better” remained the mantra.
Old: Bigger is better
Interested in buying a laptop? It was the 17-inch model that turned the most heads. Deciding on a new iMac? If you had the dough, you got the one with the largest display.
Over the years, Apple’s Cinema/Thunderbolt Displays have increased in size from 22” to 27”. You can’t buy a smaller one today even if you wanted to do so.
Getting a new flat-panel television? The preferred choice has been the largest one that fits within your room and your budget.
New: Smaller is better
In the last few years, however, the apple of a tech user’s eye has often taken a U-turn.
Apple has eliminated any 17-inch laptop from its lineup. Even the 15-inch MacBook Pro seems to be falling out of favor, as the 13-inch size emerges as the new standard. For the MacBook Air, many reviewers cite the 11-inch model as preferable to the 13-inch. A similar situation exists with the iPad Air vs. iPad mini, with a majority of reviews (at least among the ones that I’ve read) leaning towards a preference for the mini.
That’s right…even techno-savvy “power users” that write reviews, and for whom price is usually not a prime consideration, often say they want the smallest model they can get. What a turn-around!
Apple’s new Mac Pro is being lauded for its small size, compared to the old Mac Pro behemoth…even though the size reduction comes at the expense of internal expandability.
Among flat-panel TVs, larger sizes still rule. But even here, I’ve noticed a trend towards downsizing from a few years ago. Buyers now seem more averse to getting a television that overpowers their room — unless they are setting up the room as a dedicated home theater. Users also seem increasingly content to watch movies on their iPads, skipping the larger television entirely.
What’s going on?
What exactly is going on here? What’s behind this seismic shift, with smaller now the new larger?
To some extent, it’s been developing for quite some time. Sales of laptops have long ago eclipsed desktop machines, despite a laptop’s much smaller display. In fact, many analysts predict that consumer desktop computers will disappear from the landscape altogether in the not-too-distant future. For most, the convenience of being able to move around with the computer outweighs all other considerations.
However, I trace the origins of the more recent surge to the arrival of the iPhone. The iPhone was the first device to offer most of the functionality of a laptop computer, but with a size that could fit in your pocket. Suddenly, mobility and portability were the buzz words of the day.
With the advent of the iPad, even laptops are now viewed as heavy and clunky in comparison. Tablets are well on their way to replacing laptops as the primary computing device of the masses.
Helping to fuel this transition are improvements in display quality. In the past, buying a small-sized device often required accepting a trade-off of an impractically tiny display. But with today’s higher resolution screens, including Apple’s Retina display, a small display can show an incredible amount of real estate and still have legible text.
The result is that smaller is not only more acceptable these days, but preferred — especially for those who place a high value on mobility. Such users increasingly extol the advantages of smaller. They complain that you can’t use a full-sized iPad with one hand or that a 15-inch laptop is too big to use within the confines of an airline seat. Smaller sizes are deemed more convenient for any sort of travel.
There remains one major exception to this shift: smartphones. Although Apple has so far largely resisted the trend, Android users have shown a preference for the largest phone that can fit in their pocket (or, in some cases, one too large to fit). There are now 6-inch Android smartphones! Perhaps conceding to this trend, there are rumors that Apple will release a larger iPhone later this year.
Of course, even a 6-inch phone is still quite small — compared to a tablet, a laptop or a desktop computer.
Overall, I view the shift towards “smaller is better” as part of a larger technological and cultural shift away from viewing computers as a “destination” (something you go to an office to sit down and use) towards becoming a transparent and ever-present part of our lives. I suppose the inevitable end-point will be when computers are implanted in our brains and have no external size at all. Not to worry. That’s still at least a few years away.