# Review of the Retina iPad Mini



## Holly (Mar 8, 2011)

Received mine two days ago shipped from China.  Have a 1st and 4th Gen. iPad to compare it too.  Bit of a learning curve with IOS7.  Will keep my review here to pertain to iBooks on it.  The new update to iBooks installed on this machine removes what was previously promoted as a selling feature.  Yep... gone is the nice looking wooden bookshelf.  It is replaced with a plain grey page.  Flat larger icons replace 3D icons of the previous Apple OS.  Functionality remains excellent but aesthetically it suffers in comparison.  I guess it doesn't matter when you are actually reading.  Page turning and book loading are both incredibly swift and reliable.  Animation is not altered.  Interesting, though is that yesterday, Nov 28th I visited the Apple Store to find out why my mini wasn't loading the familiar bookshelf.  Those on display still showed the wooden shelves.  Somewhat deceptive to leave the older version of iBooks on them when it isn't the version that will load on your new device. The techie told me it wasn't possible to backload a previous version.  Got home and looked at the reviews on the App store to find that there are many people equally unhappy with this change.  
Pros - fast and reliable
Cons- bland graphically


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## kwajkat (Nov 6, 2008)

Don't worry you get use to the changes fairly fast.  You have to because they are probably not going to bring back the old style!


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## Holly (Mar 8, 2011)

You are right - didn't take me long to get used to it.  Now just have to get use to the new Safari.


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## AmazonExpert (Sep 5, 2013)

Holly said:


> Received mine two days ago shipped from China. Have a 1st and 4th Gen. iPad to compare it too. Bit of a learning curve with IOS7. Will keep my review here to pertain to iBooks on it. The new update to iBooks installed on this machine removes what was previously promoted as a
> 
> 
> 
> ...


You will get used to it. the new safari is fast and nice. the speed and reliability is noticeable, and the retina display will prolly cover some of the cons as you mentioned.


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## Holly (Mar 8, 2011)

I've played with my retina mini for over a month now.  Realize that my initial concerns were more about the new operating system than the actual hardware.  I now love everything about the Retina Mini.  P.S. The wooden bookshelves have been removed from the demo models in the Apple Store as well.  I'm wondering how Apple will ever make an upgrade to this one!  Want to get several for a family with children next year.  Hope it doesn't have the touch password protection as I think parents should check periodically what their kids are doing online - but I'm sure Apple will have thought of a way to address this.


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## maries (Dec 29, 2010)

You don't have to have the touch password protection.  In small print you can bypass this during set up and you can later remove it but I don't remember how.    I had to google to find out how to remove this after I added that and didn't like it on my ipad.  It states that you need it for something to work and it might allow your user IDs and passwords for KBs, etc to save.


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## Holly (Mar 8, 2011)

I have removed the 4 digit password.  What I was talking about was the fingerprint password ring similar to one on the iPhone.


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## nico (Jan 17, 2013)

Holly said:


> I have removed the 4 digit password. What I was talking about was the fingerprint password ring similar to one on the iPhone.


As the other poster said, you don't have to use the fingerprint password protection the 5S (and probably on the next round of iPads). You can disable fingerprint scanning, passcode, or both.


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