Apple 'working on smaller iPad' Rumours of smaller iPad prototypes have circulated frequently in the past, and Apple is know to build a range of products in order to assess their suitability for production. Various executives, including Phil Schiller and Jony Ive, have told journalists that Apple's way of working is to focus on a small number of ideas, but to look at a much wider range. A 7.85" iPad would be a rival to Amazon's popular Kindle Fire, and would offer a resolution only slightly below the "Retina display" of the iPhone and new iPad. Gruber told the podcast that he had heard the device described as being approximately as tall as the current iPad's shorter side. Apple's existing iPhone and iPad products have only ever previously been released at 3.5" and 9.7" respectively. Steve Jobs previously suggested that 7" tablets would simply offer a frustratingly shrunken version of the existing iPad experience. In 2010, he said such products would be "dead on arrival." Gruber told podcast host Dan Benjamin that the most important question to ask about a new size iPad was why Apple should release it, rather than why it shouldn't.