There is no obvious reason this product isn't going to sell in huge quantities.<p>Less conceptually fragile, less expensive, more portable, same software stack, same media stack, same OS, same UX, same premium experience, same monstrous manufacturing and distribution reach, same monstrous advertising and product awareness engine.<p>Every single one of the children you see in restaurants working an iPad so mommy and daddy can eat in peace will have one of these by January.<p>Schools will buy in by the hundreds of thousands, regardless of actual utility or how successful digital textbooks eventually become.<p>This is the new travel iPad. This is the status gift for the developing world. This is the throwaway iPad if you're rich or the first one you look at if you're less so.<p>It's priced to make Apple the margins they want while still inviting comparisons with less expensive and similarly sized tablets. It's going to suck the oxygen out of the $300-$500 price range for anything with a screen.<p>And it's cheap enough to substantially distinguish itself from the main iPad line, which is selling millions a week. That's all it had to do, pricing-wise.<p>I don't want or need this, and I don't think it was particularly necessary for the health of the iPad line, but they dotted all the Is and crossed all the Ts when designing this product.
How underwhelming.<p><i>At 7.9 inches, it’s perfectly sized to deliver an experience every bit as big as iPad</i><p>What does that even mean? Either it's perfectly sized, and the iPad is the wrong size. Or it's not. There can surely only be one perfect size to deliver an iPad experience??? Either it's 10" or it's 7.9".<p>I think Apple's marketing has always been the same - it's just that for a while they were ahead of the curve and so their hyperbole was justified. The iPhone was amazing. The Macbook Air is still amazing. But there is absolutely FUCK ALL amazing about a smaller fucking iPad.
One of the best parts about my Nexus 7 is that it fits perfectly in my back pocket (and even front-jeans pockets but that's much less comfortable). Having a tablet on my person (i.e. not having to reach inside a backpack to get it out) has been a great convenience.<p>The increase in width from the 7.9" screen is surely going to mean that this won't which is a pity.
With their announcement speech so full of contradictions, it seems like they're struggling to differentiate the Mini from the cheaper Nexus 7. The major appeal is its small size, but in comparison to the Nexus 7 they emphasize how much larger it is (albeit lower total resolution). Seems to be a clear case of presenting weaknesses as strengths, which will, unfortunately, probably succeed with many existing Apple customers. The two compelling advantages over the Nexus 7, the presence of a second camera and the availability of cellular capability, were barely mentioned.
I suspect that lots of women will be buying these with the 4G wireless. That form factor could fit into a lot of purse and pocketbooks quite comfortably, but the screen is still much more usable than a phone. Having that around while shopping will be awesome for users.<p>I also suspect that lots of doctors will buy these. I suspect this will fit very nicely into a lab coat, and the form factor will be a much better fit for doctors with easier one handed operation.
Why does it cost more than the Kindle Fire HD but has way worse specs? Apple have shot themselves in the foot with this launch. I'm so disappointed in the iPad Mini.
Steve Jobs must be rolling in his grave ;)<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFAjfUT8wZI" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFAjfUT8wZI</a>
For those of you who are wondering, this is how a market evolves. When Apple built the iPad they took their best guess at what the 'right' size for the device was. Designers debate this stuff all the time, and I'm sure they looked at the iPod/iPhone screens vs MacBook screens etc. The 10" form factor was very successful for them.<p>Other folks have smaller form factor devices, the Dell 'Streak' [1] being an early example of an Android based device that started out at 5" and 'grew' to 7". 5" was not very successful and mocked as being an unwieldy phone, the larger size was better.<p>Laptops got 'huge' the 17" one being the pinnacle, and then 'small' again with the most popular models being 13 - 16"<p>Other tablets came out in 6, 7, 9, 10, 11" sizes at various levels of acceptance or not.<p>The Kindle was the first e-reader with a solid market foot print, it was 'small'. E-readers of 7" are common.<p>So dialing all of that together you end up with a bunch of different designers trying different ideas and some of them are successful and some aren't. The same designers look at the successful products and try to extract what aspects of the design were critical, which weren't? How did people use them, how did people think of them, what did people want that they didn't get.<p>So this market is evolving.<p>So the folks at Apple see these things and try to capture as much of the market as they can. They saw folks buying a bunch of Kindle fires and Nexus 7's and hey, they could do that.<p>I'm completely conflicted because I like the idea of an A6x iPad but I really like to 30 pin connector on my 3rd Gen iPad.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/mobile-streak-7/pd" rel="nofollow">http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/mobile-streak-7/pd</a><p>[2] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Streak" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Streak</a>
The app situation they highlighted vs Nexus 7 was pretty damning for Google although I have a feeling Apple cherry picked apps that make the N7 look especially bad.<p>On the plus side for the N7, they screwed up on price though - for the ecosystem and build quality advantage may be a $50 premium would have been attractive esp for lesser screen resolution and older CPU/GPU. The N7 also feels like it should be more single hand friendly than the iPad mini.
I don't really understand the point. Don't Apple now have 4 devices which do the same thing?<p>iPod + iPhone.. as far as I can tell are identical apart from the iPod cannot make calls.<p>iPad is a giant version of the iPod... which I really like to use to browse the web on the sofa.<p>We now have the iPad Mini which is that awkward size which is too big put in your pocket and yet you don't want to put it in your backpack as you could put your netbook / iPad / laptop in your bag.<p>I am sure they will sell plenty. I just don't really get it. Its like innovation has stalled at Apple. How many sizes can we make the iPhone?<p>Beyond this the iMac is incredibly disappointing. Its thin! Oh well. No SDD. No Retina Display. Probably has a little spec boost over last model. Its disappointing. Glad I didn't wait for it.
It looks good. The 7.9" screen size may hit the sweet spot for smaller form factor tablets, my rooted Nook Tablet feels just a wee bit small at 7". I'm not an Apple fan but I'll be surprised if Apple doesn't sell these things by the truck load.
Apple stock is down on the news. Although I'm personally underwhelmed by this announcement, I'll bet analysts are more worried about the lower priced iPad cutting into margins than they are Apple's ability to ship them.
1. Apple releases new product<p>2. Critics yawn, criticize etc.<p>3. AAPL goes down<p>4. Many speculate as to what Jobs would or would not have done, joke about rolling in grave, call for Tim Cook to be fired etc.<p>5. Apple makes a mint's worth of money, AAPL hits new high.<p>It's been happening for 5 years. It's not just unsurprising, it's predictable.
After clicking on "Shop iPad" it's interesting that they place an ad next to the iPad mini for the regular iPad saying "Just as stunning. Twice as fast." The regular iPad is only $170 more.
For me the iPad Mini highlights what I think is a serious problem with iBooks: Landscape orientation should give me the option to read a single page at full screen width. I have never found the two page display to be useful. When looking at PDF files online it is great to rotate to landscape and read full width with nice-big type. This is particularly true at night after a long day in front of the computer.<p>The other thing that iBooks is sorely missing is the ability to use two fingers to zoom in and out of a page. I really don't understand why we have to look at a page with a one inch white border all the way around the page on a digital device, which forces a smaller font to fit the same content.<p>I think that the iPad mini might just stress the need or a better user experience in software such as iBooks.
Apple are exploiting one obvious flaw of the current "accepted wisdom" - that 16:9 movie-oriented wide-screens are to be foisted on all devices in sight.<p>Personally, I'm grateful someone is sticking to the 4:3 aspect ratio. If that made a comeback on laptops and monitors, so much better.
Oh look it's my Nexus 7 with more marketing speak.<p>Apple is now on the back foot and is heading towards market saturation and commoditisation via Android and intense foreign competition. Consequently I have held a large short position from 700 and will continue to do so following my sale of AAPL stock following the Samsung case - unless something changes.<p>You can only win in the brutal consumer electronics space by inventing the future. Otherwise you're just another commodity producer. You can't defeat the entire market by just doing more of the same.<p>Not impressed.
The best priced tablet out there right now is the Barnes and Noble Nook HD+. 9 inches, 1920x1200, for 269 bucks!<p>If it ran vanilla Android, it would have been a no-brainer for many of us.
I hate that you can't use the iPad mini as a cell phone. It's small enough now that in a lot of situations you can carry it around with you. And in those cases, it would be nice to only have to carry your iPad mini and leave your phone at home.<p>Sure, with the 3g model you can still use iMessage, Whats App, Skype, etc- but you're missing out on regular voice calls and SMS.<p>From an engineering perspective- is it that difficult to add a sim card slot and the extra cell antennas?
'tis a fine product but $190 for an extra 48Gb of storage? Can we not kill this practice already? I was pretty pissed that Google pulled the same stunt with the Nexus 7. It's 2012. Flash storage is cheap and widely available but Google and Apple (and probably Microsoft) don't want us to have it. It's very irritating behaviour.
IMHO Apple learned the lesson of aspect ratio for watching video with the iPhone 5, then forgot it again with this device. They missed out on a huge opportunity to start kicking their entire lineup towards the new aspect ratio and slowly eliminating any sort of Android-like fragmentation that will induce in their lineup.
My reaction: I imagine Google/Amazon/B&N must be very happy with this. I am sure Apple will sell a boatload and possibly even own a clear majority of the space, but Apple just threw a huge wave of interest into a market where they are being very clearly undercut on price and not offering that much differentation.
The size of the normal iPad is perfect for me. I don't see me ever using this product. On the other hand, I think some people will like this more or this will fit their needs/price range better. Not a very exciting announcement by Apple but not an awful one.<p>I'm more excited about the new iMacs. They look great.
Hello, fragmentation.<p>Resolution might be the same as iPad 2, but pixel density is different. Therefore an area that is clickable on iPad2 or iPad3 may become too small to click on the iPad mini.<p>So we had two platforms - iPad2/iPad3 with one tap area size, and iPhone 4/iPhone 5 with another, and now we have three.
So now with iPad Mini here, what do you think of "Apple's Contradictions" : Think different each time? - <a href="http://blog.cloudmagic.com/2012/10/25/ipad-mini-steve-jobs-and-apple/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.cloudmagic.com/2012/10/25/ipad-mini-steve-jobs-a...</a>
It's interesting that they also released an iPad 4 but hardly anyone is talking about that. I presume that this is to address the complaints some people had about the iPad 3 performing less well because of the additional overhead from the retina display?
When my macbook pro died and I had to get the logic board replaced I tried using my iPad (3) to replace basic web maintenance for the week.<p>I couldn't add a mouse or command-tab between programs. (without jailbreaking).<p>I'd pay for an update for these software features.
Want it or not these units are gonna sell like pancakes. All the same goodness but now more portable equals a win. Anyways, I was hoping for a little more fanboy vs apple-hater drama on this thread, I always find that entertaining.
It's really annoying that the only way to get LTE in Germany on these things (and an iPhone5) is through the shittiest carrier ever.<p>Why is it so hard to build an iPad or iPhone that speaks LTE on 800MHz?
I have nothing against Apple fans.<p>That said, if you own an iPhone 3G, an iPhone 4, an iPod, an iPod Mini, an iPad, and then go and buy an iPad Mini, I am judging you.
I've been looking forward to this product since the rumors started. I've owned iPads and iPhones and iPod touches.<p>The iPhone (original and 4S) were both great devices but too small. I could carry them everywhere, but the reading and browsing experience was cramped, by necessity of the small screen.<p>The iPad (original and Retina) are big, and lovely for reading and browsing, but too big to hold with one hand. This really is an issue for me, the way I sit when I'm reading... it ends up limiting my use of what otherwise would be a fantastic device.<p>So, the mini seems perfect. Light enough to hold, big enough to get a fantastic reading and browsing experience. I know it will be a little cramped compared to the iPad (well, expect it will be, but the same resolution original iPad was not cramped at all) but that's a fine tradeoff for being able to use it, literally, everywhere.<p>I like that they decided to start at $329 with 16GB, about perfect pricing for me. We spent over $650 on our retina iPad with LTE, and ended up not using the LTE much at all.<p>For our startup, which is heavily involved in iOS, and all of us have iOS devices, we will probably buy 2-3 of these minis.<p>In fact, I think I'm personally, done with the iPad and iPhone... I don't need the phone part (which is why I've mostly bought iPod touches) .... only went with it because the original iPad was not as portable as I'd like.<p>So, I'm totally stoked that this device is as it was rumored... I see no downsides to it at all.
Funny how it's only 1.9 square centimeters larger than the iPhone 5, and I'm guessing it lacks a call feature. Who does phone calls nowadays anyway right? And this old iPod Touch is incredibly obsolete now anyway, nobody uses that anymore.