They didn't bother calling it an ipad refresh for the 3rd gen ipad since this was a pretty decent upgrade. Now the new ipad will sport a brand new Apple A6X soc and lightning connector. It'll work with Sprint's LTE now as well. The officially announced ipad mini is a 7.9" ipad 2, to put it cruelly. It uses the same Apple A5 soc and uses the same resolution (1024x768). It's actually lighter and thinner than the Nexus 7. Although the Nexus 7 still wins in pricing. The ipad mini starts at $329 for the 16GB version. Both ship Nov. 2nd.
I think the entry price for the iPad mini is still pretty good, as you do get more screen real estate, a rear facing 5 MP camera for HD video etc., and an aluminum body for the extra $79 vs. the current Nexus 7 16GB price of $249.
I don't think anyone who's got an iPhone or an iPad will care about the iPad mini, and those who don't have an iPhone or an iPad won't want an iPad mini either bit seems like a pointless middle child of a product.
That's what people said about the iphone when it came out.. and the ipad.. and then said the iphone 4s was a rehash of the iphone 4 and apple was going down the hill, and then it ended up selling more than any of the prior iphones.
People on this forum were interested in the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7, and those were following in the footsteps of the original e-reader form factor, which was always significantly larger than phones. It's a popular device category and Apple wanted to launch their own product for it, just like Amazon and others will probably launch iPad sized devices later on.
Seriously? I was looking at getting a Nexus 7, but with the iPad mini only slightly more and with a much better tablet app ecosystem, I'll probably just go with the iPad mini. Frankly, the mini is about what a tablet should cost IMO, and it's highly portable at that size. This is the iPad equivalent of when the iPhone got down to $200 on contract, as it's finally getting down to a mainstream price point. I'm sure these will sell by the boatload. In fact, the mini may end up being the best selling iPad yet.
I just picked up a Nexus 7 in August and after seeing the iPod mini, I do not at all regret my purchase. I do run two macs and I do have an iPod touch 4th gen so being a part of multiple ecosystems is a challenge but I am really a huge fan of the Nexus. If the iPad Mini was a bit higher specked I'd be more excited, but truth be told I know many apps which don't run/ run well on the original ipad and that's only what? 2.5 years old (yes an eternity in tech but) It seems with the speed of releases of the tablet market right now I'd rather buy cheap and more often then be expensive and dated. I would gladly buy 2-3 $199-$250 Tablets in a six year period then spend $600-$700 and feel dated so quickly.
I'll probably be proven wrong but I doubt it. In the 10" world the iPad is king but the 7" world is already flooded with cheap but good tablets and e-readers.
Remember when people thought tablets were a fad? I just hate the idea of having but a new device every two years just to be able to run the latest apps, I'm used to buying one device that I know will last me for at least 5 years.
People hate on everything Apple puts out. We always hear about how useless it is and how no one will buy it. And then it goes on to break all kinds of sales records. It will happen again with the mini. Just watch.
The problem for me at the moment is that iOS feels old, clicking into things to get information is very old fashioned. Android has widgets and Windows has Live Tiles, for me iOS needs something to compare to these. If I was going to buy a tablet at the moment it would be the Nexus 7, good price and good features. Just had a play with the Note II, it was very nice but I am not paying that sort of cash. My wife has an iPhone 4S which I paid for as a gift for her, I don't have any sort of extreme hate for Apple otherwise I wouldn't spend that sort of money on a device. I just don't agree with the way they try to force other companies out of business with lawsuits instead of trying to compete fairly and how they overprice the cheapest of things.
I just said, Windows has live tiles and Android has Widgets. You can get apps to give you information from home screens, you don't have to click into apps to get every piece of information you want of a day. For example I have weather data and news headlines on one of my Android home screens.
Ah I see. There's the notification pull down tab on iOS, that keeps pretty much whatever info you want. Not sure if the apps have to be running or not, I don't use it often.
A notification bar is nothing like having an app widget which sits and updates information live on a screen, it is just for notifications. It took Apple a long time to even implement one of those, it seems to take them a long time to want to improve anything.
That's kind of an ironic comment considering how many Android devices are still stuck on 2.x versions of the OS.