Apple Announces New, Faster iPad Mini Built For Apple Intelligence (theverge.com) 17
In a press release this morning, Apple announced a new iPad Mini with a faster A17 Pro chip that supports Apple Intelligence. The Verge reports: The new Mini is mostly a spec bump: it runs a new A17 Pro chip, which Apple says has a 30 percent faster CPU, 25 percent faster GPU, and a Neural Engine twice as fast as the previous model. The device also supports the new Apple Pencil Pro, which is a nice touch for the Mini-toting artists out there, and comes with 128GB of storage in the base model rather than 64GB. (Those AI models need all the space they can get.) The Wi-Fi 6E chip is faster, the USB-C port is faster, everything about the iPad Mini is the same as before only faster this time.
The only real design change with the new Mini is the colors. Apple's gone more colorful with a lot of its products this year, and the Mini comes in new purple and blue models. In photos they look muted rather than vivid, though, so don't expect the eye-popping new colors on the iPhone 16.
The only real design change with the new Mini is the colors. Apple's gone more colorful with a lot of its products this year, and the Mini comes in new purple and blue models. In photos they look muted rather than vivid, though, so don't expect the eye-popping new colors on the iPhone 16.
128GB, ugh (Score:2)
I just looked this up in the previous story to compare Comcast's overage charges to the cost of flash storage. You can buy a USB flash drive with that much storage for about $12, retail.
Yeah, this gets whined about every time Apple does a new release, but come on, half a grand for a tablet with only 128GB of un-upgradable storage? I'm still rocking a 5th gen iPad mini that has become slow as snot with the last few iOS updates and is badly in need of replacement, but I just can't justify the cost for a goo
Re:128GB, ugh (Score:4, Insightful)
If you "mostly use to browse Reddit on the toilet, answer texts and check my Ring doorbell". why isn't 128GB of flash enough?
"I'd also have to say another contributing factor as to why I just don't see the value in this tablet anymore is that phone screens have gotten so much bigger now, there's not much point in owning another device with the main differentiating factor being a slightly larger screen. Might've just been time for Apple to put this one out to the pasture."
So you don't want it anyway, why whine about the storage?
Re: (Score:2)
If you "mostly use to browse Reddit on the toilet, answer texts and check my Ring doorbell". why isn't 128GB of flash enough?
Because if I'm buying something new I'd like it to have greater capabilities than the tablet it's replacing. Buying a new tablet that's just as space-constrained as my old one is kind of silly. I'd probably use my iPad more often and for additional tasks if it wasn't so space constrained and miserably slow, but even spending half a grand still doesn't even solve the space-constrained issue.
Re: (Score:2)
So you've never heard of future-proofing?
I mean, we all know that operating systems and applications shrink in size with every update, right?
Some of us want to buy something that doesn't need replacing in a year or two. And Apple has been ridiculous on their storage options / pricing for at least a decade. Why are you fine with being price gouged for inferior specs?
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The big storage market folks isn't what this thing is targeted at. This is their low-end model. And the reality is that most people store stuff in the cloud these days. They don't need a ton of local storage.
Most of the minis are sold to places like coffee shops using them as a POS. And they don't need the big storage.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm still rocking a 5th gen iPad mini that has become slow as snot with the last few iOS updates and is badly in need of replacement, but I just can't justify the cost for a goof-off device that I mostly use to browse Reddit on the toilet, answer texts and check my Ring doorbell. If Apple had paired this update with more storage and a truly "mini" price, they'd have gotten a sale out of me, but as it stands it's a hard pass.
I still had an original iPad Mini that I used only for occasional media consumption up until the lack of support by various streaming apps collapsed and the old version of Mobile Safari became completely unusable for browsing the web. And like you, I looked at the price of the iPad Mini and decided to buy a Fire tablet and install the Play Store on it instead.
For what I do with it, it made no sense to spend $500 for an iPad mini when I could do the same thing about as well with a refurbished Kindle Fire 8
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Apple has just completely missed the market here.
Well, the Slashdot market perhaps. And, in any case, only time will tell. But, given that enough people keep buying enough Apple gear to keep Cook & Co rolling in money like Scrooge McDuck - Apple doesn't seem to "miss the market" very often, no matter how much we might grumble about their prices.
On a side note - I do suspect that the Vision Pro will eventually become an example of a time when Apple did "completely miss the market".
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Apple has just completely missed the market here.
Well, the Slashdot market perhaps. And, in any case, only time will tell. But, given that enough people keep buying enough Apple gear to keep Cook & Co rolling in money like Scrooge McDuck - Apple doesn't seem to "miss the market" very often, no matter how much we might grumble about their prices.
I'm not saying that there's not a market for the iPad Mini. I'm saying that they have repeatedly missed a huge potential market for the last several years — specifically, the media consumption market.
Apple originally had that market in the palm of its hand with the iPod, and the iPod Touch continued that tradition. The problem was, at some point, most folks had enough hand-me-down iPhone devices for their kids, and no longer needed to buy dedicated media consumption devices that were in that form fa
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It used to be that Apple products cost more, but you got what you paid for — longer product life expectancy, longer support, and much better products.
The iPad Mini Gen 1 was released in November 2012 and received its last security update in July 2019. Some Googling turned up Reddit posts reporting that the Netflix app was still supported until 2022. Seems like a good run?
I've never used a Fire HD so can't comment on the more subjective "better product", but if I buy a tablet and it's still ticking along for the better part of a decade I'm a satisfied customer in that regard.
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It used to be that Apple products cost more, but you got what you paid for — longer product life expectancy, longer support, and much better products.
The iPad Mini Gen 1 was released in November 2012 and received its last security update in July 2019. Some Googling turned up Reddit posts reporting that the Netflix app was still supported until 2022. Seems like a good run?
It wasn't bad. At the time, it was a great product. It still is. It just has been eclipsed by a lot of other great products that cost a factor of 10 less. A new iPad Mini costs $500. A Kindle Fire 7 HD (only slightly smaller) costs $50.
If we assume that a current iPad Mini will have a similar amount of support (no guarantees), then I could buy a new cheap Android tablet every year for the next ten years and still come out ahead once you factor in interest earned on that deferred spending (assuming the
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I've been waiting for an iPad Mini refresh. I love the smaller form factor specifically for travel.
This is not the one I'm waiting for. Not at that price, with that rinky-dink storage. My 3-year old phone has more storage than that.
Re: 128GB, ugh (Score:1)
It is to force you to subscribe to their cloud storage.
Re: 128GB, ugh (Score:1)
Itâ(TM)s delightful that people think the read speed or the number of writes available from a $12 USB flash is equivalent to what you want for primary system storage. Sure, we donâ(TM)t need enterprise NVMe level caching and speed, but be serious. Anyone whose tried to get performance from a raspberry pi knows a glorified mini sd card will have terrible âoediskâ I/O.
"Those AI models need all the space they can get." (Score:2)
If you're running them locally, and they do claim to run something locally, sure. But with an anemic 5 GPU cores and a completely undisclosed RAM capacity (I'm guessing 6-8GB?) you're not going to run much of a model on that. I can't see more than 8-12 GB of LLMs and visual generation AIs combined, and that's being wildly generous. Probably more like 4-6GB for local storage.
So the suggestion that 128GB is needed because 'Those AI models need all the space they can get' seems a bit silly or unthinking on The
What is with all this "AI" hype? (Score:2)