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So that they can release a successor model with thinner bezels.

In reality this may be to (1) to keep costs down and (2) to distance the iPad mini from the more premium iPhone Pro Max.

All in all, this device leaves me wondering who this is for? iPads are mostly used for media consumption, no matter how Apple wants to position them. Not sure why this necessitates AI hardware, but perhaps people really start using iPads for productivity/creativity workloads that can make use of “Apple Intelligence” (the silliest moniker since “Spatial Computing” and “Retina Display”).

The comparatively small difference in screen real estate between an iPhone Pro Max and the iPad mini makes the latter rather pointless. Perhaps they are targeting people with a smaller iPhone who want another device to watch YouTube. What could have made a difference is a folding display. I think the iPad mini would have been the ideal candidate for that.

I think it's so that the fingers holding the device don't obstruct the view/ don't get counted as touch event.

Ipad Mini is such a good size. My friend lent me his Mini2 when he borrowed money from me and used it for a good 6 months i think and it was marvelous. I didn't use it all that much but later got an Air 2 and used it maybe slightly less. Then I got an iPad Pro 11" but only used it for a while and don't really touch it too much anymore. I feel maybe an ipad mini I would use more. But the jelly scroll really has me urked and I kinda want OLED on it, so there is definitely room for a Pro version if they wish, but the iPads are overwhelming with 5 sizes already.

>Why is the bezel so thick?

So you have somewhere to actually hold the bloody thing.

Bezelless gadgets look great in photos but are impractical as fuck to handle.

Screens come in standard sizes. It might simply be that they can't fit all the parts inside, including the battery, without making the device bigger than the standard screen size and so you get bezels. Bigger devices have more room in them and many of the parts are just the same size.

somewhere to grab it without putting your fingers on the screen?

> Why is the bezel so thick?

How else were they supposed to make room for the extra 4GB of RAM required to support Apple Intelligence?

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Most of the modern "dumbphones" (or "feature phones") would do this just fine for you.

If you want one that can survive anything life will throw at it, look at the Sonim devices - the XP3+ (flip) or XP5+ (candybar). They're Android Go, have exceptionally good (week and a half, easily) battery life, hotspot just fine, and handle actual use a lot better than the KaiOS toys out there. Maybe 3.x is better, but KaiOS 2.x couldn't handle actual use for more than a few weeks without starting to lag, requiring you to remove texts from it so the interface wasn't glacial, and mine eventually just stopped bothering to notify me about incoming calls and texts, which is your one job... The Android Go stuff seems to actually hold up to sustained moderate use.

I am moving away from my phone to just using my Apple Watch/AirPods then pulling out the mini when I need something it can't cover.

Apple keeps a lot of owners addicted to their phones by making Watch support exclusive to iPhone.

I’d love to go dumbphone and a Watch synced to an iPad at home, but this is not an option.

What was the pun? Many/mini?

If I was approaching the dumb phone thing I’d try something similar to this video - “dumbify” Home Screen app for iOS, setting as gray scale, screen time limits, etc. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7jVb1lLniEw

I didn't get the pun......

For me its a very nice bedside ebook reader, reddit machine, and video device. Its a perfect size for all those things, perhaps a bit too small for video but good enough. It can fit into a large coat pocket or a medium sized purse too.

I keep trying to get into my kindle but just can't for some reason. E-ink is nice but being able to get a nice glowing black background with white text is really nice and the page changes are so much more fluid than e-ink.

I find it incredible that I can't make calls on my iPad. I would just carry an iPad in my back pack if people could call me on it.

I was just pitching this yesterday to my friend. My Pixel 8 Pro is a great phone, but in many situations I only want a phone that can show me my messages and answer my phone calls, and it's OK if its interface is my smartwatch and/or earbuds. I want it to be able to take over my mobile number on-demand, and relinquish it to my Pixel afterward.

Back in the day when Android was KitKat and full of possibilities, I ran a Nexus 7 2nd gen and a cheap phone from my carrier. I'm not sure if it was enlightenment but it was closer to it than today, where I carry around a smartphone that's too big to use comfortably but still too small to use frequently for media.

You want an Apple Watch imo, I often leave my phone behind now, I’m contactable without distractions.

thanks dang

Speaking of screens, I wonder if they fixed the jelly scroll. It doesn’t bother me that much on my mini, but it would be ridiculous to keep that flaw as-is in the newer gen.

If you meant "not having Stage Manager", I'm genuinely surprised the A18 Pro wasn't considered powerful enough to run it, given that it outperforms the M1 that was. The only thing I could think of is that Apple thinks the smaller screen is too small for Stage Manager.

I still think they should support it anyway, even if only for three apps at a time on the primary display. iPadOS is weirdly bifurcated into two different window management strategies (Split View vs. Stage Manager) based on what device you bought, which is confusing. They should be expanding Stage Manager to as many devices as possible.

> and not being able to properly dock it at a monitor is a real hinderance

Can you expand on that? It seems to support DisplayPort over USB-C, and there are a number of 1st and 3rd party adapters that have DP out, power in, and a USB2.0 plug for your other devices. What does “properly” docking it look like?

> enough portability that I don’t mind the many restrictions of iPad OS.

Would it be a sweeter spot without those restrictions?

I hate that I can’t code on my iPad Pro.

Was patiently waiting for the mini getting an update - i don’t care as much for the screen, CPU etc. but not moving the front facing camera to the side, hence landscape friendly position is beyond me.

Considering the bestselling laptops at Walmart for $400-500 still sometimes have Twisted Nematic displays, I think the screen is fine.

I also don’t get the complaint about the A-series chip. What does an M1 unlock in iPadOS that the A17 doesn’t?

Lowkey wish their laptops would be as they used to be. Being able to swap RAM or hard drives is so basic but so useful.

It's a bit of filler text in a demo. You might be reading a little too much into it.

It is interesting that one of their examples is a "Mahjong Club", they want to market a sheen of board game enthusiasm without actually taking part themselves.

> I wish they had improved the screen a little bit as well.

What do you mean, the iPad mini has a higher ppi (326) vs iPad Air (264).

I think the issue is that, iPad OS is scaling the display to a weird resolution.

https://www.apple.com/ipad-mini/specs/

https://www.apple.com/ipad-air/specs/

There was some chatter on Macrumors that they flipped the orientation of the controller board so that the Jelly scrolling will be gone when used in portrait mode. That was the #1 display complaint on the outgoing model, so if its true then I’d count that as a win on improving the screen.

The alleged roadmap leak indicates they’re aiming for 2026/2027 foldable screens (no word on whether it’s horizontal or vertical) so if all goes according to plan, you would be right that this is the last update for the “iPad mini” device.

> It makes sense to update the model with apple intelligence but that might not be enough for a lot of people to upgrade.

that's fine? it's a very mature segment - medium-price small screen tablet. it hasn't even really been updated since 2021, and that was basically new case+usb-c.

Yes. The mini feels like an abandoned product. In landscape mode, the keyboard takes more than half of the screen. UI elements are routinely covered up in various apps. For example, in Flighty, the flights "drawer" cannot be hidden in the way it can on the iPhone. This is probably fine in a larger iPad, but on the Mini, it covers more than half the screen, meaning it HIDES THE AIRPLANE ICON of the flight you're tracking. Apple Maps has a similar behavior with its drawer in portrait mode, but, IIRC, at least that one can be hidden.

I've owned 8 or 10 tablets in my life and never gotten along with any of them. The Mini6 is my latest experiment, and it's my favorite, but I still find myself rarely using it.

I am not sure I understand what you mean by the scaling issues, so, I guess, no? I have the 6th generation. The problem I have (and I do not see getting improved, somehow) is that applications do not care for it. Many times I have to turn it to landscape for some more room to fit everything. Most applications feel better on landscape, but then you lose vertical space. Affinity Photo 1 is very guilty of that, having buttons overlay each other on the left.

The mini display is 326 PPI vs 264 PPI for larger iPads, but the same scale factor so things will always be smaller. (iPhones with even higher PPI use a 3x scale.)

That said, you can embiggen things like Safari browser buttons under Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Larger Text.

The version is tied to the Image Signal Processor (ISP) of the A-series chip. So the A17 has Smart HDR 4, while the A18 has Smart HDR 5.

Smart HDR uses neural image segmentation for tone mapping and other processing. In my opinion it goes way too far; trying to grab a faintly blue sky and make it as blue as possible, identifying a face and lightening any hint of a shadow, etc.

When people complain about iPhone photos looking over processed, this is why.

I luckily don’t care for higher refresh rate, but I’m disappointed this model doesn’t come with OLED.

It certainly was, like eight years ago when I got the bigger SD card for my phone

At this point, the only word that can be applied to it is "overdue" for anything who uses it beyond a thin client for server-side storage or a streaming service

Do you still need to buy the cellular version to get a GPS chip?

Most carriers offer iPads as far back as I remember? You have to get it through their stores though.

I'm seeing it on the Ireland store, for 170 eur.

It makes sense, the iPad Pros graduated to using full blown M series chips so the A Pro chips they used to use can filter down the stack.

edit: oops I mixed up A Pro and A X

I'm guessing the delays to Apple Intelligence came late in the process and it was supposed to release with the new iPhones? And then they just left hardware plans as-is when the software got delayed.

Some of it is available in the beta's, but no, it's not released to stable yet.

You can get it in the public betas, but it’s very underwhelming and not useful. I’m surprised they’re talking this up so much to be honest.

> revolutionize math education

math education is not likely going to be "revolutionized" with technology or that would have already happened

I don't know which bubble you are in, but $499 + $129 for devices at MSRP is not going to revolutionize anything, especially just for maths.

A $200 Chromebook can do 10x. Guess what, that's exactly why schools buy Chromebooks.

That's like saying giving students a better calculator revolutionizes math education.

Even giving students full access to Mathematica (which I think is worthwhile BTW) won't revolutionize it.

Ironic how one demonstrates a questionable grasp on maths if they think an expensive iDevice will revolutionise maths education for the masses.

Mathematician here. No it's really not. Having used it extensively it craps out all the time, fails to parse things properly, doesn't understand anything other than a very narrow undefined subset of anything that needs to be done and generally makes things harder.

It sure looks like it would though.

Noteful and a competent calculator with CAS functionality on the other hand might be a different outcome.

What is math notes?

I don't get why some people get so worked up about bezels. I like being able to hold my devices without accidental inputs, and to me they look better anyway.

I wouldn't mind 3cm wide bezels and accordingly larger batteries.

iPads need to have some sort of bezel, else how are you going to hold the thing? iPhones you can grip the sides, iPads not so much.

I was just thinking the same thing. Why couldn't they give it a tiny bezel, with a software option to put a virtual bezel if you want to hold it in a way it matters.

They could even give it only the virtual bezel on the left and right sides, in whichever orientation you're holding it, since you don't really hold it on the top or bottom.

Ugh, my batteries need recharging.

Will nuclear powered phones with built-in fusion reactors that never need recharging ever be a thing?

I bought and returned a 13" iPad Pro M4 because I couldn't get a Smart Keyboard Folio for it. Only the Magic Keyboard is available. I'm still using my 2018 iPad Pro.

Well, they call it stage manager, but in iOS 18 (too) it only offers split screen and one window overlaid to the side. There is an example in the page somewhere.

The Air is a significantly better drawing display.

If she's looking to sketch or just doesn't mind not having color, I can't recommend the Kindle Scribe enough. I bought it for reading but it's become my combination work notes/presentation board/drawing tablet, and I absolutely love it. The premium pencil honestly smokes the Apple pencil and it feels so nice to use. I just wish it did color too.

Nothing wrong with continuing to use the iPhone 13 Mini today: Apple CPU has been so far ahead of the competition that apart from on-device generative AI there’s nothing that hugely pushes it. For data, search for “single-core” and “multi-core” in https://infrequently.org/2024/01/performance-inequality-gap-...

The typical iPhone Mini product cycle:

Make iPhone Mini -> Mini only accounts for 10% of sales -> Cancel iPhone Mini -> Notice that 10% of iPhone customers haven't updated for 3 or 4 cycles -> Make iPhone Mini -> Suffer crippling corporate amnesia -> <...>

I'm expecting the brain worms to reach step 4 of the corporate consciousness cycle around the next generation or so.

How long do we have on the 13 mini before it becomes so slow I have to get a new phone? I don’t know what I’ll do at that point. On the 12 mini now and can never go to a big phone.

We'll merge those comments hither.

This is the salary schedule for teacher in the district my kids were in:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BN_Q51d_wUFMs7ajdwI07ESmnmS...

Teachers get $55k-$72k depending on their qualifications. Not great, but not poverty levels either. If they want an iPad, they can probably get one.

You might be surprised as to how many are willing to make the splurge. Anecdotal, but I'm married to a high school teacher. She and several of her coworkers have been willing to eat the cost personally just to avoid using dated district-provided assets, which are often clucky and make the job worse.

What other large brand has a simpler lineup? Samsung released 22 phones just in 2024 with memorable names like C55 and M05.

Although I wouldn't mind if they got rid of one or two iPhone variants, or at least gave them more meaningful names. I have no idea what the difference between Plus, Pro and Max is. I only know that Pro doesn't mean pro, and that doesn't make it any easier.

Edit: also Steve Jobs was still alive when you could choose between four different iPod variants.

It's mainly just the iPad lineup that's a mess, but it's optimized for there always being an iPad available for increasing budgets in $100 jumps, give or take. It's confusing to try and keep track of them all, but that's not really the point. What they have is anyone can walk into a store and say "give me an iPad, I'll pay $600" and they'll get a good device.

When Jobs did that Apple was close to bankruptcy. When the first iPhone was introduced in 2007, was less than $25 billion. It’s now $385 billion.

Regarding variants, it continue to be more complex to buy a Microsoft Windows notebook.

Or: more free space and lower CPU usage in the EU.

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I usually like to buy these 1-2 years old off Craigslist / Marketplace and that's been a sweet spot for price and quality.

Apple has always been about premium price and quality but I agree that it's not for everyone and their needs.

What’s with the sour grapes? I can’t afford a Pagani. Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the engineering.

The iPad lineup starts at $350, and that's brand new, look used or refurbished and it becomes even cheaper. If that's too much for you, you'll be pressed to afford any computer.

True, but they last long enough that you can get them second hand, whereas used products from other vendors tend to be junk not worth spending money on even at a cheaper price point.

There is a definite lack of worthy competitors to the iPad Mini in the market. Most other tablets are 10" or larger. The only other contemporary tablets I've found in that size have had very low-end specs in comparison.

It's ok, lotsa people have the money for it.

Apple products are not commodity, because there is very little fungibility due to network effects.

Maybe their hardware is commodity (arguable), but the product + integrations are not.

They are hardly commodities. The build quality and lifetime of iPads is incredible compared to any other tablet I’ve ever used (typing this on a six year old iPad Pro that’s still going strong).

Its commodity you can buy from dozens of other vendors for much cheaper price.

Many of these devices aren’t actually fungible commodities though.I tried to buy a phone in the $200 range and Android phones were so much worse than used iPhones. I they would drop calls and freeze on the dial pad during long calls where I was on hold. Tried two different models and had the same issues. I could have tried a used $200 Android but I was not wanting to try for a third Android. All I wanted/needed was to make important calls.

So I guess I don’t see them as commodities which implies fungibility.