[News] iPad Mini...?

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strawman

strawman

So Apple is going to be releasing a smaller iPad today. Prior to all the 7" tablets that came out in the last two years, Jobs has always said that he doesn't see the point of a smaller tablet.

Well, apparently they do now.

So far it looks like it's going to be an iPad 2 in a smaller form factor. No retina. Possibly no cellular internet.

The only thing I'll be watching for is the price. It's apple, so we know they aren't even going to attempt to compete with others on price - a good 7" tablet from google, amazon, and elsewhere is $200.

The iPod touch starts at $200, though, and Apple isn't going to reprice either the touch, or the ipad, so the ipad mini has to sit between the $200 touch and the $400 ipad 2.

Anyway, Apple is broadcasting the event live to apple products at 1pm EDT today (safari on OS X and iOS, and to apple tv). I'll have it on while I work, and I'll probably be more interested in the other releases that might happen today than the mini, but if they price the lowest end ipad mini at under $250, I'd be mildly interested. You could then buy two minis for the cost of one ipad3...
 
Espy

Espy

Yup, expect it to be a minimal device, subsequent editions will have more goodies.
I really don't think I'd want a 7inch personally. I have an iPhone, if I go big I'd probably want a full size iPad. I suppose theres a market for it though.
 
Adam

Adam

I'm watching the Apple event live and I have to say I can't believe people attend these - they are brutal. I'm embarassed to be watching.

"It's amazing" "It's fantastic"

It's a fucking new processor.[DOUBLEPOST=1351014751][/DOUBLEPOST]WOW, a smaller iPad. What a fucking surprise.[DOUBLEPOST=1351014830][/DOUBLEPOST]Incredibly thin!
 
Adam

Adam

Gilgamesh said:
Genius marketing ploy to get Apple Fanchildren to make their stock stay sky rocket high.
Click to expand...
All it does is cannibalize possible existing sales, especially this close to Christmas. Obviously they're scared about the Nexus tablets.
 
strawman

strawman

Yeesh. So for $70 less, you get an iPad 2 that's smaller. $329 just doesn't cut it, Apple.

Not only that but they threw off their release schedule. It used to be iPad in spring, and iPhone in fall. Now they've lumped them both in the fall, and apple fanboys won't have the cash to buy a new one every year of both - they'll have to choose which $500 device they want.
 
Adam

Adam

I think a $199 iPad Mini would have sold like hotcakes but would have eaten up any sales of the full sized iPad - which I think is the reason for the upgraded spec and release timing of the bigger Ipad.

Differentiating the products, making the full Ipad a much beefier computing device, and then slowly reduce the price of the iPad mini similar to the thought process behind the Mac Mini and iMacs or the MacBook and the MacBook Pro.[DOUBLEPOST=1351017008][/DOUBLEPOST]Small consolation:

appl.jpg
 
strawman

strawman

Well, who are we kidding? It'll fly off the shelves. There are so many people who want an iPad, but don't want to spend $400 or $500 and would settle for $330.

The funny thing? Right now at the apple online store you can get a clearance iPad 3 (ie, only 6 months old) for $379. So for $50 more you get the full size ipad, and the retina display.

I think they made a _really_ lousy decision releasing the 4th generation ipad right now.

However, Microsoft surface has sold out, and they finally have their awesome apple-built chip which wasn't ready last spring, so they may have jumped the gun.

Alternately, they really believe there's a separate but equally viable market for the smaller tablet beyond low cost. People who want something larger than an iPod but smaller than an iPad.

If that's true, they are merely expanding their market, rather than cannibalizing their existing products.[DOUBLEPOST=1351017334][/DOUBLEPOST]
Adam said:
Small consolation:

View attachment 8606
Click to expand...
Doesn't this always happen, though? People buy stock leading up to the announcement, then fall over each other selling it before each other trying to catch that artificial announcement high. We're talking about a drop of 2.5%. Look at the stock over the last five years and you can see an increase leading up to the announcement of the major devices, and a big drop after, but it always climbs higher later.
 
Adam

Adam

stienman said:
Doesn't this always happen, though? People buy stock leading up to the announcement, then fall over each other selling it before each other trying to catch that artificial announcement high. We're talking about a drop of 2.5%. Look at the stock over the last five years and you can see an increase leading up to the announcement of the major devices, and a big drop after, but it always climbs higher later.
Click to expand...
You must be looking at different stock information than I've seen. Ipad 3 announcement had the stock dropping to the March 7th announcement and then going up very quickly.

Ipad 2 announcement was pretty blase, no big changes in stock price.
 
strawman

strawman

If you bought AAPL this time last year, and sold it today after the drop, you'd still be ahead $200 per share. A 50% increase from $400 per share to $600 per share in one year is just amazing.

Surface may be a competitor. Android is not, although it's clear Apple sees them as a competitor - they spent a lot of presentation time explaining why the apple 7" tablet was worth $130 more than the Android tablet. People will see it as a competitor, and Apple is going to be spending a lot of time explaining how iOS is still significantly better than Android, and most of that time will be used showing that developers are doing a better job - it really has little to do with the OS itself, merely the available apps and web designs. In other words Apple is winning merely due to installed user base, which is a shaky foundation, but one that has to be exploited as much as possible while one still has it.[DOUBLEPOST=1351017983][/DOUBLEPOST]
Adam said:
You must be looking at different stock information than I've seen. Ipad 3 announcement had the stock dropping to the March 7th announcement and then going up very quickly.

Ipad 2 announcement was pretty blase, no big changes in stock price.
Click to expand...
Yes, I see what you're saying. The same thing happened for the iPhone 5 though - buildup to announcement, sale afterward.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Pretty sure the 4Pad is everything the 3Pad was supposed to be but the technology and mfr capacity wasn't there at the time to make it. My guess is that the 3Pad was made as a stopgap just to keep people interested so they would still be watching by the time the 4Pad finally got released.

--Patrick
 
strawman

strawman

Ah, here's probably what made Apple refresh the iPad so soon: Google is announcing their 10" android tablet next Monday with a higher resolution screen than the iPad.

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-google-nexus-10-20121022,0,5255521.story

This is significant because surely Google's tablet won't be $500 to start off with - they know they can only beat Apple on price, other android tablets have fallen because they cost as much as the iPad.

I doubt it will have the same battery life and computing power that the latest iPad has though. It's taken Apple years to develop custom mobile processors that have an extraordinarily high performance to power consumption ratio.

It's actually interesting that Apple is putting so much investment under the hood. It's not something they can easily tout, but, for instance, today they announced the 13" Macbook pro retina has asymmetric battery pack. That's a pretty big deal in the portable computing world, and something that will allow them to focus on the looks and form factor of later devices more than they can now where all the batteries in a device have to be the same size and capacity.

Still, As usual I'm glad to see MS and Google aggressively advancing in these areas - keeps Apple on their toes. If no one was nipping at their heels we'd still be stuck with the iPad 2 and iPhone 3GS and we'd think they were pretty neat. Apple, if nothing else, doesn't progress just because they can. They only do so when the must.
 
Shakey

Shakey

I think Apple really learned from what happened to them with the PowerPC processors. They know that the only way to get what they want out of their products, they need to be able to have full control over how they're made.
 
strawman

strawman

That's possible. I'd like to think they understood the importance of long battery life and knew that if they could make their products lighter and longer lasting, they'd have a distinct edge no one else would be willing to invest in.

Their processors are powerful enough that they could make a low end macbook with one, running OS X, and customers would be lining up to buy it. The fact that OS X and iOS are getting closer and closer to each other certainly suggests that's their long term game plan. They certainly don't want to keep paying Intel dozens of dollars for silicon that only costs a few dollars to make.
 
Shakey

Shakey

That's kind of what I was getting at. To do what they want, which has become thin and light, they needed to start designing their own components. The PowerPC's had become so horribly power hungry and hot they couldn't do much with them. Add to that the supply and update issues, I'm sure they figured out the only way they would be able to make the products they want they would have to get in the design game.
 
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