Apple announces new iPad mini geared towards Apple Intelligence

Why is the bezel so thick? A 1-2cm bezel around the entire "mini" device seems a bit odd, given that the iPad Mini is a relatively tiny device and phones these days come with a 1-2mm bezel (10x less useless border).

Is it a cost saving measure / sneaky margin increaser, or what might be the motivation?

Edit:

Touch interference is a good idea. Still, from the picture, it looks like the bezel could be half as thick and work well. Sorry to be such a stickler, I am genuinely curious if Apple is chasing better margins, the best feasible UX, or something else.

Could it be that since this device is only $650 USD, it isn't expensive enough to warrant a premium display? (Like the iPhone SE https://www.apple.com/iphone-se/)

If so, I wish there was a fancier "Pro" model with premium components. IIRC, I paid $1000 for my first iPad, it was the first super high-resolution one back in 2012. Perhaps there aren't enough customers who are sensitive to wasted screen real estate on an 8-inch device.. and FWIW I have noticed a constant stream of toddlers pacified by iPad Minis whenever I'm at Costco.

In many ways (no pun intended :-)) I would relate to having an iPad mini and a much much dumber phone which was just text/chat and voice. I have gotten there because I'm constantly in this weird tension between wanting a bigger screen on my phone because the app I'm using and wanting a smaller phone so that it is easier to pocket and carry around. A friend of mine did the folding screen phone thing and that has its advantages but I really like a small phone (and ideally with a long battery life so no 1000 nit screens on it). Definitely first world/21st century problems :-). I do find engineering tradeoffs in product design an interesting thing though.

If it were possible to do so, I would possibly buy this as my new "phone":

   - I almost never hold my phone to my ear
   - I don't need the dual-lens features of the new iPhones
   - Standby battery life seems up to the challenge
   - Apple doesn't offer the iPhone Mini anymore, which is what I'm carrying now. If I'm going bigger, why not actually go BIGger.

Things holding me back:

   - Not actually sure about the battery life
   - As far as I know you can't transfer your actual phone line to a Mini

Selling machine learning stuff as "intelligence" raises false expectations and is ultimately fraud. I can't wait for this whole overblown hype to crash and burn.

It is interesting that one of their examples is a "community repair fair", they want to market a sheen of social responsibility without actually taking part themselves.

We changed the URL from https://www.apple.com/ipad-mini/ but readers may want to check out both.

The mini is the absolute sweet spot for me - enough portability that I don’t mind the many restrictions of iPad OS. But the A-line chips and low-quality screen are problems, and not being able to properly dock it at a monitor is a real hinderance. None of those are addressed here, unfortunately.

If Apple's listening.. a 120Hz would have sold this for me. I'm still on a 2018 iPad Pro because the upgrade isn't worth the enormous cost including a basic keyboard and pencil, and the only device that has a 120Hz drawing experience is that iPad Pro.

For anyone who thinks the pencil on a 60Hz screen is "great", you need to try it on an iPad Pro next time you're in the apple store. You'll see the difference between the "ink" trailing and lagging, and actually drawing as you move the nib.

Can I just get a a flagship iPhone sized like an iPhone SE please?

This Apple Intelligence starts reminding about Tesla Autopilot. I hope they will not hire people on the other side of the world to click buttons on your phone.

Too bad Apple hasn't released Apple AI at all; why bother with press releases featuring it? (EU)

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

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

Perhaps we're looking at a device that simply will be out of lineup soon (next few years).

I do like this form factor a lot though, well, eventually we'll get foldable phones to become mainstream I hope.

I want this but why no OLED? :'(

iPhone went OLED in 2017. And they didn’t OLED the poor iPad mini (the best iPad) in a newly released model in 2024!? :'(

One would think that they avoid the embarrassment of releasing another device before their AI features are even available. But no.

I'm curious about users who do use something similar. I have an iPad pro, but I find either a notebook and pen, or butcher paper and pen to be far superior for capturing anything.

Can someone tell me how they're increasing their creative productivity with these outside of making illustrations?

I have a ton of ideas that I organize and illustrate, but I can't give up my pen/paper as I haven't found the killer combo yet.

I find it hilarious that Apple is selling the new iphones with AI features that only works on the new devices because they apparently don't require the cloud, and instead run locally.

Apple's logic:- saving private photos on the cloud is good for privacy, while doing AI computation on the cloud is somehow bad for it ?

A17 Pro and WiFi 6E like the iPhone 15 Pro, not like the iPhone 16 series.

What I want Apple to introduce is a multi-user option for the iPad. Then, I'm buying one of them for the family. We just don't want (or need) an iPad per person.

I've heard through the grapevine that Apple is having trouble making Apple Intelligence not give lots of bad or wrong advice/suggestions/etc... (same as most LLMs).

I would be amazing to me (as in "get out the popcorn") if Apple decided not to ship Apple Intelligence and came out with a public statement saying LLM tech is not ready or is a dead end and effectively implying that other LLM companies are selling snake oil.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/10/llms-cant-perform-genuine...

The lineup sizes are filling in, a bit like A-series paper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size

Since Apple Intelligence won’t be available in the EU, this is a very underwhelming refresh.

I do love my iPad Mini to bits though. I use mine purely to read, sketch and take notes. It does not receive any notifications. I carry it almost everywhere I go.

Looks like this is eSIM only - which is a show stopper. I'll have to research if they release a SIM mobile option somewhere on earth, if not, I'll probably stick with my current Mini 5 a bit longer (or pick up a discounted Mini 6 for the wait)

Does anyone here have insight as to the differences between the various versions of Apple's "Smart HDR" feature? Interesting to see it took the leap from Smart HDR3 (previous model) to Smart HDR 4 (new model), and yet the latest iPhones released last month apparently use Smart HDR 5.

i would've considered this if it had slimmer bezels or a 120 Hz display.

the current iPad Mini is laggy compared to other iPads, and i'm not sure why. an iPhone with the same processor is not laggy at all. it becomes obvious when scrolling or opening and closing apps.

I have an older (but not old) Mini, and I find it almost unusable, as screen elements don’t scale up. For example, Safari browser buttons are stupidly small. Is that still an issue with the Mini?

120hz would’ve been nice… since they likely won’t make pro modal in this size.

A17 Pro huh, that's a first for putting a pro chip in a non pro iPad, isn't it? I guess it's, as they advertise, to handle Apple Intelligence although I don't understand why they are doubling down on this _now_ while nothing from the newly announced AI stuff is available as of today...

Nice choice, always been my favorite size.

Surprised though that they don't have an option with cellular so you can have always-on data access (i.e., with a data-only plan).

Updated: my bad, it does come with cellular -- it's just not advertised on the main product page

That page uses a lot of words to say,

"We added more RAM because there's no way we could make an LLM useful in only 4GB. While we were there, we updated the CPU. Might as well.(We grabbed the A17 Pro because we were in a rush.)"

It sucks that Samsung doesn't have a 7 inch Galaxy S10 Tablet. I would buy that, and I own a tab S9 Ultra. Samsung, make a 7 inch tablet with a Qualcomm chip and AMOLED screen please! I'll take even an 8 inch screen.

Bump up from 64 GB default to 128 GB is nice.

Is there somewhere where this Apple Intelligence can be used ?

Never had an iPad but I think I will buy this one.

I'm wondering how advanced it can get with the math. If it had capabilities like decent symbolic math software, that'd be pretty interesting.

Ugh, that bezel.

Will full coverage screens with a software driven, virtual bezel every be a thing?

I love iPad minis, but a keyboard folio for this size would be great. I've used this form factor with the iPad Air for writing, and it's perfect for carrying in a small bag. I know this is an expensive toy, though.

[*] For reference, the iPad Air with the Magic Keyboard is about as heavy as a 13" MacBook Air.

i use it like Kindle

The size of the mini is really the best, but the external monitor support is very disappointing. Do jailbreaks etc. allow for native monitor resolutions or are we limited to the iPads screen resolution by hardware?

All I want to know is can it do windowed multi tasking with stage manager?

BEZEL

All of this looks good, but if they want to retain trust with artists, the last thing they should be doing is integrating generative AI tools into their art programs.

Creatives are getting more and more frustrated with the AI tools showing up in places like Windows or in Photoshop. For the first time ever I am meeting career artists and designers who are actively looking to add non-AI alternatives to their usual toolchains because they feel betrayed by the addition of generative AI.

Apple is asking to lose the trust of a major market segment by charging forward with this stuff. You would think that the backlash to their "Crush!" commercial would have been an eye-opening moment for them about what Artists actually expect from them...

Pretty sure theres no stage manager, hard pass. Sticking to my 6.

Would be nice if Apple also introduced a new base iPad with at least support for a decent Apple Pencil. I want to buy my wife an iPad, but she wants to draw and the Apple Pencil USB-C doesn't support presure levels, so it is either a base iPad with an old Apple Pencil 1st Gen (that still is lightining) or paying extra for the iPad Air and Apple Pencil 2nd Gen/Pro. The fact that Apple Pencil USB-C doesn't support presure levels at ALL is infuriating too.

Apple Intelligence more like Apple Idiotic as ...

- Today the summary it gave to an iMessage was "Going to sleep, talk to you tomorrow." The girl and I scheduled a video chat date and she said nothing of the sort rather, "Getting ready for tomorrow (along with some other stuff), talk to you soon."

- Siri is still stupid especially compared to ChatGPT on the same iPhone. I use ChatGPT.. speak to it to count my calories throughout the day at the various places i eat at (Chipolte, Cava, Panera, etc) which it knows calories for everything, calculates and keeps track so i add later add my dinner calorie count .. it even knows how many calories i had on Saturday (still recalls it and speaks it upon me asking). Siri via Apple Intelligence is still the old stupid Siri one pony trick which you still can only speak to it once vs. ChatGPT have a conversation with.

What was this Apple Intelligence supposed to do and how was it supposed to be better? I want a ChatGPT phone and by Microsoft sure their Windows Phone was nice!

It's sad that "ultraportable iPad" marketing works, but "ultraportable iPhone" does not make sense for most people.

iPhone 13 mini was the last flagship smartphone with such dimensions.

[dupe]

More discussion on official post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41848298

lol as if teachers have money to buy this to make their lessons plans.

I still remember the Steve Jobs era when people would praise Apple for having a simple lineup of devices, in contrast to Android, which had some crazy amount of variants of every device. How times have changed.

iPad mini 2024 with Pencil Pro and Math Notes is going to revolutionize math education.

Looks really nice, wish could afford it, but Apple products are so expensive... Commodity products for premium price

So it's useless in Europe

I got an 8" Android tablet instead of an iPad mini. What I wanted, was to have something really compact that I could use emacs on, mainly for org-roam, notes and writing in general, not for writing code. It works well with termux, I don't think there is a good way to have a local version of emacs on iOS.

The keyboard is the most important part really (although I did want a good screen too). I'm on my second keyboard, they are only about $30 each, which is better than iPad prices. The first one wasn't so convenient to unfold quickly, the new one is working really well.