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.
iPhone 13 mini was the last flagship smartphone with such dimensions.
So I guess I don’t see them as commodities which implies fungibility.
[*] For reference, the iPad Air with the Magic Keyboard is about as heavy as a 13" MacBook Air.
I also don’t get the complaint about the A-series chip. What does an M1 unlock in iPadOS that the A17 doesn’t?
Apple used to use the X suffix for bigger versions of their phone processors that went into iPads (starting with the A5X); that went away when the M-series was introduced.
And the "Pro" suffix itself doesn't seem to denote anything in particular-- there was never a non-Pro A17, and the "A17 Pro" going into the iPad Mini is itself a cut-down version of the chip that went into the iPhone 15 Pro (it has one GPU core disabled).
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.
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
I will say though the criticism of the A-series getting hot doesn’t make sense. If the A-series gets hot, the M-series is going to be boiling in that tiny chassis.
Will nuclear powered phones with built-in fusion reactors that never need recharging ever be a thing?
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?
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 wouldn't mind 3cm wide bezels and accordingly larger batteries.
I agree with the other poster; maybe look at refurb and a 2nd gen pencil.
Or just don’t get one. But it sounds like this is on the short list to buy for you two.
More discussion on official post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41848298
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.
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.
> Or just don’t get one.
This is actually what I am going to do: wait until there is a better base iPad version. Unless I can get an older iPad Pro for a cheap price, but it is unlikely here in EU.
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.
I think if I was in the market for a drawing device on a budget I'd go with an iPad Air that supports the Apple Pencil 2nd generation. Something like the iPad Air 5th or 4th would do well.
It's unknown how useful any of this will be in day to day use-cases.
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.
If you check Apple's comparison, at least on that overview, it seems they changed only the processor, networking, that HDR thingy on the camera, and... that's all. Everything else is the same.
It sure looks like it would though.
Noteful and a competent calculator with CAS functionality on the other hand might be a different outcome.
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.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/16/24194423/math-notes-ipad-...
Either way, and on a more fundamental note: I’m a little dubious that “completing equations” is a net benefit for math education. It really seems like a small nice-to-have-available affordance tacked on to the real game changer: a computer that can adaptively challenge a student and competently answer clarifying questions without making it too easy. Y’know, just AGI stuff lol
As we’ve all seen from ChatGPT’s impact on English courses already, this all will require a fundamental rethink of how we teach children and adolescents. Homework is a bandaid over capitalist failings, and it’s beginning to peel…
That said, you can embiggen things like Safari browser buttons under Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Larger Text.
> Update, 9/28/2021: In response to our inquiry, Apple has told us that the "jelly scroll" issue on the 6th-generation iPad mini is normal behavior for LCD screens.
> Update, 9/30/2021: An iFixit teardown suggests that the iPad mini's more noticeable scrolling issue is a byproduct of how the display controller is mounted.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/2021-ipad-mini-suffe...
FWIW, my 5th Gen Mini doesn't have this issue.
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.
As for education, you don't really need a calculator. We don't really use them that much. Pen, paper, ears.
As for computers, programmed randomised questions with deterministic answers and documented steps to solve the problems are the right way. LLMs can't do that even if they look like they can. some universities actually have tools which generate those. Those are truly enlightening as you can see the reasoning properly.
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.
[1] https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-gu...
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.
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...
math education is not likely going to be "revolutionized" with technology or that would have already happened
You don't realize how much it matters until it does, and then it changes everything. Always having to carry an external drive just because my email takes 150gb of the 256gb MacBook storage is even more annoying than windows puting candy crush saga on the start menu.
Is it not possible to sync MP3s to Apple Watches anymore? I have a really really old model, and I selected a few playlists on my iPhone, and when they change, the songs automatically sync to my Apple Watch.
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
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.
A) I had to manually enter captital I, apostrophe, and ‘m’ every time I wanted to write “I’m”.
B) New words (like brand and place names) displace common words in the built-in wordlist - that is, T9 gets worse the more you use it.
It was still an OK digital minimalist/detox device - the GMaps web app with voice search was good enough.
The Android Go devices you mentioned sound far better – I’m never touching KaiOS again.
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.
Never heard of anyone making that but this would honestly sound like the first innovation in several years, not incremental like "GPS now finds a solution 2 seconds faster" and "the mobile data now uses 7% less energy" but something that is now possible that wasn't a feature before
Soldering the RAM has legitimate performance benefits, but soldering the SSD is just to save space and upsell overpriced upgrades.
I've never found a compelling use case where I'd willingly buy another Apple watch.
Can I recommend you a 40€ phone? They've been making models that can do calls for a while now and they needn't cost as much as an Apple-branded device to do just that
> they would drop calls and freeze on the dial pad during long calls
Never heard that happen to anyone with any phone model. If you've ruled out some software-specific issue like a call recorder you've installed or so, that sounds borderline implausible. Then again, given the number of issues I experience with software (of any kind)...
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 $30 each, which is better than iPad prices. The first one wasn't so convenient to unfold quickly, the new one is working really well.
I used to leave the house with just my watch and it was great - I could read and send text messages, email, even take calls on my watch and have everything synced up to my phone at home. You can even download music to it and pair it to your airpods.
The missing piece here is just having a dumb phone - somehow I think that with some ingenuity you might be able to something that serves 80% of your needs here or something like that.
You have a very different email life than me. Is that like, all emails received in your life, or just huge attachments?
How else were they supposed to make room for the extra 4GB of RAM required to support Apple Intelligence?
So is storage and RAM but every OEM has their added vendor tax and so does Apple.
2TB Samsung pro nvme SSD is 170$, how much is 2TB Apple storage...
Same with screens.
"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.)"
Obviously these aren't directly comparable products but neither are iPads and budget laptops, and Apple asks $750 for a model with equivalent storage and a cellular modem. For a lot of people the screen probably is perfectly adequate but I can also see why some potential buyers would be pretty disappointed given the price point, especially since unlike the air apple doesn't even offer an upsell option at this size.
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.
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.
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.
If that practice spreads to the MacBooks, you'll also need a CNC mill.
I’m afraid though that the core premise of your comment is flawed. Storage and especially memory are increasingly soldered to thin and lights. Even professional grade laptops such as the Thinkpad X1 Carbon have soldered memory.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-scourge-of-fully-soldered-...
It will have the new flagship A18 processor and adequate RAM for Apple Intelligence.
Unfortunately, it will be larger (6.1") than the SE 3 (4.7"). Probably with a notch and Face ID as well. :(
Edit: For the non-pilots reading this, it's also worth noting that the most popular flying app by far for general aviation at least, ForeFlight, is iOS only. So your choices are generally small iPad or big iPad, and a lot of people don't like big iPad in a small airplane cockpit.
Assuming you use something like WhatsApp, Facebook or something alike. Modern "feature phones" include built-in applications for messaging and calling, and you generally can't install anything custom on them.
I know children who study with their iPad minis and prefer them over notebooks. This isn’t necessarily a pro-Apple statement, but rather a reflection on how different user groups may engage with devices in ways that are cognitively distinct from what we discuss here on HN.
There are also comments here about specific use cases, like pilots using tools such as ForeFlight. While this kind of usage may not drive overall demand, it highlights how certain groups find unique value in the iPad mini for their specialized needs.
I have phases where I convince myself this is true, in between switching back to a note taking app (TickTick last few yrs) and every time I go back it's because it a) has total historical recall + a search box when I want to find something and b) I already carry my phone everywhere, like the grocery store, or I'm on my laptop for work.
Papers only true benefit is focus and "zen" stuff.
Integration with Fitness on Apple TV is extremely slick for HIIT and yoga.
Also, the third-party Intervals Pro app has been my go-to running app. I started with Apple+Nike since 2010 and a Fitbit Charge in 2015, but nothing let me customize my workouts as much as the Intervals app.
Due to the aspect ratios, there are significant differences in viewable area. It is not a "small" difference at all. Once you add in the ability to deal with specific aspect ratio content, the difference becomes even larger.
https://displaywars.com/6,9-inch-d%7B19,5x9%7D-vs-8,3-inch-d...
> All in all, this device leaves me wondering who this is for?
Not for everyone I would suggest. But I have people in my circle who will be very pleased. As they use a Mini as their phone/portable machine out of the house. They have little keyboard cases and use VOIP services for communication.
> but perhaps people really start using iPads for productivity/creativity workloads
Part of the appeal for most people is the seamless usage of features and functionalities across their sweet of products. People expect to be able to pick up where they left of, and have access to the same functionality as they largely do on the rest of the devices.
It's nice even if something is not your primary productivity device, to be able to execute or perform things on them if that's what happens to be in front of you at the time.