Apple introduces iPad mini built for Apple Intelligence

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.

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?

I think stage manager? And the A1 can get hot sometimes (PDFs and Procreate).

I can’t find any mention of Stage Manager being supported on this device - so either it doesn’t, or the help pages haven’t been updated yet.

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.

> 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?

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.

The A-series chips only support screen mirroring; with the M-class iPads you can have stage manager and multiple windows across two displays; and the main display runs at native resolution. It’s a far better (though still flawed) experience.

There are a bunch of UX differences between an iPad and a laptop while connected to a docking station that make using an iPad in that manner not quite satisfactory. For example, the iPad's screen always has to be on - while you can choose to either mirror or extend your desktop environment, you can't use only the external monitors and shut your case like you can with a laptop.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

Depends on a particular A and M chip, tho.

The what?

The whole chassis is weak, old... One camera still? Lame... The thermals are mediocre, at best. And the iPhone 15 Pro I just got makes me look forward to the winter. I expect similar experiences with this. When you write/draw on it, it does get hot. Same battery life is not bad, but it could use some more when you use the Pencil. Touch ID is another very very weird thing to keep. I wonder what sort of market buys that and they don't want to upgrade anything... It feels so weird...

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.

The screen has the same pixel density as the iPhones'. Which is better than any other iPad model's.

They are referring to the screen lagging/tearing while scrolling

I'm guessing Apple is using an IPS panel meant for landscape orientation (i.e. the image scans from the top/bottom) in a device mostly used in portrait orientation. This causes rolling shutter distortion when scrolling contents.

It's basically screen tearing, apparently because the top and bottom of the display (or left and right in other orientations) refresh at different rates. iFixit suggests its a controller issue.

> 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.

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.

> One camera still? Lame...

It's a tablet, not a phone. No number of cameras is going to make it into a good device for taking photos.

The real fix would be for them to stop being so stingy with 120hz panels, as long as they keep using 60hz ones they're going to be prone to jelly scrolling in one orientation or the other. With 60hz the best you can hope for is that the orientation you use the most often is the good one this time.

Get a-Shell, iSH, etc.

If were picking random stuff to compare it against, for $250 Motorola will sell you a phone with a 6.7", 395ppi, 120hz OLED screen. It also comes with a stylus and has 256GB storage standard.

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.

Yeah I mean sure, but they are all extremely limited emulators.

The M1 allows you to use it like a proper laptop for productivity: hook it up to an external display, keyboard and mouse, and it’s a perfect machine for ms-word, PowerPoint or excel. I have my iPad Air connected to a 32 inch monitor for video editing with Final Cut Pro.

check out: https://github.com/straight-tamago/misakaX

it allows you to enable stage manager on an ipad mini without problems and without needing to jailbreak or similar :). the only gotcha is, that the ipad mini doesn't support more than 1080p output, therefore, if you connect a 4k screen it will remain blank.

would love to know if the ipad mini 7 now supports 4k - would actually be a meaningful upgrade then.

That's cool and all, but 18.1 killed the exploit this uses to write the MobileGestalt file. Which means if you buy a mini 7 now, you're probably not going to be able to force-enable Stage Manager like this.