Comment by hankman86
13 hours ago
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.
> Perhaps they are targeting people with a smaller iPhone who want another device to watch YouTube.
Hi, it me.
I have an iPhone 13 Mini that will have to be pried from my cold dead hands because it's about as big a phone as I'm willing to carry (I'd still rather have the 5s form factor.)
I also have an iPad Mini that supplements it perfectly.
Really don't want anything larger, because I like to handle it with one hand while walking or I'm propping it up in a tight space like when I'm watching a how-to video while doing a home-improvement project or working on my car.
There is absolutely no way I'd buy a phone as gigantic as a Max.
Honestly not sure how people walk around with those things.
If I didn't have to spend the $, I'd totally have a small phone for when I leave the house, and a bigger device like this for when I'm at home.
> There is absolutely no way I'd buy a phone as gigantic as a Max.
It's not gigantic for everyone to be fair. I'm 6′1″ with largish hands I suppose and the Max is a single hand device for me. Small devices look comical in my hands. I was one of those very well served by Apple starting to make larger devices, and it's when I shifted over from Android full time to iOS devices. (I was very fond of the early generation Galaxy Note devices prior to that.)
> Honestly not sure how people walk around with those things.
The same way as I do anything of that size. It goes in my pocket or i'm holding it?
I get where you are coming from those because my partner has a much smaller 13 line device and we've done some basic testing and like you, shifting to a Max sized device...well, its just not very likely. My phone looks absolutely jumbo once you put it in her teeny hands.
I dunno, I'm 6'2" with corresponding hand size and I'm in the "won't go larger than a 13 mini" camp.
I think preference probably plays a bigger role than size. I see a lot of tiny people manhandling pros and maxes too.
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I mean yeah, of course I know how people hold and walk around with these devices. I was being silly.
Everything you said about large hands rings true for small hands and the mini form factor, but instead of just looking silly it's a hinderance.
We need both form factors. What I don't think we need is the weird middle size (current regular iPhone size), but I'm sure that's probably the one most people actually want if they could only pick one.
“ The comparatively small difference in screen real estate between an iPhone Pro Max and the iPad mini makes the latter rather pointless.”
While the linear diagonal size of the screens are not so much different, the area of the iPad Mini is significantly larger. I ran the numbers a month or so on it when someone was making the same claim of equivalence. I don’t recall the specifics now but I think the iPad screen had at least 60% more area. That is significant.
“ Not sure why this necessitates AI hardware”
It would be hard for Apple to put in a chipset now that didn’t support AI. All of their SOCs for the past 10 years have had neural processors. This A17 Pro has 8GB of RAM. All of their recent SOCs have the 8GB of RAM needed to run AI. Why not?
> All in all, this device leaves me wondering who this is for?
Who is any iPad for? They’re nice screens attached to good processors.
I bring mine to work to either read or watch videos over my lunch break. Don’t want the full size of a regular iPad. Don’t want to use my work laptop with my personal service accounts like YouTube, Netflix, kindle, etc.
And while the Mini is small, it’s still a substantial screen size increase over using my regular sized iPhone for that purpose.
Lots of aircraft pilots love the iPad mini. Ideal sized tool for having strapped to a yoke, or to one's knee.
I plan on buying one for exactly that use-case. I have a mini 5 that's showing its age and doesn't have enough storage (downloading flying charts takes up a surprising amount of space) and I didn't want to upgrade to the mini 6 considering how long in the tooth it was getting. The mini 7 isn't some massive improvement, but it's improvement enough in a very good niche for flying.
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.
Three size options now, the mini at 8.3"; regular, Air, and Pro at 11"; Air and Pro at 13"
I hate that ForeFlight does not run on Android. It is is keeping me from getting rid of my last overpriced, closed, proprietary Apple device. Not that Jeppesen (Boeing) has a good record on any of that either.
> All in all, this device leaves me wondering who this is for?
You know, you could just read all the other comments on this post talking about why they like the mini.
People like to spend 1 minute looking at a product and pretend they've done a market analysis by only looking at their own consumption patterns or those of their very close group of people around them combined with some stereotypes like "people use tablets for media consumption" (and never do anything else on them in between).
>Not sure why this necessitates AI hardware
New Siri and iOS notification summaries seem like it should be enough of a reason for apple to want to ship an iPad with ai hardware.
> for apple to want to ship an iPad with ai hardware.
You mean the dedicated neural chip they've been gushing over for half a decade saying how it's an amazing dedicated chip for exactly this kind of work?
> The comparatively small difference in screen real estate between an iPhone Pro Max and the iPad mini
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.
> All in all, this device leaves me wondering who this is for?
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.
> who this is for?
I dunno, every Boomer guy I know with disposable income seems to have settled into Big iPad, iPad mini and iPhone as their compute stack.
I think for them it's like desk/table computer (Big iPad), sofa computer (iPad mini), out&about computer (iPhone).
I know guys like this who haven't even really owned a computer-computer (MacBook or otherwise) for 5+ years.