The iPad 3 will be officially unveiled just days from now, but the rumor mill is always forward-looking, which means it’s already on its way to being yesterday’s news. What can we expect after the iPad 3? That’s what everyone wants to know now.
If a report from Apple’s best frenemy Samsung is anything to go by, it’ll be the long-rumored iPad mini.
According to a new report from Taiwanese publication Digitimes, Apple is gearing up to produce a 7.85-inch iPad. The rumored device is reportedly set to enter mass production by the third quarter of this year.
With so many rumors surrounding a smaller iPad of late, even the most skeptical amongst us are beginning to believe. The latest reports comes from The Wall Street Journal, which claims Apple and its suppliers are currently testing a new tablet with a smaller screen said to be around eight inches, that will “broaden its product pipeline amid intensifying competition.”
Rumors of an iPad mini have been revived once again today after a Technology Business Research analyst said Apple will launch two new products at its upcoming iPad event. And when we say “new,” we don’t mean a next-generation refresh — we mean something brand new.
Those products are expected to be a new case accessory that features an integrated keyboard (about time!), and a smaller 7-inch iPad.
In a collaboration with Macrumors, CiccareseDesign has produced a papercraft mockup of what the rumored 7.85-inch iPad Mini would look like… and you can even print it out and hold it in your hands yourself.
That’s right — rumors surrounding an “iPad mini” have been resurrected by DigiTimes, which claims Apple is really going to give Amazon’s Kindle Fire something to worry about next year with an 7.85-inch model of it’s hugely successful tablet.
Remember that supposed iPad Mini flaunted by famous Taiwanese racecar driver Jimmy Lin earlier today? We thought he was holding a fake, but we may have been more right than we knew: according to reader Greg Mills, it’s a Photoshop fake.
When Steve Jobs himself was queried on the possibilities inherent in the seven inch tablet form factor, he replied that they were “dead on arrival” and declared them to be “tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad.”
Despite this, rumors have persisted that 2011 will see the introduction of a 7-inch iPad Mini… and now a famous Taiwanese celebrity and race car driver is claiming to own a prototype.
Steve Jobs’ disdain for the 7-inch tablet form factor embraced by the likes of would-be iPad killers like the Samsung Galaxy Tab couldn’t be any more dripping even if it poured in bilious rivulets out of his open mouth. At the last earnings call, he flat out dismissed them as “DOA – Dead On Arrival.” He even fantasized about customers sanding the meat off of their fingers until only the skeletal bone was left, since “sand[ing] down their fingers to around one-quarter of their present size” is the only way to type comfortably on one.
This contempt seems pretty unequivocal to me, but someone apparently wasn’t paying attention: according to Reuters, Asian manufacturing sources are telling them that Apple is putting together a 7-inch “iPad Mini” for shipment in early 2011.