Step 1: Apple announces new product.
Step 2: Accessory makers photoshop their entire product lineup to fit that new product.
Step 3: The press is deluged with PR emails.
And so it goes. The first in my inbox was iLuv, and its product picture people really have been busy shrinking everything down for the iPad Mini. If you’re planning on buying Apple’s shrunken-iPad-2-with-a-better-camera, then you’re not going to want for cases, chargers or any other crap.
There were a couple of big surprises yesterday at Apple’s iPad mini event. The first was the pricing of the iPad mini itself: while everyone anticipated a $249 or $299 starting price, the iPad mini actually starts at $329… a good $70 higher than devices like the Google Nexus 7.
But there was another surprise. No one heard a peep in the last few months about Apple’s new Fusion Drive, a combination solid state and platter based hard drive that “fuses” the best aspects of flash and traditional hard drive storage.
Those aspects? Solid state drives (or SSDs) over much faster reading and write speed, as well as “instant-on” boot up from sleep or power down. This leads to huge performance boosts all across the Mac. Traditional hard drives, however, have a couple key advantages: they are both cheaper and have more capacity, allowing you to easily store massive media libraries.
So what’s the point of the Fusion Drive? Simple. It’s the best of both worlds: the speed and instant-on of an SSD, with all of the storage space of an HDD. But how does it work?
As a brand, China’s GooPhone has made a name for itself not only because of their laughably stupid branding, but by the fact that they consistently manage to rip off Apple’s next product design before Cupertino gets their product to market… then threaten to sue Apple for IP violations.
Saucy! And now GooPhone is at it again, announcing a $99 iPad mini clone called the GooPad that looks exactly like an iPad mini, right down to the icons.
It’s not a whole lot to go by, but this image surfaced on the Dead Trigger Facebook page, teasing the existence of a Halloween update for the Android and iOS zombie shooter, Dead Trigger. Will you be fighting pumpkin-head zombies?
As you may have noticed, Apple announced the iPad mini today. Soon after, of course, came the analyst perspective – if there’s a strong demand for the iPad mini device, we may see serious supply issues. This has been rumored already in regards to the aluminum back for the new iPad mini, but this is the first report that a shortage of display units may also have a role to play.
“We’re now starting to see the issues that [Apple] is having with Samsung,” said Richard Shim, an analyst at NPD DisplaySearch, in an interview with CNET.
Samsung is not supplying displays for iPad mini, according to the analyst, which leaves only two suppliers to make the smaller iPad mini for Apple.
We’ve seen those parody videos about the “shit Apple fanatics say,” but what about the Android fanatics? Yep, there’s one one those too. If you have an Android fanatic for a friend or happen to be one yourself, there’s a good chance you’ve heard or spoken a few of these beauties.
The iPad mini just left the land of make believe to become Apple’s hottest new gadget. And on our just-recorded special edition CultCast, we’re ready to reveal our first impressions of the mini’s smaller form factor, compact screen, and higher than expected price tag.
Plus, are you more than a little peeved that Apple just made their 7-month-old “New” iPad obsolete? Sure, the newly announced 4th-gen iPad the is great news if you didn’t just buy the now last gen iPad 3, but if you did, you’re probably none too enthused.
Our discussion on that and our other hardware first impressions on this very special edition CultCast! Subscribe now on iTunes, or easily stream The CultCast via Apple’s free Podcasts App.
The iPad mini is a totally new product for Apple. It represents a beautiful juxtaposition of the iPhone’s 4-inch display and the Retina iPad’s larger 10-inch canvas. While the rest of the industry has already shifted its focus to 7-inch tablets, Apple entered uncharted territory for itself today.
Based on what we’ve seen, the iPad mini looks like a very compelling device. I’m sure Apple will sell bazillions. What I don’t understand is Apple’s pitch for the iPad mini. What purpose does it serve, and what kind of customer is it intended for? There’s no denying that Apple unveiled a great product today, but the purpose of the iPad mini was muddled by a confusing pitch.
Why is the iPad mini $329 instead of $200? In the promo video above, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Design, the venerable Sir Jonathan Ive, gives an implicit explanation. The iPad Mini is not a reduced iPad, he says, but a concentrated one.
Here’s his rationale:
The fourth generation iPad is now here. That means the third-gen iPad you bought just six months ago is a big pile of silicon dust: twice as slow as the new iPad, without a new connector, with none of its advantages.
Hey, bummer. Apple feels for you, man. That’s why they’re discontinuing the third-gen iPad and selling you the iPad 4 starting at just $379 for the 16GB Wi-Fi only model, just $50 more than a base 16GB iPad mini.
The 32GB and 64GB models are $469 and $549. Want a top of the line 64GB iPad with LTE? It’ll cost you $679 refurbished. At the low end, you can buy a refurbished iPad 3 for the price of a brand new iPad 2.
Source: Apple