Credible Reports of a 7.85 Inch iPad Mini Emerge

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Network World: "For months now, rumors of an iPad with a 7.85-inch screen have been circulating through the blogosphere. And though Steve Jobs once said that 7-inch tablets are 'dead on arrival,' the relative success of the Amazon Kindle Fire and other smaller tablets suggests that consumers are more than willing to accept a smaller screen size in exchange for a cheaper buy-in point. Indeed, you might remember that Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said that Apple saw a tremendous uptick in overall iPad sales once it lowered the price of the iPad 2 down to $399. That said, a chorus of credible reports over the past few days have all claimed that Apple is currently working on a slimmed down iPad and that it may be set for release as early as this Fall."

Comments

Are they copying Samsung's IP

[QuantumRiff]

Or do they have different shaped corners than the Samsung models?
Cause really, what they need is more lawyers involved. its legal stimulus in a crappy economy.

Naturally

[Applekid]

Well of course credible reports have emerged. The market needs some uncertainty injected into it since the Nexus 7 is soon to be released, and Apple certainly doesn't want anyone to buy that when they could have an iPad in a few short months.

Just a marketing ploy. It's a shame how complicit the media is when Apple wants to do it versus, well, any other technology company ever.

Re:Naturally

[jmorris42]

> The Nexus 7 looks fantastic. It is a revelation at the $199 price point.

No, at $199 it is another tethered media consumption device. No external ports. Add an SD slot (not Micro) and I'd probably have a pre-order in already. Add a USB host port and/or HDMI out and it would be a game changer.

Instead we got a Fire with better hardware specs tethered to an inferior content selection so it is a wash. Subsidized hardware is almost always a loser for the customer shortsighted enough to buy into it.

And back to the main topic, anything new from Apple suffers from the exact same problem. Tethered to the iTunes store. Just waiting for the door to close on the Mac.

Re:Makes sense. Somebody is buying Nanos still.

[guises]

If Apple brings a 7-inch pad to market that outperforms Fire and Nexus 7 I'd be interested.

It's possible that Apple could bring a better performing 7-inch tablet, but it will not beat the price/performance ratio. You're forgetting Apple's market - they never compete on price. My guess: they charge $250-$300 for something very similar to whatever's going for $200 in Android land at the time, but they add some trivial feature and play that up in the marketing as being worth the price difference. Siri 2, for example.

A play on the joke about Nietzsche...

[GameboyRMH]

"7-inch tablets are dead on arrival" - Steve Jobs

"Steve Jobs is dead on arrival" - 7-inch tablets

Re:10" tablets are too big...

[Belial6]

Because Apple didn't make a 7" tablet. Apple's marketing has always declared that any features Apple doesn't have is either irrelevant or actively bad, and any feature that Apple does have but their competitors don't are absolutely indispensable.

Re:The only real answer:

[CanHasDIY]

power (i.e., of the sociopolitical variety) != strength, at least, not in the Darwinian sense that I am specifically referring to.

Having all the money in the world won't save you from genetic weakness; just ask Steve Jobs. Oh wait, you can't, because even his vast wealth couldn't make up for the fact that he was, in the evolutionary sense, weaker than, say, you and I.

Which is my point; being able to hire a million people to do your dirty work for you does not make you stronger; in fact, considering that doing so tends to generate a dependence on said army, I would posit that such activity actually weakens the individual.