iPad Millions of iPad minis are being sold...soooo

flavr said:

That being said, it's curious why apple didn't at least drop in 1GB of RAM with the A5 chip to keep things speedy longer...

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So they could save it for the iPad Mini 2 with retina display and A6X.

nah. First of all I would expect Apple to drop support for iPads about 3.5 yrs from release to keep a steady profit flow... That will equate to 2 major updates. I don't see many huge burdonsome advances in the OS that will cause the hardware to falter in that short of a timeframe. And if there is Apple will simply drop support for that particular feature for that device. That's what they have done in the past (sure some is artificial limiting too, but there have been some legitimate hardware limitations)

flavr said:

I agree...but now they have ten of millions of minis sold with the A5 and 512RAM that needs to be supported till 2015-16, kinda biting them in the arse...

On the ther hand, if hardware specs are kept "current", software will progress at a faster pace overall...

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What's your definition of support? Apple releases iOS devices you get 2-3 firmware updates then nothing after that.

flavr said:

I agree...but now they have ten of millions of minis sold with the A5 and 512RAM that needs to be supported till 2015-16, kinda biting them in the arse...

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By jove, I think you have stumbled upon something Apple clearly never considered.

kodeman53 said:

By jove, I think you have stumbled upon something Apple clearly never considered.

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I'm always amazed when someone on the Internet figures out something that all if Apple's product planners missed.

darngooddesign said:

I'm always amazed when someone on the Internet figures out something that all if Apple's product planners missed.

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I think he was being sarcastic.

shenan1982 said:

I think he was being sarcastic.

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They both were.

Funny how the ipad 2 just keeps on ticking.

AppleRobert said:

They both were.

Funny how the ipad 2 just keeps on ticking.

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Well some are still in warranty, and Apple's auto-destruct feature is set to activate 1 day after the last warranty expires

flavr said:

I agree...but now they have ten of millions of minis sold with the A5 and 512RAM that needs to be supported till 2015-16, kinda biting them in the arse...

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I disagree, did you own a first gen iPad? Completely reinvigorated the tablet market selling millions. It was released April 2010, ran like a hog when we all upgraded to IOS5 18 months later (only about 4 months after they stopped selling it) No software support from Apple 26 months later with release of IOS6 (only a year after Apple stopped selling it).

I love my Apple products as much as the next fanboy, but Apple has no issue in not provisioning brand new first gen products with the hardware needed to run software in the long term. The iPad Mini may be a similar story.

Even if it did end up with IOS 8/9 on it you most likely won't get access to many of the big features. Siri is a great example of this. The iPad 2 doesnt have Siri, but the Mini with the near identical performance and components does.

flavr said:

I did have an iPad 1 and you make a great point...that being said its a *****ty way to welcome all the millions of potentially new iPad users by not supporting the hardware for a reasonable amount of time...bringing me back to my point that had Apple at least dropped in 1GB of RAM, it would have help increase that longevity...RAM makes a huge difference and honestly was the limiting factor in the iPad 1...

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Yup RAM is defiantly the key here isn't it? Best example I can think of is the close release of 1st gen iPad & the iPhone 4. Despite being a slower device in every way the iPhone 4 still runs both ios5/6 like a champ due to having as much ram as even current products such as the Mini. I loved my first gen iPad, it was a real game changer but it suffered from a severe rack of ram. I just hope the mini is different, mine arrives next week lol

i would love to see the return figures for the iPad Mini

Medic311 said:

i would love to see the return figures for the iPad Mini

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What would that show, and what what you conclude from them (whatever they happened to be)?

irDigital0l said:

So they could save it for the iPad Mini 2 with retina display and A6X.

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Fro the love of god drop it. The A6X can not be just used in a mini. It requires 42 Watt battery to power the retina display on the iPad 4 for 9-10 hours.

The mini battery is 15 Watt. The power efficiency of the A6X is just not good enough to run a 2048x1536 resolution display on the mini without seriously effecting its battery life dramatically alongside repercussions of additional heat generated and dispersed in the smaller device (the iPad 4 still runs warm like the iPad 3)...

MacRumorUser said:

Fro the love of god drop it. The A6X can not be just used in a mini.

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!!

This incessant focus on the number one criterium being a few characters etched into a piece of silicon in a device encompassing myriad components is a trap that companies like Intel set years ago, and people still keep falling for it today. We shouldn't care one bit whether the number inside the latest device is one greater than the number inside yesterday's device, that is what the chip manufacturers want us to think about, but what we consumers should care about is whether it runs the apps we want to run, and runs them well. That is the criterium that matters, and that's what Apple is desperately trying to move toward (not reporting details of its components). The criteria that matter are criteria actually associated with tangible and measurable benefits to the consumer.

We consumers care about whether apps run, whether there are lags in the running or loading of them, whether the battery life is long enough, whether the weight and size and thickness of a device in which the device sits is comfortable for our uses and whether there are enough apps to run on the device available in the market. Tech oriented people, if they got their way and were allowed to design these products, would build totally unusable devices (too heavy, too ugly, too fat, too large), "but they'd be fast," they'd tell us.

There's a reason the engineers don't design products, but rather implement the designs that others come up with - because the products have to be usable by and appealing to everyone else.

WilliamLondon said:

!!

This incessant focus on the number one criterium being a few characters etched into a piece of silicon in a device encompassing myriad components is a trap that companies like Intel set years ago, and people still keep falling for it today. We shouldn't care one bit whether the number inside the latest device is one greater than the number inside yesterday's device, that is what the chip manufacturers want us to think about, but what we consumers should care about is whether it runs the apps we want to run, and runs them well. That is the criterium that matters, and that's what Apple is desperately trying to move toward (not reporting details of its components). The criteria that matter are criteria actually associated with tangible and measurable benefits to the consumer.

We consumers care about whether apps run, whether there are lags in the running or loading of them, whether the battery life is long enough, whether the weight and size and thickness of a device in which the device sits is comfortable for our uses and whether there are enough apps to run on the device available in the market. Tech oriented people, if they got their way and were allowed to design these products, would build totally unusable devices (too heavy, too ugly, too fat, too large), "but they'd be fast," they'd tell us.

There's a reason the engineers don't design products, but rather implement the designs that others come up with - because the products have to be usable by and appealing to everyone else.

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And thank goodness most of the users on this forum aren't engineers or designers at Apple because undoubtably we'd end up with this

Actual iPad Mini will be on market untill IGZO display will be diffuse and not too expensive, in order to keep it "Mini" and light. No "Retina" versione, I guess.

I would assume millions are being sold, but again, we have no numbers of how many went out the doors, or how many came back in. All we have is anecdotal evidence and (what I think are) manipulated shortages at some locations (apparently).

The processor speed (I don't care about the number painted on the outside, but it does matter what happens on the inside) and RAM are crucial. In my case, as much as I loved the iPad 1, it's lack of RAM meant that it literally could not open many of my PDFs. The iPad 2? No problem. So, I had to upgrade. Rendering of PDFs on the 2 and 3 is painfully slow for me (usually with scanned and OCR'd PDFs), but at least I finally have a perfect (?) display with the 3. I suspect the 4 is faster, but in my brief tests, not significantly so. We need more RAM and faster processors for a lot of activities, and for my use case, the Mini is already years behind.

I am not saying there isn't a market for it. There is also a market for the small iPod. However, the fact remains that if you desire more performance, you need to switch to Android (all sorts of issues with that, of course), or upgrade to an iPhone / large ipad.

This is why hardware, to some extent, does matter. In trying to keep legacy devices in the loop of updates, iOS can never make dramatic leaps forward, which gives rise to Apple's incremental update philosophy, which in my opinion hurts the users who are hoping for more with each update.

WilliamLondon said:

What would that show, and what what you conclude from them (whatever they happened to be)?

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do i even have to answer this question? what do you mean what would it show??? it would show how many people returned the iPad Mini..............

the conclusion would be determined by what the return numbers are.


sheeesh

MacRumorUser said:

Fro the love of god drop it. The A6X can not be just used in a mini. It requires 42 Watt battery to power the retina display on the iPad 4 for 9-10 hours.

The mini battery is 15 Watt. The power efficiency of the A6X is just not good enough to run a 2048x1536 resolution display on the mini without seriously effecting its battery life dramatically alongside repercussions of additional heat generated and dispersed in the smaller device (the iPad 4 still runs warm like the iPad 3)...

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You should work for Apple or something with that sort of knowledge (probably found on wikipedia).

Using the words "can not" is pretty premature in today's world. Apple cannot release a tablet because no one will buy it. Apple cannot make a 4-inch iPhone because it will cause fragmentation.

Your basing everything off previous devices on a device that surely is going to get new and better technology. People doubted that Apple could produce a Retina display for the iPhone 4, they did. They did it again with the iPad. Its going to happen with the Mini.

Apple is going to find ways around those issues, make compromises, and leave some for the 3rd generation to fix. That's Apple. By your logic Apple should have used the A5 chip for the iPad 1 because the A4 obviously didn't help it get iOS 6 update. The iPad 3 also should have gotten the A6X instead of the A5X so it wouldn't have those problems people were having.

It all cums down to what you can do with 512mb (or 320 available to the OS) for iOS 7, 8 etc. I suspect iOS 7 will run, but like a dog. By then it'll be time to throw away your old idevice and buy a shiney new one!

irDigital0l said:

You should work for Apple or something with that sort of knowledge (probably found on wikipedia).

Using the words "can not" is pretty premature in today's world. Apple cannot release a tablet because no one will buy it. Apple cannot make a 4-inch iPhone because it will cause fragmentation.

Your basing everything off previous devices on a device that surely is going to get new and better technology. People doubted that Apple could produce a Retina display for the iPhone 4, they did. They did it again with the iPad. Its going to happen with the Mini.

Apple is going to find ways around those issues, make compromises, and leave some for the 3rd generation to fix. That's Apple. By your logic Apple should have used the A5 chip for the iPad 1 because the A4 obviously didn't help it get iOS 6 update. The iPad 3 also should have gotten the A6X instead of the A5X so it wouldn't have those problems people were having.

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Wikipedia.. oh my you are such a funny guy. All your friends (well the folks you chat to on XBLA and convince yourself they are you're friends must be in perpetual stitches at your comic routine all the time).....


And on the contrary, you are the one trying to shoehorn current technology into a device. Shove an A6X into this despite the fact that it is currently inefficient, pack a retina display in now because they must have them because the iphone and iPod have retina, despite understanding that 320dpi is vastly different display technology than 450+ dpi required to keep the same 4x scaling.

We have been saying all along it will require advances in battery, CPU & GPU, and display technology to give the iPad mini a retina display and that's the reason apple did not release the mini with the retina display, not because they wanted a cheaper model, but because the technology wasn't ready for that particular device.

When the iPad mini does get a retina at the end of next year, it will be with new display technology, a new CPU & GPU technology/revision and possible new battery technology required to keep the same battery life despite the extra power resources required by the more powerful hardware.

Until then there won't be a retina mini, and this includes one being ready for March as you keep asserting over and over like a broken old record..