iPad mini $329 for a Mini? Are you kidding me!?

[ReallyBigFeet]

I was hoping it would be around the price of a Nano... it only makes sense Mini is just slightly bigger/more than Nano in the Appleverse.

Do a parts comparison and then compare. I think you'd find that the iPad Mini, at COST, is far more expensive to manufacture than is an iPod Touch, and the Touch costs more to make than does the Nano.

This is purely logical pricing on Apple's part. Unlike Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc....they don't need to subsidize their products. They sell themselves on merit alone.

 

[Phokus]

I don't see anything at $199 that's even close to iPad Mini. Did you not watch the event?

I did and it was a lot of B.S. propaganda.

 

[BoxerGT2.5]

iPad Mini: Half the performance at 65% of the price.

 

[Phokus]

Not true. People see a $199 price and figure they must be the same. Look and compare. Its not close. You want cheap junk, buy cheap junk. Same as PCs. You can buy something cheaper than a Mac.

Except the ipad mini is specced as cheap junk. 1024 × 768 resolution is just shameful for a 7.9 inch display.

 

[dmelgar]

Let me introduce you to a company called Apple (formerly Apple Computers)

The have NEVER sold a device that was "competitively priced".

There you have it.

Thats not quite true either.

Apple has never sold a device that was the dirt cheapest product in a segment.

They have sold many items at very competitive prices. Its often not easy to build a similar product for a similar price. Look at Macbook Air competitors, typically cheap plastic painted to look like aluminum, or much higher priced. No phone is as well built as the iPhone. Motorola tried making a 10" tablet made from cheap plastic construction and it was more expensive than the iPad.

This is no different.
Will be interesting to see how the $329 price point works. I would have thought $299 more reasonable with usual retail pricing, i.e. $299 looks way better than $301.

 

[ugahairydawgs]

True. But what if you are not invested in the iCosystem?

If you just looking for something to consume content, what's the justification?

If you weren't tied into the ecosystem then it wouldn't matter.

This is just me talking, but I've never been blown away by (or even really liked all that much) the Android experience. I've tried it both Samsung's take on it and the "pure Google" approach and it's always seemed a bit lacking. That's fine....its why we have choice. I'd personally rather pay a little more for an Apple product that I feel is a bit better constructed than to go with a Nexus 7 (which I have tried for a while) or something similar.

Should someone not in the Apple ecosystem automatically go for the iPad? Of course not. But to say the product is a bad value just because you can get a Nexus 7 for $80 less is a bit misleading.

 

[slippery-pete]

At 249 I would have considered, at 329 it's an easy pass. This coming from somebody who owns 4 iPads (iPad 1, 2 iPad 2, and a new iPad

 

[Ladybug]

I think the Mini could have been a tad cheaper but the price is not really overly high in my opinion. I've seen no one mention yet how much ram it comes with? I'm of course hoping its at least a gig of ram. Anyone know?

 

[dmelgar]

I did and it was a lot of B.S. propaganda.

Have you seen what you can get for $199? The Nexus has potential if you can get it and if Google bothers to support it. They typically hate dealing with actual customers.

The Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD are relative junk. Laden with in your face advertising. Doesn't even come with a power adapter. No volume controls even. No camera. Big, heavy, clunky, small display. Runs a heavily modified version of Android that's really just a Amazon sales platform. Can't get apps from Google Play, just Amazon app store.
And Amazon isn't even making money at that. No point in Apple trying to fight for that market.

I've never understood why Google wants to sell a tablet at a loss, or give away Android etc. I don't know how long they can keep spending money with giddy abandon without worrying about how they make money at it.

Folks are talking like the iPad mini is Soooo much worse than the Nexus 7. Are you kidding me? Its not that different, 1024x768 vs. 1280x800.

Due to Apple's software architecture, they can't make up arbitrary display sizes unlike Android. So their choices really were 1024x768 or double (4x pixels) at 2048x1526. They're trying to evolve that architecture but will take a long time with all the apps out there.

 

[Phokus]

Have you seen what you can get for $199? The Nexus has potential if you can get it and if Google bothers to support it. They typically hate dealing with actual customers.

The Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD are relative junk. Laden with in your face advertising. Doesn't even come with a power adapter. No volume controls even. No camera. Big, heavy, clunky, small display. Runs a heavily modified version of Android that's really just a Amazon sales platform. Can't get apps from Google Play, just Amazon app store.
And Amazon isn't even making money at that. No point in Apple trying to fight for that market.

I've never understood why Google wants to sell a tablet at a loss, or give away Android etc. I don't know how long they can keep spending money with giddy abandon without worrying about how they make money at it.

Folks are talking like the iPad mini is Soooo much worse than the Nexus 7. Are you kidding me? Its not that different, 1024x768 vs. 1280x800.

Due to Apple's software architecture, they can't make up arbitrary display sizes unlike Android. So their choices really were 1024x768 or double (4x pixels) at 2048x1526. They're trying to evolve that architecture but will take a long time with all the apps out there.

Except the Nexus 7 is almost 1 inch smaller than the ipad mini. The Ipad Mini's DPI is atrocious.

 

[ThatsMeRight]

Ok, Apple is now officially acknowledging that it's a greedy money hungry company. I'm sorry but if you pay 329 for a 16GB mini you've either got more money than common sense or are a complete moron. That's friggin rediculous. WOW!

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1473923/

For $329 you are getting an iPad that's basically the same as the $499 iPad with Retina display. There are three main differences:

- $499 iPad's got a Retina display, iPad mini doesn't
- $499 iPad's got an A6X chip, iPad mini doesn't
- $499 iPad's design is from early 2011, $329 iPad mini's design is from late 2012

As you can see all other features are the same. I think it's pretty decent from Apple to build a lighter, thinner, smaller iPad that's $170 cheaper and 'only' misses the A6 chip and the Retina display (by far the most expensive component).

Heck, this $329 is superior to a $399 iPad 2.

 

[insoc]

I can't believe how many people are still comparing the Nexus 7 with the iPad Mini in things like processor speed, memory, storage and the likes and how the Nexus 7 or Kindle or whatever your favorite 7" tablet is cheaper but NOT talking about the DIFFERENCE in the SIZE of the screen whereas the iPad Mini has a 7.9" screen and the Nexus a 7" screen (a 35% difference) That to me is the factor that makes me want to buy the iPad Mini right away. I'm an avid magazine reader, both the interactive ones and the regular .pdf ones. I found my iPad 3 to be just to heavy to keep reading a magazine as I would with a paper magazine and one month ago I started to look for alternatives. The Android 10.1 tablets were a good alternative (specially the ultra thin Toshiba Excite 10 LE) but nevertheless I always wanted a smaller tablet that I can hold just with one hand. Then I looked at the 7" tablets like the Kindle or the Galaxy Tab 2 7" but found the screen a bit small and the way they showed the magazines or the .pdfs a little weird always keeping blank spaces in the screen unusable.
So the iPad Mini came as a wonderful solution FOR THE MOMENT. The moment they make the iPad 13" X.000 just as thin and light as a single paper sheet I will buy it but as of today the iPad Mini is the only device that gives me the portability, weight and thinness as the 7" tablets with MORE display space.

 

[Phokus]

I can't believe how many people are still comparing the Nexus 7 with the iPad Mini in things like processor speed, memory, storage and the likes and how the Nexus 7 or Kindle or whatever your favorite 7" tablet is cheaper but NOT talking about the DIFFERENCE in the SIZE of the screen whereas the iPad Mini has a 7.9" screen and the Nexus a 7" screen (a 35% difference) That to me is the factor that makes me want to buy the iPad Mini right away. I'm an avid magazine reader, both the interactive ones and the regular .pdf ones. I found my iPad 3 to be just to heavy to keep reading a magazine as I would with a paper magazine and one month ago I started to look for alternatives. The Android 10.1 tablets were a good alternative (specially the ultra thin Toshiba Excite 10 LE) but nevertheless I always wanted a smaller tablet that I can hold just with one hand. Then I looked at the 7" tablets like the Kindle or the Galaxy Tab 2 7" but found the screen a bit small and the way they showed the magazines or the .pdfs a little weird always keeping blank spaces in the screen unusable.
So the iPad Mini came as a wonderful solution FOR THE MOMENT. The moment they make the iPad 13" X.000 just as thin and light as a single paper sheet I will buy it but as of today the iPad Mini is the only device that gives me the portability, weight and thinness as the 7" tablets with MORE display space.

The fact that they made the ipad mini almost in inch larger than the nexus 7 while having a lower resolution is what makes the ipad mini so crappy. Enjoy your low DPI experience.

 

[MrXiro]

Thats not quite true either.

Apple has never sold a device that was the dirt cheapest product in a segment.

They have sold many items at very competitive prices. Its often not easy to build a similar product for a similar price. Look at Macbook Air competitors, typically cheap plastic painted to look like aluminum, or much higher priced. No phone is as well built as the iPhone. Motorola tried making a 10" tablet made from cheap plastic construction and it was more expensive than the iPad.

This is no different.
Will be interesting to see how the $329 price point works. I would have thought $299 more reasonable with usual retail pricing, i.e. $299 looks way better than $301.

They did the 8gb iPod Touch 4th Gen for $229 and then dropped it to $199 the next year. I bet they do the same thing.

"Competitively priced" per spec is what these people are measuring. Design and premium materials are not what anybody ever refers to. Nobody on this site or many other sites cares about the aluminum and glass with premium design vs plastic thing because it can't be measured in straight numbers. It's a sad truth.

 

[ActionableMango]

I did and it was a lot of B.S. propaganda.

So a smaller bezel, lighter, thinner, 35% larger screen, made of better materials, and 275,000 apps designed for tablets were all B.S.? Which specific ones do you think were the lies, I'm curious?

Or do you just don't think any of those things are worth money?

 

[Apple...]

Ok, Apple is now officially acknowledging that it's a greedy money hungry company. I'm sorry but if you pay 329 for a 16GB mini you've either got more money than common sense or are a complete moron. That's friggin rediculous. WOW!

What is your problem?!

 

[MrXiro]

I did and it was a lot of B.S. propaganda.

I think the word you're looking for is "Marketing".

They're neither putting fear in you nor forcing you to do anything you don't want... they just want to sell you something

Hence, not propaganda.

----------

Do a parts comparison and then compare. I think you'd find that the iPad Mini, at COST, is far more expensive to manufacture than is an iPod Touch, and the Touch costs more to make than does the Nano.

This is purely logical pricing on Apple's part. Unlike Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc....they don't need to subsidize their products. They sell themselves on merit alone.

It was a joke... Nano is smaller than Mini so mini should be priced close to Nano... sigh...

 

[QCassidy352]

Nexus has built in GPS. The WiFi version of the iPad does not.

I don't see how Apple justifies the $130 premium over the Google Nexus 7. That premium jumps to $260 if you want/need GPS. It goes to $310 if you want 32GB and GPS.

There's no "justification." People will buy more iPad minis on per-order night than nexus 7's have been sold in the life of the product. So why wouldn't they charge what they can get?

 

[Troneas]

I don't see anything at $199 that's even close to iPad Mini. Did you not watch the event?

the nexus 7 and the kindle fire hd come to mind.

both have similar specs to the mini ipad but with better resolution at 216 ppi - albeit they are a bit heavier and have no back camera - just front facing (who takes photos with the ipad though?)

they are priced at 199.

 

[kailibur]

you people forget they still want to sell the ipod touch.

 

[Apple OC]

personally I like it ... this may be my first iPad

 

[PlutoniusX]

So a smaller bezel, lighter, thinner, 35% larger screen, made of better materials, and 275,000 apps designed for tablets were all B.S.? Which specific ones do you think were the lies, I'm curious?

Or do you just don't think any of those things are worth money?

Larger screen, lower pixel density, left over old/slow components from the iPad 2 (A5 Processor). Stop drinking the Apple Juice, this is a left over bin tablet for a premium price. Heck, even the Nexus 7`s quad core tegra is faster than the old A5. =Joke

If you REALLY want something that is .1 pounds lighter and millimeters thinner then go ahead. I prefer something that doesn`t scream ripoff.

 

[ixodes]

Apple has always charged premium prices.

What's misleading & no fault of Apples, is the artificial image of bargain pricing on heavily subsidized iPhones. $199. has become the popular price point for most top of the line smartphones, which causes Apple to look good.

Because the non-technical average computer buyer rarely compares equally configured computers, Apple's premium prices often go unnoticed.

In lieu of a serious competitor to iPads, once again most price points aren't noticed. However now with two iPad sizes to choose from a comparison suddenly becomes nearly automatic.

Yet Apple "the brand" is so strong people will pay without hesitation & no one knows that better than Apple.

 

[QCassidy352]

Larger screen, lower pixel density, left over old/slow components from the iPad 2 (A5 Processor). Stop drinking the Apple Juice, this is a left over bin tablet for a premium price. Heck, even the Nexus 7`s quad core tegra is faster than the old A5. =Joke

You act like people are sitting around debating iPad vs android tablet. They aren't. The iPad has a stranglehold on the market, and the pricing of both products reflects that.

 

[BaldiMac]

Larger screen, lower pixel density, left over old/slow components from the iPad 2 (A5 Processor).

So, basically, it's an iPad 2 in a smaller form factor with better cameras and a higher quality screen for $70 less than the iPad 2 was selling for yesterday.