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

[Wild-Bill]

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!

Wait a minute......

You mean you didn't realize Apple was greedy when they decided to release a 30-pin to "lightning" adapter and charge $29.00 for it ?


You mean you didn't realize Apple was greedy when they started to systematically solder the memory on to its computer lineup so the end user could no longer upgrade memory on their own (for far cheaper), and in order to "upgrade" memory now they need to do it when they order and pay the highway robbery-esque "upgrade" pricing?

You didn't realize it when Apple invented the "Fusion Drive" marketing speak to distract customers from the fact that, instead of being able to have both a SSD and HDD in one machine, now you get one drive and pay more than the cost of two separate hard drives?

/sarcasm

I think Gordon Gecko is on their Board of Directors now....

 

[munkery]

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.

Who the hell is using a tablet as their GPS? And, for the best GPS experience, you need cellular data, which the N7 doesn't have.

Garmin and TomTom GPS's seem to work fine without cellular data.

The maps application is one of the most uses apps on the iPhone. Why do you think there has been such a flap over it?

If people are using the maps application on the iPhone to navigate around, why wouldn't they want to use an iPad Mini to do the same thing?

The GPS in the Nexus 7 is limited compared to GPS with cellular data and dedicated GPS units for three reasons:

1) small offline region - data allows updating and dedicated units contain larger map regions.

2) lack traffic data - data allows live traffic data and dedicated units contain historic traffic data.

3) lack points of interest - data allows searching and dedicated units have info stored with map data.

Even dedicated units are limited in comparison to GPS with cellular data in dense city centres that limit the GPS signal.

 

[The Catalyst]

But that only a $30 difference. Are you saying you won't but the iPad mini because it's $30 more than your anticipation?

That right there is Apple's exact line of thought.

They know people will bitch/moan about price for a hot second... but then they'll walk right out to their local Apple store and purchase one anyhow.

 

[Surminga]

$249 would have made more sense to me as well, we just got two iPad HD's with 16GB for 399 and I also got the 32GB which was a bit more. But for an extra $70 why would people not get the HD...

 

[dchao]

$249 would have made more sense to me as well, we just got two iPad HD's with 16GB for 399 and I also got the 32GB which was a bit more. But for an extra $70 why would people not get the HD...

If it were $249, why would anyone want to buy the $299 iPT5 then?

 

[joelk2]

i think theyve priced it right!

 

[Purant]

Okay... So they should have either priced it very aggressively, or they should have beefed up the specs.

At that price it should have been A6 based. Then we could have argued that it may be pricier than the competition, but at least it's a better speced tablet.

Now we have a mini tablet, with 1 1/2 half year old specs, but priced like it's new technology.

 

[TibookAktive]

I really can't see why everyone is getting their pants in a twist over this one. Great product and sensible price.

1) The iPod Touch is at $299 and they will/have sell/sold boat loads of them. This is basically a fully functional iPad at only $329. They will sell millions of them.

2) No matter what people on this forum hoped to pay, apple have just reduced the entry cost of the iPad down to $329 - just $29 more than the iPod touch! It will have come on the radar of thousands of more schools, colleges. Hence the emphasis on iBooks and textbooks at the event. Getting apple products into the hands of school/college kids is the smartest thing apple could do - they're the ones who will be queuing up for the iPad 10 in a few years... They've sold 100m iPads with an entry price at a minimum of $399 - and you don't think they'll sell any more now its down to $329?! Apple has always been on the premium end of the tech world - think of them as BMW. Just because BMW releases a 1-series hatchback to meet a growing demand for smaller, more efficient cars, do you think they price it to compete directly with a ford fiesta?...now that would be silly.

3) Why does everyone seem to think apple needs to price to beat/match the nexus 7 or kindle fire? Did you watch the event? It is night and day - those two tablets have a much reduced app offering - many of which are scaled up phone apps and they are cheap plastic and are part of the fragmentted Android ecosystem. Should apple reduce its Macbook Pros to $699 because you can by a 15" Dell laptop with fairly decent specs for that amount? No - that would be silly. Don't get me wrong, I think there is a place for them - the kindle fire particularly I have a lot of time for, but to say that apple should compete directly with them makes no sense. Sure reduce your price point and quench the desire for a smaller form factor, but head-to-head compete (when google/amazon are openly selling at/close to cost price) makes no sense, and apple don't need to.

4) People may think that the mini is a let down, but I truly think its the perfect embodiment of what the ipad should be to me. I sold my iPad 3 64gb 2 weeks ago in anticipation and will be getting the iPad mini 64gb as soon as the pre-orders open. The iPad was too big and heavy for me, I want a small device to use on my commute and for magazines, etc. I use my retina mbp for all day-to-day tasks and I need a truly "additional device". The ipad 3 was too powerful and too much of a computer replacement. The ipad mini is perfect. I'm betting there's a lot like me also.

5) As a small seperate mini rant - why are iPad 3 owners SO annoyed that they released the iPad 4th gen.? Did yours suddenly lose 4hrs of battery life? Did the resolution downgrade over night? Have apple neutered it remotely so it can't access the App Store anymore? No. Its still the device you thought was awesome yesterday. Is having the latest and greatest (rather than the device itself) the most important part of owning a gadget to you? Also, anyone who bought an iPad 3 after the rumors of the lightning connector surfaced, or even more so those who bought after the iPhone 5 release - i have zero sympathy. its hard to logically reason that they wouldn't try to bring their entire line to lightning connector as soon as physically possible.

Rant over. Let the flames begin.

 

[Purant]

1) The iPod Touch is at $299 and they will/have sell/sold boat loads of them. This is basically a fully functional iPad at only $329. They will sell millions of them.

The iPod Touch is over-priced as well. But still I don't think they are competing products. 4inches and 7.9 inches are not exactly the same. They are for different people. I never had an interest in iPod touch but I do (did) have an interest in an iPad mini, why should I care what the price for the iPod touch is?

2) No matter what people on this forum hoped to pay, apple have just reduced the entry cost of the iPad down to $329 - just $29 more than the iPod touch!

At that price though, why isn't it A6 based? Why does it contain old tech in the interior? It seems that they main engineering focused was on the exterior.

3) Why does everyone seem to think apple needs to price to beat/match the nexus 7 or kindle fire? Did you watch the event? It is night and day - those two tablets have a much reduced app offering - many of which are scaled up phone apps and they are cheap plastic. Should apple reduce its Macbook Pros to $699 because you can by a 15" Dell laptop with fairly decent specs for that amount? No - that would be silly.

I don't know about the Kindle Fire, but the Nexus 7 is an awesome product. And it may be "plastic" but it's a nice quality plastic. It's a pleasure to hold.

4) People may think that the mini is a let down, but I truly think its the perfect embodiment of what the ipad should be to me. I sold my iPad 3 64gb 2 weeks ago in anticipation and will be getting the iPad mini 64gb as soon as the pre-orders open.

How do you feel about the spec downgrade you are getting then? Your iPad 3 was much more powerful.

The iPad was too big and heavy for me, I want a small device to use on my commute and for magazines, etc. I use my retina mbp for all day-to-day tasks and I need a truly "additional device". The ipad 3 was too powerful and too much of a computer replacement. The ipad mini is perfect. I'm betting there's a lot like me also.

Why weren't you looking into a nexus 7? If your needs are that simple then surely it would have fitted your purposes (even with the "lesser" app ecosystem).

5) As a small seperate mini rant - why are iPad 3 owners SO annoyed that they released the iPad 4th gen.? Did yours suddenly lose 4hrs of battery life? Did the resolution downgrade over night? Have apple neutered it remotely so it can't access the App Store anymore?

Because they used to have the latest and greatest and now they don't. And they don't a little sooner than they expected. It's not 100% logical, but it's human and understandable.

 

[TibookAktive]

The iPod Touch is over-priced as well. But still I don't think they are competing products. 4inches and 7.9 inches are not exactly the same. They are for different people. I never had an interest in iPod touch but I do (did) have an interest in an iPad mini, why should I care what the price for the iPod touch is?

I'm not saying you should care what price the iPod touch is at, I'm just saying they have sold millions of these things at that price. In what world could they price the bigger more able, larger screened device at the same or cheaper? That doesn't make business sense.

At that price though, why isn't it A6 based? Why does it contain old tech in the interior? It seems that they main engineering focused was on the exterior.

The only other A6 based devices are the iPhone 5 which starts at $629 off contract and the new iPad (4) which starts at $499. Why should this device have a A6 again, when priced at $329?

I don't know about the Kindle Fire, but the Nexus 7 is an awesome product. And it may be "plastic" but it's a nice quality plastic. It's a pleasure to hold.

I don't think its a bad device, I'm a big fan of Amazon and actually have a Kindle Paperwhite and buy any internet purchases through them, but to say its functionality rivals the iPad is just wrong.

How do you feel about the spec downgrade you are getting then? Your iPad 3 was much more powerful.

Fully agree that the iPad 3 was much more powerful, but I didnt need it. As I said all I used it for was internet/computing when travelling and newspapers/magazines when at home. iPad mini will be perfect for me.

Why weren't you looking into a nexus 7? If your needs are that simple then surely it would have fitted your purposes (even with the "lesser" app ecosystem).

I'm so down the rabbit hole with Apple (macbook pro, iphone 5, family ipads, iCloud, @mac.com email address, etc) that it would be a lot of extra work (for no/reduced benefit) to try to slot an android device into my ecosystem.

Because they used to have the latest and greatest and now they don't. And they don't a little sooner than they expected. It's not 100% logical, but it's human and understandable.

I do understand that, but it seems slightly silly. OK, be slightly annoyed that you're not top of the gadget tree anymore - but some of the vitriolic "I will never buy another Apple product" type comments, are fairly laughable really..

 

[Purant]

In what world could they price the bigger more able, larger screened device at the same or cheaper? That doesn't make business sense.

Apart from bigger, why is it more able? They basically have the same hardware...

Also, different markets, so why would Apple care that the prices should be comparable?

The only other A6 based devices are the iPhone 5 which starts at $629 off contract and the new iPad (4) which starts at $499. Why should this device have a A6 again, when priced at $329?

The iphone 5 at that price has LTE and makes phonecalls. The iPad4 at that price has a much larger retina display and also an A6X chip. The iPad mini could have the normal A6... Why wouldn't it have A6 at 329$?

I don't think its a bad device, I'm a big fan of Amazon and actually have a Kindle Paperwhite and buy any internet purchases through them, but to say its functionality rivals the iPad is just wrong.

Fair enough.

Fully agree that the iPad 3 was much more powerful, but I didnt need it. As I said all I used it for was internet/computing when travelling and newspapers/magazines when at home. iPad mini will be perfect for me.

Fair enough again!

I'm so down the rabbit hole with Apple (macbook pro, iphone 5, family ipads, iCloud, @mac.com email address, etc) that it would be a lot of extra work (for no/reduced benefit) to try to slot an android device into my ecosystem.

Sure, I have a mbpro and an iphone 4, so I am sort of in a similar position. Although I wouldn't mind an android tablet at this point.

I do understand that, but it seems slightly silly. OK, be slightly annoyed that you're not top of the gadget tree anymore - but some of the vitriolic "I will never buy another Apple product" type comments, are fairly laughable really..

People over-react to things

 

[sneaky butcher]

$299 would have been the perfect price.

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I don't think the Nexus 7 has GPS?

yes it does have gps and google maps allows you to cache their maps on the device.

Nexus 7 also has NFC which ipad mini doesn't

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lots of confusion about the nexus 7 in this thread and in other threads:

the nexus 7 is $199 for 8 GB, and it's $249 for 16 Gb (everybody keeps using the $199 price for comparison--but that's the 8 GB price!)

IOW, the 16 GB iPad mini is $90 more than the 16 GB nexus 7.

Also, the iPad mini has a 5 MP camera, the nexus doesn't.

Now: here's the crunch--the mini will continue to receive iOS upgrades, can the nexus guarantee that it will continue to receive Android upgrades?

Bottom line: Would you pay $90 for a 5 MP camera and for easy iCloud sync for all your documents and photos??? remember that it'll sync to your iPhone and to your Mac??

get with the program. Nexus 7 32gb releases next week and takes the 16gb price point. 16gb moves to $199

 

[k995]

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!

As I predicted still what did you expect its apple.

 

[Hell0W0rld]

The price is really a joke, tell you what in Europe the price for the ipad mini is 329€, that's bad, but the price for the ipod touch 5 is also 329€.


That's just epic fail.

 

[loybond]

I dunno, at around $80 more than the 32GB Nexus 7, even the 16GB iPad mini doesn't seem like a good value to me. The N7 can open large PDFs (~100MB) much faster than my iPad 3, and render each page faster as I scroll. The N7 can open 160MB Word documents just fine where the iPad 3 crashes. Skype and my SIP application auto-launch and never quit with the superior multitasking, whereas on the Ipad 3 (and iPhone 4S/5) Skype quits every now and then.

So with the lack of RAM, outdated SoC, lower PPI and higher price... doesn't make much sense to me.

 

[inscrewtable]

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!

You can't compare a beautifully crafted aluminium and glass classic with a piece of plastic trash.

Just go and buy the mini, you know you want to.

 

[Yuya106]

C'mon, just fork out an extra $100 for the iPad Mini

Seriously!! I would happily spend $100 more and buy myself an iPad Mini rather than an NOOK HD.

Rant about Nook continued here....

http://www.tradingfloor.com/posts/b...on-ipad-mini-price-reveal-nook-safe-248844453

Plus, when did you get so price sensitive? This is a bargain compared to the old days when you had to spend a ton to buy a fat desktop computer that took up half your room. Portability comes at a price, and one I would happily pay up

 

[Sissyboy]

Ok, I'll put my hand up to say I was totally wrong about what Apple would charge for the mini, especially given its specs.

I currently have in our family: 2 MacBook pros, 1 MacBook, couple of old iPods, 1 iPod touch and an iPad . I was holding out on the mini announcement before buying a 7 inch tablet.

I'll be honest, I thought it was going to be a tough decision, but with the released specs and pricing for the mini, the decision is the easiest one I have ever had to make. I'll be buying a Nexus 7 32gb for $250.

The sadist thing about this, is that if you read the comments in the stories covering the announcement, everyone thinks the same, this mini is way over priced. If someone like me , who has not bought other than apple for mobile devices can find it an easy decision to now buy a Nexus, imagine what the populous who don't have any preference are going to choose.

Sad day in my opinion, very sad. At least the iPad specs and pricing are competitive in the full size tablet market. The mini isn't even close.

Enjoy the apps!

 

[Archerious]

What's better about them?

The iPad mini is faster than the Nexus 7 in every way, it's got MUCH better tablet apps, it's better built, thinner, lighter.

The Nexus has higher resolution and....well, that's all.

You know I could say the same thing about the Macbook Pro Retina 13 inch compared to a Asus Ultrabook, the Asus is build better, thinner, lighter, and has MUCH better tablet apps.

The RMBP 13 inch has a higher resolution and...well, that's all.

 

[BaldiMac]

If you got 200 dollars more to spend, have at it. Id rather use that 200 dollars for something else.

I have no idea what you are getting at here. $200 more than what? You were the one that said you would rather have an iPad 2, which is more expensive than an iPad mini.

 

[ReallyBigFeet]

People need to get over this. Apple sets the initial price, either the market embraces it or rejects it. I expect the former in a big, big way.

Apple has no desire to cater to the extreme low-end of the spectrum. Leave the bottom-feeders to people like Amazon, Google and Samsung.

 

[Idefix]

yes it does have gps and google maps allows you to cache their maps on the device.

Nexus 7 also has NFC which ipad mini doesn't

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get with the program. Nexus 7 32gb releases next week and takes the 16gb price point. 16gb moves to $199

Ah, Google is responding to the pressure of Apple's product introduction! Surprise! And selling it close to "at cost", right?

Guess what: competition works! Google introduces smaller tablet to compete with iPad. Apple responds by introducing smaller tablet with more bells and whistles to compete with smaller Google tablet. Google responds by reducing price.

Doesn't matter. You either want a ritzy Porsche, or you want a Ford Focus.

There's a very old saying: "A taste for Champagne on a Coca Cola budget!"

Ah! But maybe I should spell that out? Apple = Champagne, Google = Coca Cola...

 

[gto55]

A french website compares the iPad Mini to the concurrency
http://goo.gl/uvGNe

 

[wgnoyes]

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!

So don't buy it. Apple is not a charity. They're in business to make money. They make a premium product and charge a premium price. They're not the only one. Oakley, as an example, thinks nothing of charging $250+ for a serving of polycarbonate and plastic molded into the shape of a pair of sunglasses.

You don't want to pay $329 for an ipad mini? Fine. There are plenty of 7" android tablets out there at $199 waiting for you.

Avarita bona est.

 

[JSalig]

Enjoy the apps!

Funny, I hear that from PC-users all the time. If there is one thing the Mac community has had to adjust to, its having less programs available to it (or were built for it) than the competition. Stop acting like its some sort of huge hardship. It comes down to each individual's needs and uses.