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Apple Announces iPad Mini 3 With Touch ID Home Button, Gold Color Option

It's absolutely worth the upgrade, I mean we're getting Touch ID and a *GOLD colour! Take my money now, I'm buying 10 of those! :eek:

* Not literally made from Gold, also not Gold but more like Champagne colour.
 
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Mixed feelings

On the one hand, this makes my decision to get Mini 2 on launch last year that much sweeter. On the other, this ghetto-izes the Mini brand a bit.

Really surprised, especially after Tim Cook seemed to tear up when he mentioned the Mini 2's 100% customer satisfaction rating. Why not build on that?
 
fruitpunch.ben said:
New page is up: http://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/#comparison-chart

Check it out.
For $100 extra (over last year's model), quite literally the ONLY THING THEY HAVE DONE is added touch ID.
For a hundred dollars!!!!!

Apple this is just unbelievable :mad: :(
Cook and co, you should be embarrassed

- no anti-reflective display
- no A8 chip, let alone A8X. It's A7!
- no AC wifi
They have literally just wacked touch ID on the front and are selling it as a new model. I am speechless!
Click to expand...

Isn't it the same price as last year's model was yesterday? Last year's model dropped $100. What your saying is that you should just buy the mini 2 instead and save $100, right?

It is ridiculous though - the only difference appears to be TouchID and the gold color option.
 
If I wanted an iPad mini, I'd get the "2" and be done with it, $100 less than it was last year. Touch ID is very nice, but I don't see how it's a $100 option. In comparison, the "5S" with Touch ID, 64 bit CPU and a few other improvments was $100 more than the "5", the mini difference by one gen, $100 and Touch ID only.
 
firewood said:
It's not really much of a new model. It's just a place-holder so they could drop the price of last year's Retina Mini by $100, and have something to fill the hole.

Thus, Huge price drop! is the real news.
Click to expand...

That would be true if they didn't also drop the price on last years iPad Air by $100 as well and actually upgrade the iPad Air 2 with a faster processor, add a barometer, upgrade the iSight camera, etc..

It's just another attempt at Apple to increase their margins. But then again, this isn't anything new. We should be used to this by now.
 
Apple must be too busy counting their money to innovate, I reckon they're the only company ever to bring out a new product with now new chips.
 
Glassed Silver said:
I'm surprised they keep the Mini 1 still around... Two budget iPad mini models which are the cheaper iPads to begin with due to their size?
Click to expand...

It's probably so they don't lose out on tablet sales at the $200-$250 price point to Android devices.

iPad sales have been falling a bit lately, year over year. Must try to please the shareholders I guess.

----------
Glassed Silver said:
Sure I blame them, they used to be THE company priding itself with knowing what people want before they knew.

They set the standards of expectations, so they will be measured by them.
Click to expand...

And that was when Steve Jobs was still in charge.
 
i really hope the ipad mini 3 will have the worst sales ever. just to show them what a stupid decision this was.
 
The great news for us Mini 1 owners is that the Mini 2 dropped in price. I'm not interested in paying an extra $100 for Touch ID, and I'm not into the gold color.

Seriously, this is the least exciting update I've seen yet for any Apple device. I don't need an Air, I need a Mini that's future-proof for 2-3 years. I'm already having enough issues with the original on 7.1.2...I don't dare take it up to 8. Yeesh.
 
Nozuka said:
i really hope the ipad mini 3 will have the worst sales ever. just to show them what a stupid decision this was.
Click to expand...

And thus, the iPad Mini 3 may just be the very last iPad Mini ever. Worlwide tablet sales have already slowed down (not just Apple). If this iPad Mini 3 sales are poor, then Apple will have the exact excuse they need to discontinue it completely. Just like the iPods.
 
I think part of the issue is that this year, with a complete redesign of the iPhone, creating the :apple: watch from scratch, and introducing a plethora of fairly major software changes across multiple platforms, Apple has had their hands considerably fuller in 2014 than in years past.

The Mini 3 seems to be simultaneously an exercise in monetizing an existing design for as long as possible, and running out of resources/time.
 
Like others have said, this really just means a hundred dollars off last years model.
 
I was thinking an A8 for sure, or even an A8X.

But this... this feels like a stop-gap. The price drop screams 'plan B'.

I bet it's a supply issue - perhaps on the A8 with the iPhone 6/6+ doing better than anticipated?
 
Eeyup. Very frustrating. I'm sure it performs just fine, the biggest annoyance is that it'll most likely mean it gets left behind for OS upgrades in 2 years while the Air 2 gets at least an extra year. After the original iPad got similar treatment, and how annoyed I was about that (it played a part in me switching to Android for a while) I'm rather skeptical about buying this now. And it's rather annoying, as it's made what was an easy decision (I wanted something that could fit in my jacket pocket) a difficult one. May even just leave the iPads altogether for a year.
 
firewood said:
It's not really much of a new model. It's just a place-holder so they could drop the price of last year's Retina Mini by $100, and have something to fill the hole.

Thus, Huge price drop! is the real news.
Click to expand...

It’s odd though that they do keep the old model around. They replaced the iPad 3 with the iPad 4. It’s a gamble for Apple to expect that users will prefer the iPad Mini 3 over the predecessor just because of Touch ID. I’d wager that the iPad Mini 2 will eat up a lot of potential iPad Mini 3 sales.
 
Cloudane said:
Eeyup. Very frustrating. I'm sure it performs just fine, the biggest annoyance is that it'll most likely mean it gets left behind for OS upgrades in 2 years while the Air 2 gets at least an extra year. After the original iPad got similar treatment, and how annoyed I was about that (it played a part in me switching to Android for a while) I'm rather skeptical about buying this now. And it's rather annoying, as it's made what was an easy decision (I wanted something that could fit in my jacket pocket) a difficult one. May even just leave the iPads altogether for a year.
Click to expand...

I wish people would just ignore a product if it doesn’t meet their expectations. I get that there is nothing like an up-to-date Apple product, but customers do give Apple the wrong signals if they buy such technologically-outdated products, even grudgingly.

It would be funny if more customers take Apple’s offer on the iPad Mini 2 now. ;-)
 
A little bit disappointing, agree. A8 and camera updates would be nice. On the other side: it still have the mute/rotation switch.

But nevertheless I will get one. I even have a retina Mini now but with smaller memory as I first wanted to try the format for my daily needs. As it perfectly fits I now can upgrade to the 128GB version with Touch ID and pass the current mini to my child. Kind of win-win for me (and :apple:)
 
The less they update it the better, surely?

If you don't have an iPad mini but want one, there it is - like the older one with touch ID. Or buy the older one which will be cheaper than it was yesterday, especially if you buy second hand. Plus you can buy the older model knowing that it's just about as good as the newer one.

If you already have an iPad mini then great; it'll keep working as they have to support the new model (which is no faster) so you're laughing.

I have the original mini (non-retina) and it works a treat with iOS8.
 
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