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How will Apple cripple the mini iPad to get to the lower price point?

The mini iPad will be limited by having...

  • Only 8GB of RAM

    Votes: 52 36.6%

  • Requiring a data plan

    Votes: 3 2.1%

  • Only one camera

    Votes: 50 35.2%

  • Non-retina display

    Votes: 104 73.2%

  • A4 processor

    Votes: 23 16.2%

  • 802.11n only (no 4G, no 5ghz wifi)

    Votes: 40 28.2%

  • No Bluetooth

    Votes: 8 5.6%
  • Total voters
    142
  • Poll closed .
Redbeard25

Redbeard25

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 4, 2003
156
17
===============
Note: first poll choice should be 8GB Flash memory, not 8GB of RAM. 8GB of RAM would be nice.
===============


And, in order to justify the crippling, do you think Apple will market it as an "educational" iPad, an iPad for kids, a giant iPod touch, or something else all together?
 
Last edited:
I don't think that marketing will have a lot to do with getting the price down. My thoughts:

Storage: 16 GB (no other option available)
Camera: Front facing only, 2-3 megapixels for video chat/facetime
Display: 1280X800 (216 ppi) like the Nexus 7
Price: $299
 
They will use a dual core processor (They don't need a quad core)

It won't be Retina.

They will leverage many of the same parts used in the next iPhone.
 
Redbeard25 said:
And, in order to justify the crippling, do you think Apple will market it as an "educational" iPad, an iPad for kids, a giant iPod touch, or something else all together?
Click to expand...

Smaller display 7"

1024 x 768 resolution

Same cameras, GPU, CPU and Ram from iPad2 since they are already in the pipeline and cheaper from scale.
 
I assume it will be mainly a shrinked iPad2 with respect to CPU and grachical specs.

That and a limit in storage on 16GB should help; also guess that the battery will be cheaper die to smaller size.
 
It's gonna be an iPad 2 with a smaller screen, 16GB only, at $299. That's it. Same resolution and aspect ratio, even, just shrunk down. Maybe a non-IPS display. The iPad 2 will stick around at the current price.

Next year, when the "iPad 4" is released, the "iPad 3" drops to $399. Retina iPad mini in Fall 2013.
 
screensaver400 said:
It's gonna be an iPad 2 with a smaller screen, 16GB only, at $299. That's it. Same resolution and aspect ratio, even, just shrunk down. Maybe a non-IPS display. The iPad 2 will stick around at the current price.

Next year, when the "iPad 4" is released, the "iPad 3" drops to $399. Retina iPad mini in Fall 2013.
Click to expand...

Great comments!

I agree with screensaver400's 2013 prediction, however, I think Apple will not make the iPad mini on par with the iPad 2 in any way... unless the iPad 2 goes away.

I just thought of another marketing angle: iPad Cloud, and they don't actually tell anyone that it has 8GB of RAM... just push everyone to the thought that they play music from their iCloud account... they use documents saved to iCloud, etc.
 
ucfgrad93 said:
I don't think that marketing will have a lot to do with getting the price down. My thoughts:

Storage: 16 GB (no other option available)
Camera: Front facing only, 2-3 megapixels for video chat/facetime
Display: 1280X800 (216 ppi) like the Nexus 7
Price: $299
Click to expand...

It will NEVER be 1280x800. It will be 1024x768. They would have to redesign every app if they went with 1280x800.
 
slicecom said:
It will NEVER be 1280x800. It will be 1024x768. They would have to redesign every app if they went with 1280x800.
Click to expand...

Not so sure about that. Many apps are made for iPhone and iPad. iPhone screen ratio is 3:2 and iPad is 4:3. If the rumored iPhone 5 is going to be just longer (as shown in mock ups adding a row of icons), it will become 16:9. Isn't it possible that Apple may start to converge on that ratio for the new iPhone and perhaps a mini iPad?
 
dmk1974 said:
Not so sure about that. Many apps are made for iPhone and iPad. iPhone screen ratio is 3:2 and iPad is 4:3. If the rumored iPhone 5 is going to be just longer (as shown in mock ups adding a row of icons), it will become 16:9. Isn't it possible that Apple may start to converge on that ratio for the new iPhone and perhaps a mini iPad?
Click to expand...

If they did that, it would still be 768px wide, not 800px. May seem small, but that's a huge difference. One involves either interpolation (everything will be blurry) or a complete rewrite of all apps in the App Store, and the other involves little to no changes in most apps.

I'm quite confident it will be a ~8" tablet with a resolution of 1024x768.
 
screensaver400 said:
It's gonna be an iPad 2 with a smaller screen, 16GB only, at $299. That's it. Same resolution and aspect ratio, even, just shrunk down. Maybe a non-IPS display. The iPad 2 will stick around at the current price.

Next year, when the "iPad 4" is released, the "iPad 3" drops to $399. Retina iPad mini in Fall 2013.
Click to expand...

I'd buy this... both your prediction, and the device itself!
 
Apple wanna do a awesome competitor device which has more features & is maybe a lil bit more expensive then the Kindle Fire & Nexus 7 though its worth it
 
If the new iPhone is getting a new screen ratio/resolution, I wonder if future iPads, including any iPad Mini will get a similar aspect ratio.
 
They're not going to cripple it, they'll just offer last gen hardware with few compromises. The specs go like - Apple A5 dual-core CPU, 512MB RAM, 8/16GB storage, 7.85" 1024x768 res. , low res. front and rear cameras, etc which isn't bad at all.
 
It won't be an iPad mini it will be an iPod maxi. So, no 4g, discontinue 8 Gig iPod, etc... it is the next gen iPod.
 
dmk1974 said:
Not so sure about that. Many apps are made for iPhone and iPad. iPhone screen ratio is 3:2 and iPad is 4:3. If the rumored iPhone 5 is going to be just longer (as shown in mock ups adding a row of icons), it will become 16:9. Isn't it possible that Apple may start to converge on that ratio for the new iPhone and perhaps a mini iPad?
Click to expand...

Whatever the pixels is, we'll see. I was getting more at the fact that they already deal with multiple screen ratios in iOS.

To your point, I could even envision 1366x768 (16x9) since that is the same as the display they use on the 11" MacBook Air.

iPhone 5 looks like it will be 16x9 as well and likely grow to 1138x640. Or maybe they will cram more pixels in and up it to 1280x720???
 
Maybe they could use 1280x960. Its a 4:3 resolution, it would fit in line with the ipad display ratios, then again 1024x768 could be used but it needs something to set it aside from the current 7inchers I could see the ipad 2 maybe being dropped and just having two types of ipads for sale.

It will have the same internals more or less as the ipad 2. I think it will only have a facetime camera, as well as the ability to choose either 16GB or 8 GB of storage space.
 
I voted retina because of reasons (plus I'm drunk so that's why I deserve hugs and money give me hugs and money) and I found out others guessed the same. :)
 
Easy one.

It will have the resolution of the original iPad - ie, 1024x768. Not Retina. Which won't look too bad on the smaller sized screen.

Lower storage options - i.e. 8/16/32gb

Same spec as iPad 2 - A5 w/512mb RAM.

Price? $199 8gb.
 
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