Here is how I see it. Thus far, literally every single first generation mobile apple device has had something pretty big missing from it.The iPhone 1 didn't have 3G support, unlike even dumb phones at the time, the iPod touch 1 didn't have a speaker, unlike every PMP ever made, and the iPad 1 didn't have any cameras, which was a bust for many. All of those deletions were big selling points in their next generations, so let's ask ourselves, what can apple delete this time around. My vote is for the retina display. Apple can sell a bunch of regular non retina minis now and then have something to market next year for people to upgrade to. In addition, the display adds a lot of cost to what should be a cheap device to conquer the Nexus 7 and Kindle fire, but more importantly, takes a massive battery which I don't think can fit in the smaller case. Remember a few months ago when it was found new iPad 2 devices had a die shrunken A5SOC? Why would apple bother to refine something that should be on its way out in favor for the a5x or a6... perhaps it was a test for a new device with a smaller battery... As we all know apple doesn't really care about specs either, such as how they continue to use dual core CPUs in the iPad 3 while most high end android devices are quad core, so I don't see them having any problems reusing the acceptable A5 again. To recap, I see the die shrunken A5 paired with a 1024x768 display for app compatibility and what do we have.... Oh wait, that sounds like an iPad 2, and oh wait, that is still in production so parts are cheap to make increasing revenue.