If you sat and watched the Apple event live from the Californian Theatre and convinced yourself that you would be getting your hands on the white variant of the newly announced iPad mini, then buckle yourself down and prepare to wait for a few extra weeks before it finally gets delivered. Apple were widely expected to introduce the iPad mini to the world during the event, and they didn't disappoint by showing off the 7.9-inch tablet that will be be available in black or white starting on Friday November 2nd.
Competing directly with the Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire HD in the quickly expanding small but powerful, cheap but well designed tablet market, the iPad mini is most important new product to come out of the October 23rd Apple media event.
Apple announced a smorgasbord of new and updated products yesterday, including the 13” MacBook Pro with Retina Display, all-new iMacs, refreshed Mac mini, fourth-generation iPad and, the most important device of all, the iPad mini.
Whenever Apple take to the stage to hold an official media event we can always be sure that it will contain a number of purposely made videos that are either overviews of the products on show or ad campaigns that will ultimately end up on the television. Yesterday's event at the California Theatre was no different with Tim Cook and Phil Schiller proudly showing off a number of videos showing off the range of new products that were announced during the keynote speech, two of which have been uploaded to Apple's official YouTube channel.
It’s finally here, folks! Apple has just announced the all-new iPad mini at their event today. It’s (mostly) exactly what the technology blogosphere was expecting: a smaller iPad 2. Check out all the basic specifications, pricing and availability after the jump!
Unlike devices like the iPhone and iPad that require software updates to push new content to the product, Apple have the ability to update the Apple TV home screens remotely and add new web-based content at will. Several keen-eyed Apple TV owners have noticed the appearance of the new Apple Events icon that is themed in similar fashion to the event invites that were distributed last week for today's press event that we suspect will be dedicated to the purported iPad Mini as well as being heavily focused on education. More on the event here.
Ever since rumors first sprang up with regards to the smaller iPad, or "iPad Mini," as it is being unofficially dubbed, one of the immediate questions springing to the minds of many has been "what about the iPod touch?" After all, the so-called "iPhone without the phone part" has been the only device offering the iOS experience minus the iOS price, but with the iPad Mini combining the lower-end cost with a larger screen and a set of features easily matching the iPod touch, is there really a place left in the market for it?
According to a report from the generally-reliable 9to5Mac, the entry-level model of the upcoming iPad Mini will cost $329. Given the purported specification of the device, the price point was always going to be dramatically lower than that of the main iPad, and although it's not as cheap as the Nexus 7, it's still, one suspects, cheap enough to potentially command huge sales.
Just as we expected, Apple has sent out media invites for an event which they are going to host in the California Theatre, San Jose, dated 23rd October.
At the beginning of this month, it was presumed the iPad Mini would be announced on October 17th, with invitations going out a week prior on the 10th. That hasn't turned out to be the case, but tech enthusiasts remain defiantly undeterred - predicting Apple's announcement instead for next week. As well as corroborating the notion of a launch next week, AppleInsider has learned the smaller iPad will arrive in four storage configurations ranging from an entry-level 8GB all the way up to 64GB.
