Apple Quietly Releases New iPad mini and iPad Air

[AlanRalph]

I’ve currently got an iPad Mini 4, which I love. I’m gladdened that Apple has decided to refresh the Mini, but I’m unsure if it’s worth it right now to spring for the new version or maybe the new Air.

[ddmiller (Doug Miller)]

I am somebody who love the iPad Mini size - I have the Mini 4, and it is working fine for me. My wife also has one, and it also is fine for her. (Our mothers also both have one, and both use them as eBook readers as well as general web and app devices.) What I love particularly about the Mini 5 upgrade is not that I can go buy one now, as ours are fine - it’s that if something happened to one of our iPads and we needed to buy another, until Monday, we would have had to spend about $630 for a new Mini 4 with AppleCare+ and cellular and a four year old A8 processor. Now I can spend the same amount for a Mini 5 with a brand-new A12 that will receive iOS updates for far longer.

I have 128 GB storage now but don’t need it over 64 GB at all - with iCloud Photo Library and iTunes Match I have never come close to having 64 GB stored on the iPad at any one time. (It’s extremely rare that I use the iPad mini for listening to music anyway - for that I use either my phone or the Sonos app to listen in the house.) The only times that I come close to using more than 64 GB of storage are when we are taking a long airplane trip and I load three or four movies or Netflix episodes onto the iPad for watching on the plane.

I’m hoping that this announcement is the beginning of Apple reliably having one to to year hardware bumps on most of their products going forward. In fact, after years of Apple not being reliable about this (with the obvious exception of the iPhone and maybe the MacBook Pro), it does seem that in the last two years they have come back to this sort of update schedule.

As for an iPad Mini Pro - I’d never buy one, but I think it would be a great option. I do wonder, though, whether enough people who want a Pro iPad would really go for a Mini over a larger display to make it worthwhile for Apple to offer one.

[ron8 (bocaboy)]

@Simon

I guess you could argue a $429 128 GB iPad is a decent middle ground. Unless of course you actually want the compact size of the mini (which I do).

While having a “middle option” would be better than nothing, I really think the base option should be 128 GB. Geeze, it’s 2019 Apple. Get with it!!

[jimthing]

Upsell.

“Our new one starts at only x!”, when in reality, everyone knows they have to get the next one up from the bottom to get what’s usable.

@ Apple: like we can’t see through your marketing to figure this most basic of facts out. HAHA.

[ricklavin2001 (Rick)]

@eccparis

the forScore app allows me (and many fellow musicians) to leave sheet music at home while on tour. (I even know a pianist from Vienna who, after scanning all his scores into his 12.9” iPad Pro, started buying all kinds of gifts while on tour for his family because suddenly he had all that extra space in his suitcase!)

I know this probably doesn’t happen very often, but what happens if someone forgets to charge the iPad or it malfunctions?

[eccparis]

Since the scores had been scanned as pdfs and just about always stored in a cloud service, they can easily be downloaded and printed out in a pinch. Which is a yuge improvement over the old days, as I recall a renowned pianist looking for a particular score in the library of my music school, because he had forgotten to pack it before going on a US tour from Europe!

Meanwhile, many orchestras also store scores and parts in Dropbox nowadays, so that members can download them to practice before the first rehearsal when real parts are used.