A blog about life amidst technology.

Apple iPad mini Event

October 23, 2012 by

This is the first even in a long time that Apple has live streamed on the web. In addi­tion to that they’re also stream­ing to their Apple TV devices so you can watch the event live from the com­fort of your couch — which is where I’m watch­ing it.

Here’s my notes and observations.

New ver­sion of iBooks for iOS

  • Con­tin­u­ous scrolling
  • Bet­ter iCloud integration

Mac­Books

  • 13” Mac­Book Pro is their #1 sell­ing Mac

New 13” Mac­Book Pro

  • 0.75 inch thin (20% thinner)
  • 3.57 lbs (almost a pound lighter)
  • Retina dis­play
  • Starts at a 128GB SSD drive
  • Ship­ping today
  • “It’s the best line of porta­bles we’ve ever offered”
  • Apple’s prod­uct page

“You knew there’d be some­thing called mini in this pre­sen­ta­tion, didn’t you?” Phil Schiller

Mac mini

iMac

  • Beau­ti­ful new thin design
  • 5mm thin
  • Apple’s new Fusion Drive — com­bin­ing a SSD drive with a stan­dard hard drive
  • 21.5” starts ship­ping in November
  • 27” starts ship­ping in December
  • Apple’s prod­uct page

iPad

  • 100 mil­lion iPads sold
  • Tablet web traf­fic is 91% iPad

iBooks Author

  • New ver­sion avail­able today
  • Embed­ded fonts by publisher
  • Directly insert math­e­mat­i­cal expressions
  • Mutli-​​Touch widgets
  • Book updates are eas­ier for authors now
  • Apple’s prod­uct page

I love that Apple is devot­ing press time to this app — it means it’s more likely to stick around. I think the poten­tial is huge here for both edu­ca­tion pub­lish­ers as well as self pub­lish­ers. Get­ting your own book into the iBook store look­ing exactly how you want is a great fea­ture and ser­vice to offer.

4th Gen iPad

  • A6X chip
  • 2x cpu performance
  • 2x graph­ics performance
  • Next-​​generation Image Sig­nal Proces­sor (ISP)
  • Still with the same 10 hour bat­tery life
  • Face­Time HD in front and back
  • LTE Sup­port
  • 802.11 a/​b/​g/​n
  • Light­ning connector
  • Same prices
  • Pre-​​order Octo­ber 26th
  • Ship­ping Novem­ber 2nd
  • Apple prod­uct page

iPad mini — “Every inch an iPad”

  • 7.2mm thin — as thin as a pencil
  • 0.68 lbs (53% lighter)
  • Black or white
  • 9.7” iPad /​ 7.9” diag­o­nal on ipad mini
  • 1024 x 768 pix­els — same as the iPad 2 so apps should look just as good with­out much work.
  • Dual-​​core A5 chip
  • Face­Time HD cam­era front side camera
  • 5MP iSight cam­era on the back
  • LTE Wire­less
  • 802.11 a/​b/​g/​n Wi-​​Fi
  • Light­ning connector
  • 10-​​hour bat­tery life
  • Start­ing at $329 USD
  • Pre-​​order Octo­ber 26th
  • Ship­ping Novem­ber 2nd
  • Apple’s prod­uct page

Which iPad to Buy?

I’m sur­prised they’ve kept the iPad 2 in their lineup along­side the 4th gen­er­a­tion iPad and the new iPad mini — par­tic­u­larly as they touted all the ways the iPad mini improved upon the iPad 2. If some­one was ask­ing me, I’d say decide on the size you want and then buy. iPad mini for smaller/​portable or iPad with Retina Display.

I’d guess it’s because they want to hit cer­tain price points, but the iPad mini with 32GB is only $30 more than the iPad 2 with 16GB — why wouldn’t you go for that if you’ve got $400 burn­ing a hole in your pocket?

You can watch the keynote on Apple’s web­site or on your Apple TV.

Filed Under: Apple