“The iPad mini will not blow your mind,” Dave Thier opines for Forbes. “I feel confident in saying that. It hasn’t been announced yet, but when it is, it will likely be less powerful, smaller and cheaper than its bigger brother. It will not be, as Apple likes to say, ‘the best, BLANK we’ve ever made.’ It will be a product with less functionality, for less money – not the company’s usual MO. It will be a new product, but not a new idea. And it will sell very well.”
Thier writes, “There was a time when Apple blew our minds. The iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad – all of these products fundamentally changed our relationships with technology, democratizing and simplifying with every step. That magical, mysterious, Jobsian vision helped to craft a new world defined by personal electronics, changing everything…”
“Apple already did all that,” Thier writes. “The world that Steve Jobs once imagined exists now, and Apple’s job is different than it used to be. Apple is now in the business of distribution as much as it is in the business of innovation – all of those once revolutionary devices are being refined and tweaked to stay current, and new products, like the iPad mini, are being designed to broaden the reach and build upon what the iPad already did. It’s a slower, less exciting process, but no less impressive and no less important. The world doesn’t only need top-of-the-line products. Other people need other options, and Apple wants to be in the business of providing them.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Rainy Day” for the heads up.]
Apple already blew our minds with iPad. The mini will just be an additional form factor to compete with the cheaper imitations.
Nothing to read here. Move along!
I’ll say there is nothing to read. A lousy review of a yet to be introduced product by a paid Microsoft whore.
The problem with these writers is that they have no imagination, yet they pose as brilliant market analysts. They do more harm than good, and several of them are a waste of skin.
All the tech press called the original iPad announcement boring. “Just a big iPod touch.” Remember that? Now when the same press remembers it, they say it blew their minds at the time.
And wasn’t the iPod mini “smaller, less powerful and cheaper than its big brother” too?
Apple releases game changers about every 4 years. Then optimizes the product. Are we really seeing any change in the play here. Let’s revisit this in a couple of years. I am not expecting the Product of the Century… every year.
Typical Forbes whiney bullshit. There’s no news here, it’s an iPad Mini, a smaller version of what’s gone before, and it’ll sell shitloads, because lots of people want what the iPad does, but in an easy-to-carry, pocketable version.
He might have well saved his time writing this, because there’s nothing that isn’t already spectacularly obvious to someone who who has half a brain.
Cannot wait to get mine. And yes it will be a matter of fact release that will really sell well.
Tiny screen iPad? Yes, boring! I want magical and shiny like the good old days!
Yep, as the man said.
“Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
Charles H. Duell, U.S. Commissioner of Patents, in 1899.
Left to wonder the websites Charles surfed on his iPad and how many videos made on his iPhone displaced the stiff posed sepia-toned photos? 😉
I posted this at the original site:
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‘”It will be a product with less functionality, for less money ”
“The world that Steve Jobs once imagined exists now, and Apple’s job is different than it used to be.”
eh??
besides a whole slew of iPods following the original iPod like the mini, the nano, the shuffle
there were a whole slew of Mac laptops : macbook Pro had smaller siblings the iBooks (later called the macbooks)
the were a whole slew of macs: Macpro had the MacMini… (even in the earliest years for example the MacII FX had smaller less powerful siblings like the Mac II Ci, Mac ll Cx etc. )
so what are you talking about?’
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these guys are so eager to write “the end of apple after jobs” that common sense know flies out the window… ‘
I think this DOOM MONGERING crap, every damned day, is a sort of betting pool of what TechTard journalist will win the eminent ‘PROPHET OF DOOM AWARD’!
Sorry TTJs, but every DOOM article about Apple, going back to 1984, has been a FAIL. You’re betting against the wrong horse. I’d think you’d have noticed.
Apple Death Knell Counter
I cut off a line from the original post where I said:
‘in numerous conference calls and product launches Jobs said that apple tries to produce the ‘Best’ in different price points and functionality for example the iPod shuffle was the best for a lightweight music player’.
Of course it would be boring to you if you’re an unimaginative hack writing for Forbes. But what if Apple don’t see it as simply a smaller iPad, but an iPad with a different role ?
My money would be on Apple promoting it to car manufacturers so that it can be elegantly integrated into their vehicles. Apple already has a good working relationship with most manufacturers ( except Ford, who insist on crippling their cars with Microsoft stuff that doesn’t work reliably ). Apple also has the eco-system, breadth of applications and longevity to make it an appealing prospect.
Just imagine if your car had been optimised for something like HP’s PayBook. It would be pretty useless by now and even less use in five years, but you can be entirely confident that iPads will still be around in ten years. Integrating Android tablets would mean that you would run into problems with fragmentation and each car manufacturer would probably have to produce a list of ‘certified’ tablets that would work with their vehicles. With Apple, you only need to get an iPad mini and any of them will work, including future models.
Apple tv remote thingy dressed up as smaller iPad?
I don’t want my mind to be blown, I want a device I can use.
oh look the apple doom article of the month is out zzzzzzzz
Thier writes, “There was a time when Apple blew our minds blahblahblahblah
So what’s with the August Effect in October Thier? Waiting until the cheap season for vacation? Stupid article. See you when you get back.
It is very fashionable among know-it-all writers and persistent market bears to post anything negative about Apple. They are Apple challenged, so to speak.
Apple has never announced anything boring. When the mini comes out, it will have a surprise or two to it, I know. And when the stock crosses $700 again, that will be a real blow to the bad luck wishers .
The iPod HiFi was pretty boring. So boring that people don’t even remember it ever existed. So boring it’s been wiped from collective memory. It never even makes the “top ten Apple failures” lists.
It still works for me.
What a maroon (as Bugs Bunny would say).
Why does an iPad mini have to be less powerful and have fewer features than the iPad? Don’t forget, the iPad is due for a refresher this spring, so it could become more powerful than the mini, rather than Apple releasing a less powerful mini.
This all assumes that Apple is releasing an iPad mini, and not some other handheld device designed to make home automation and TV viewing 1,000X better.
I want a Touch with a no or aka month to month LTE Data account. “I” like many people spend 80-90% of their time in a wifi zone *and* I rarely use my smart phone to talk on. My cell bill would almost vanish and when I travel I would hit my cell account for $15 like I do with my iPad and I am off and running again. We have all gotten used to paying $80-$150 for our smart phones which is a little crazy.
You realize that they already make those, right?
Or did you mean an iPod touch with no cell contract but with the cellular antenna? I didn’t get that from your post, but I realized that that may have been what you meant…
It must be hard being a tech writer, being SO BORED by Apple ALL THE TIME.
What a bunch of irrelevant, snobby jerks.
This is the same crap they said about the iPhone and the iPad. Don’t talk publicly about stuff you know NOTHING.
It will be at least a month or two before it will dawn on these guys what a game changer thus will be.
These people did not understand the use case for the iPad when it was released. After the iPod, iPhone and iPad came into my family, we have found it hard to imagine how we got by without them. It is like a drug but without all the nasty side effects (except much larger bills from Verizon).
Jobs’ vision wasn’t just that we have these things. It was that they’re constantly looking to innovate these things and come up with new ones. It’s a continual process, it’s not, “Hey we got this stuff out now, we’re done.”
What I don’t get is, why write an article….about an article?? Are you running out of ideas that you have to pull an Apple and steal everyone else’s ideas? Let’s thank Microsoft for the ipad since it was their idea. And then thank Apple for making it boring. The surface tablets would be nice to have and maybe you could have written about that instead?