“Apple’s new iPad for the spring is a $329 model with an A9 chip; it replaces the $399 iPad Air 2 in the lineup that Apple sold — until today,” Benjamin Mayo reports for 9to5Mac. “However, the new iPad is not an upgrade over the iPad Air 2 in every respect; it is cheaper, but it is also significantly thicker and heavier.”
“The iPad Air 2 was very slender; 6.1mm and 0.96 pounds,” Mayo reports. “The new iPad is relatively bulky, measuring at 7.5mm thin and weighing 1.03 pounds.”
“The new iPad is more than 20% thicker than the iPad Air 2 although in absolute terms, it’s important to note we are still talking about millimetre differences here,” Mayo reports. “An increase of 1.5mm is small but it will definitely be noticeable in the hand if you have handled both tablets before. At 9.7 inches, the weight increase of 0.07lbs or about 30 grams is probably not discernible in practice.”
“For a company that is known for making things ever thinner and smaller, Apple has actually released a lot of products recently that are thicker than what came before,” Mayo reports. “Apple Watch 2 was thicker to accommodate GPS, iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 are thicker than iPhone 6, and now the iPad has a thicker iteration too.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: With any luck, we’ve passed Peak Thinness with Apple. We’ll happily trade a bit of Apple’s former thinness/lightness fetish for some added durability, battery, and features.
SEE ALSO:
Apple unveils new 9.7-inch iPad starting at new low price of just $329 – March 21, 2017
1.4 mm and 0.07 pound is significant ??????
If Apple put something useful inside the chassis (BATTERY), this seems like a small step in the right direction.
But you know they didn’t! Lol
The weight difference is not significant, but that difference in thickness is certainly noticeable.
For, like, 2 seconds.
Now if Apple can apply the same logic to the Desktop Mac line-up–slightly bigger, but more powerful AND cheaper
One can dream.
I agree.
to make the Mac Mini thinner and remove the 4 core option and solder the RAM in is (to me) a real head scratcher . Why does a Desktop need to save a little space and lose so much functionality? You’re not carrying it around like a mobile device!
(Don’t want to get into the Mac Pro as some will say I’m getting into my screaming soapbox again, lol … 🙂 )
re: Your Mac Mini statement
Simple. They would rather you spend 2-3x the going price for RAM when getting a system from Apple, than would have you pay for third party RAM. (Profits and margins matter.)
Example: We bought a late 2012 4 GB MacMini Server in 2015 from Apple, yanked out the 4 GB, put in 16 GB, removed one of two 1 TB drives and replaced it with a 1 TB SSD. ~~Hundreds of dollars~~ cheaper than similar hardware from Apple.
Now we have a 16 GB quad core i7 with a 1 TB SSD (and an internal 1 TB carbon copy HDD).
Total cost = $1,171.88
If purchased pre-configured from Apple = $1799
(you’ve got a point)
but I have to also say you can’t get a quad core at all today.
and after years the max RAM (Apple option) is still 16 GB.
(these isn’t so bad IF they had a Mid desktop but they don’t and the Pro is thousands of dollars).
(I don’t know what the exact reason but they’ve not upgraded the Mini for years . I expect they would have done so if it was selling, so it’s probably not selling. Note the Mini was a bestseller at launch e.g it was on Amazon’s best seller desktop list for years (I checked) — so apparently their ‘bean counter we- want -all– the–profits” strategy BACKFIRED. Many both Mini’s originally precisely because they were flexible )
Besides a fan, I’m an aapl investor and think bean counting is sometimes short sighted.
Losing upgrade sales to others is better than losing the sale ENTiRELY (as it appears the Mini sales are dwindling).Like today with locked Minis would you still buy one?
(I think if Apple made the upgrades slightly cheaper — i.e they will still make substantial profits — many would just upgrade them from Apple instead of the do it yourself hassle — but keeping an upgradable option means it will also please the ‘serious’ users like yourself. )
The non upgradable GPU in the Mac Pros plus the bean counting ‘we will not lower the price set in 2013’ is also killing the Pro sales. One MDN reader said he recently ordered a Pro — gritting his teeth at the price — and it was ‘special order’ for a week to produce — so apparently the production lines are not even functioning full time. )
this is your new mac.
enjoy.
Desktop coming! patience is a virtue 😉
Cheaper, thicker and heavier.
We get it.
Kudos for the wording.
Man, some people should write with their butthole. Their mind are to thin….. Get it?
No
Did they drop that annoyingly useful common headphone jack because THAT is innovation Apple style.
And in some windowless room in Cupertino, Jony Ives is restrained in a straight jacket, drooling, and slowly banging his head against a white wall.
I suppose the good news, apart from a cheaper iPad option is that they have got this out of the way so it doesn’t get lost or take up important minutes in a proper product launch sometime in the next month. That would mean they don’t need to pad it out because of the significant products to be launched. Well one can hope anyway, crumbs of hope are all that keeps us going this past few years, or maybe it’s just manic nervousness at play.
Meanwhile the Mac withers ever more….