“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.]