“The original iPad mini has quietly disappeared from Apple’s web site, and is no longer available to purchase new from the Apple Store,” Jeremy Horwitz reports for 9to5Mac.
“Introduced in October 2012, the first iPad mini established the industrial design that was subsequently used in the iPad mini 2 and iPad mini 3, as well as the larger but otherwise nearly identical iPad Air and iPad Air 2,” Horwitz reports. “Apple notably continued to sell the 16GB iPad mini as an entry-level model alongside two of its sequels, dropping its price to $299 in October 2013, then $249 in October 2014.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: R.I.P. original iPad mini!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bill” for the heads up.]
Skipped buying it ’cause it wasn’t retina.😳
Luv my iPad mini 2. Skipped buying 3 ’cause only change is Touch ID. Plan to buy iPad mini 4 in October along with iPad Air 3 and iPhone 6S Plus – all with cell and 128 GB storage.😜⌚️😱💥🎉👌🏻🚀❤️😇😋
Question for you FM. Why get cell in the iPad’s when you can use a Hot Spot on your iPhone to link them?
‘Cause I’m grandfathered in unlimited iPad AT&T cell @$30 a month – switchable among all my iPads – and unlimited AT&T cell on my iPhone too. Got both deals at the beginning of iPhone 3G and iPad 1.😃
Hotspot feature can’t be invoked on grandfathered unlimited AT&T accounts.😩
Also because the iPad cell models includes a GPS chip not in the WiFi only models. I’ve never understood why Apple doesn’t use that little known fact in their marketing to better upsell customers.😳
Probably in an effort to drop support for iPad 2 models in future OS releases (same processor).
Except that iOS 9 supports all devices supported by iOS 8. That includes the old iPad 2. Even iPhone 4S is supported.
Right but, long term, developers are going to stop supporting pre-A7 devices due to Apple’s encouraging them to only write for 64-bit processors going forward. That’s iPad Air and iPhone 5S or newer.😱
And iPad mini 2 of course.
Of course, “long term” even the newest devices will become obsolete. But I was responding to the statement about dropping support for “future OS releases.” iOS 9 is a future OS release, and every currently supported devices is supported.
No it’s not like that. With iOS 9 developers can write to 64-bit A7 or newer processors and their apps will simply not appear in pre A7 device App Stores.
They have no motivation to do such a thing, even if they can. A third-party app developer wants to support the largest number of users possible. Generally, that’s users running the latest version of the OS, plus one release back (since all customers do not upgrade on Day One of a new release). Since iOS devices compatible with iOS 8 and 9 are the same, most app developers will support those devices for at least the next TWO YEARS.
There are still a HUGE number of users running devices compatible with iOS 8 and 9 that are “pre A7.” That’s iPads (all models except the 1st gen iPad), iPhones (models going back to iPhone 4s), and iPod touch (current 5th gen model introduced in 2012). The majority of iOS device in use today are “pre A7.”
Long overdue. Drop the iPad mini into that price slot.
A7 so much faster
*mini 2
Totally. Although, that likely means it’ll cost $100 for an upgrade to 32GB again.
There’s no 32GB tier anymore. It goes from 16GB to 64GB then 128GB.
My mistake. They’re selling the iPad 2 with 16GB for $299 and with 32GB for only $50 more. The above set of tiers is reserved for the $399 iPad 3 in $100 increments. But in October this pricing will be reserved for the iPad mini 4 with A9 processor and 2GB system ram – we can hope right?😱
There is a 32GB tier for the previous year’s model, the iPad mini 2. It is a $50 jump instead of the regular $100. It was a great deal (in Apple terms, that is ) but when you think about it, it was an easy upsell for Apple and they ended up getting another $50 out of you because $50 for double the storage seems like a good deal. ( $100 feels like a ripoff, especially for last year’s model )
In reality, the iPad should be STARTING at 32GB. I suspect that will be big value add with the iPad this year. 32gb and perhaps ( big maybe ) force touch.
About time. Apple has been keeping old obsolete models of iPads and MacBooks on the market too long lately. Their product lineup is getting as bloated and confusing as it was in 1996.
Point taken about the dangers of a bloated and confusing product lineup. 1996 was not a good year for Apple for that very reason.
Nevertheless, these older models sell very well in developing markets. With average unit production costs lower than ever on these older models, Apple can still make a tidy profit, put the squeeze on the likes of Samsung and, enlarge the population of the Apple ecosystem.