The latest Apple product the iPad mini was launched at a conference in San Jose yesterday – Tuesday 23rd October 2012, hosted by Tim Cook and Phil Schiller. The new product has long been anticipated by Apple fans and its release comes just in time to rival Samsung and Kindle for Christmas.
News of the release from Apple was attended by press officers in the technology industry and a live stream was broadcast across the internet. At the launch Schiller tried to blow competition out of the water by commenting that “Others have tried to make a tablet smaller than the iPad and they have failed miserably,”
The device has a 7.9 inch screen -1024 x 768 the same resolution as the iPad2. It is just 7.2mm thick and weighing in at just 308g it is as light as a paper notebook. There will be three versions of the new iPad mini 16GB, 32GB, 64GB with prices starting from £269 up to £429 for the 64GB version.
iPad mini is 23% thinner and 53% lighter than the iPad 3 edition and it is predicted that there will be a huge amount of interest in the device, the iPad had sold 100 million in 2 years. The new device is small, user friendly and is priced and marketed to rival kindle – it has itunes and an ibook store.
“iPad mini is every inch an iPad. With its gorgeous 7.9-inch display, iPad mini features the same number of pixels as the original iPad and iPad 2, so you can run more than 275,000 apps designed specifically for iPad,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “iPad mini is as thin as a pencil and as light as a pad of paper, yet packs a fast A5 chip, FaceTime HD and 5 megapixel iSight cameras and ultrafast wireless – all while delivering up to 10 hours of battery life.”
iPad mini will have full access to the apple application store, which is sure to entice customers. They have 100 million iPad minis in their factories in China in anticipation of the launch, with products going on sale from November 2nd and pre orders taking place from 26th October.
