It's the top image on the product page: https://www.apple.com/ipad-mini/

I would assume, however, that they didn't "fake" it - that they instead chose a filming position and lens such that camera was obscured behind the edge of the device (the edge facing the viewer is the far side from the camera). Bit of trickery for sure though.

The usual narrative is that Apple are meticulous, therefore it is only proper that we assume they did this on purpose.

Definitely an odd choice. Especially when two images later has it again

It always reminds me of the imac from 15 or so years ago when they were touting how thin the imac was.

In reality the back was curved, and they took pictures from an angle that only showed off the edge of the screen and not how far back it curved

woah - that's pretty shocking to me actually. in the past they generally have just used flattering angles. This is downright deception.

It's still very strange how much work goes into the materials for the case and the ergonomics and weight of holding the devices without a case just to assume everyone will put it in a case. I'm with you on iPads, they get too heavy/thick for their primary uses once in a case. The phones I sort of get but I still think it ruins a lot of the aesthetic choices they make about the case design.

Nah it’s just easier to pick up a phone when one edge is higher than the other.

The correct answer. The camera bump is intentional and so is building phones that aren't resilient to drops out of the box. What do you mean I can't have a phone with rubber bumpers on the corners?

Half the time their mid-year fresh is just a new color, with a huge marketing push. If everyone has a case, colors become a moot point.

I also don’t think I’ve ever seen an Apple exec use a case, as it would imply the phones are durable and a case is needed, which they don’t want to convey. (Bumpers for antenna-gate aside)

A surprising amount of people use the back camera for document scanning.

I use it quite often for scanning QR codes.

To be fair, the iPad mini is a way better form-factor for camera use than any of the big iPads. I think the only time I've ever used the rear camera on the 12" iPad was to scan a document...

I've seen asshats at concerts holding their iPads up to record. Bad enough when people hold their phones up, but this was next level.

WAT. Just because you do not does not mean you get to dictate how others can use it. I know lots of people that use the rear camera on iPads. I'm one of them.

Would you also like the extra weight of such a device?

what premium would you pay for this? asking for a friend.

Not sure about the iPad Mini, but I've really only seen the bigger iPads with a case. There's just so much screen to damage, and you do really want some kind of way to prop up the bigger iPads. I very rarely remove my iPad Pro from its keyboard case.

It looks like 1:1 iPhone copy minus camera bump.

Then just remove the camera in return for nothing. Less weight and a slimmer form!

Looking at my now "old" ipad mini 2024: you might want to delete that comment - and google picturesearch a bit ;)

A lot of their devices do that, but I doubt there is space in the iPad mini bump to fit anything.

The big examples are iPhone Air and iMac.

From my experience, the iPhone bumps are a lot more noticeable than their iPad siblings.

Like nitrogen and oxygen gas that would take up the extra space inside?

The extra volume can be air like it is in most consumer electronics.

That's the thing - I genuinely don't understand the user or usage Venn diagram : when and who will 1. Have an expensive ipad with them and require a good big camera, but 2. Not have an equivalently competent phone with them?

Don't get me wrong, I understand it happens - back when I did wedding photography, one of my massive pet peeves were the uncles and grandparents who stepped into the aisle with their massive tablets just as bride is starting her walk... But I do not understand it at all :-/.

I'd absolutely happily completely kill the rear facing tablet camera. I've had at least a dozen android and ipad tablets and I genuinely don't think I took a single photo with them - it'd feel weird and awkward and so ostentious.

(As always as a consumer, clearly I'm in minority here :-})

iPhone Air is leaps and bounds better (source: owned 13 Mini)

I kinda feel that way too, but I can see why 3% of iphone sales wasn’t a compelling case at apple.

I see what you did there!

It's especially bad if you're non-American with multiple TVs.

e.g. I've got three screens in my house (office TV, living room TV, basement projector) in Canada — upgrading to the latest Apple TV on each of them would cost me $1,287.

In Europe, it’s closer to $400, which is downright insulting for what is essentially a cheap smartphone without a screen or battery.

I've thought a lot about that actually. I have a number of hardware purchases I'd like to make but I'm delaying due to the insane prices. That said, would I give up LLMs for the prior prices? No. Prices will come down eventually once more factories come online (it's just slow to bring up a new factory/fab, especially for RAM) and LLMs are such an awesome tool that I'll take the short-term pain of higher hardware.

What a shortsighted and ignorant statement, but not unexpected.

It's part of it. Another part of the reason is patent related royalties that they have to pay to the likes of Qualcomm, Nokia, etc. for any device that has a working 5G stack inside of it. Apple actually has had their own 5G modem implementation for a few years now; they clearly have the technology to deliver this with a clean full in house chip design.

But any device that has that embedded would have some royalty overhead added to the BOM. Which is why they've always had ipads with and without 5G and have so far never really bothered with adding this on laptops (which actually would make a lot of sense from a technical point of view). Operators would probably love that because it's a nice up-sell opportunity on monthly subscriptions. And with soft sims there would not be a need for a hardware sim card.

For the same reason, you don't see this feature on many other laptops either. There are a few obviously but it's a less common feature than you'd expect given how important good connectivity is to most laptop users.

> The buyer is also signing up for a monthly payment. So clearly they have the cash to make an “extra monthly payment” or two up front.

I know of pilots who buy the +Cellular simply for GNSS and do not get a separate plan.

Charging more for the C-series hardware is understandable, but if there's enough of a 'transistor budget' it would be nice for the GNSS functionality to be more universal (since the N-series seems to be going into everything).

I wish this was somehow listed as a separate line item with the price, assuming prices will normalize at some point. I don’t want these prices to be considered the new normal, even after memory prices come down. I think transparency in the pricing would help with that.

Computers are a “luxury good” now?

"Marketing doesn't work on me" type of people calling Apple a luxury... they have above 50% market share on phones and tablets in the US

I really dont understand the hardon for refresh rates.

This isn't even a "people dont see that fast".

It just, it seems more like a perceptual addiction to a trivial feature. A penis measuring contest more than a useful advancement of technology.

you don't need promotion if you're going to use it for movies, but OLED is a huge improvement in this regard.

the price is a bit high, but that's all apple products.

i do think this means a lot of android tablets on this form factor are going to start coming out with OLED screens as well though, which is good, as they will be much cheaper.

I think the Mini's primary use case that benefits a 120hz screen is art apps, but the artists I know would prefer OLED over 120hz. For entertainment, video is video, and games on tablets often lock to 30 by default to preserve battery life.

For the iPad Air (especially the 13" model!) I agree 100%.

Everyone and everything is for sale for the right price.

I think there will be be app integration, but hopefully no App Store. We know that apps can work on HomeView using CarPlay. Not sure that is sufficient long term, perhaps just to jump start things. They may need to enhance that library to allow more kinds of apps to work with HomeView.

Right now, I think they are bringing out an MVP and waiting to see how people react to it and what kinds of things turn out to be useful. When they launched the Watch, no one was sure what kinds of things we would want to do on it. It took a while to see what was useful. I think a model where apps on your phone provide HomeView widgets like the Watch might be better than writing apps specifically for such a device.

Old people

I’m buying one for my parents and in-laws

They have iPads

iPads are never charged and in some random spot in their being empty houses

This will make sure my kids can FaceTime their grandparents whenever they want

That’s worth $300 to make my kids and my parents happy

That was a joke lol Tipping culture is so insane in North America

Nice to have until you need to charge because you forgot about it. Tbh the only use case for me was using it to study; afterwards it collected dust.

This is it, they are media consumption devices.

Nano texture was the entire reason I upgraded to an iPad Pro M4. The camera on the long edge is a major regression as far as I am concerned, however. The only drawback is fingerprints are harder to remove,you really need that special microfiber cloth or one of the cheap Chinese clones.

LCD iPhones defo had this. I thought it was to do with panel supplier

For nighttime viewing with my Pixel 8 Pro (OLED), I wish I could make the screen even dimmer at night. The extra dim mode barely does anything.

Samsung Galaxy Tab A11 X130 with 8GB of RAM costs around 220 EUR, I haven't tested that one though.

Another alternative is the Lenovo Legion Tab TB321FU, 12GB RAM, 256GB, but this one costs 500 EUR.

But you are right, there are not a lot of alternatives with 8GB RAM out there. Most Android Tablets with a screen size of 8-9" have 4GB, which would make them slow.

Pro-motion, 120FPS display.