Tuesday, October 23, 2012

iPad Mini

Steve Jobs said it would never happen. Yet a smaller Apple just fell from the iPad tree.

Apple execs have finally unveiled the company's long-awaited iPad mini -- something Jobs once declared the company would never do. The new $329 product is meant to compete with smaller, 7-inch tablets from companies like Google and Amazon that are nipping at the tech giant's heals.

"You knew there'd be something called Mini in this presentation," joked vice president of marketing Phil Schiller before revealing the hotly anticipated gadget. Apple has sold 84 million iPads since their debut in April 2010, he said.

"So this iPad mini is just 7.2 mm thick. That's about a quarter thinner than the fourth-generation iPad. Thinner than a pencil," CEO Tim Cook told the crowd earlier. The new product has the same resolution as the larger display 1,024 × 768, but it should look sharper thanks to the smaller screen.

It's the iconic hardware that Apple is known for, of course, and the company wasted no time unveiling it. Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing for the company, joined Cook on stage to tout the company's victories in that arena, as the pair noted that Macs are the number one desktop and notebook in the country.

To continue that momentum, Schiller revealed a new 13-inch MacBook Pro that he said is 20 percent thinner than the previous generation, and a pound lighter. The new laptop features a 2.5-GHz Intel processor, a high-resolution Retina display with over 4 million pixels, and a solid-state drive rather than a spinning disk. It will start at $1,700, he said.

Schiller also described updates to the company's Mac Mini and iMacs, the later drawing oohs and aahs from the assembled crowd. The new iMac, which starts at $1,299, is a razor-thin all in one computer that starts shipping next month, he said.

"There is an entire computer in here," he said, despite the product's incredibly tiny form.

"We sold more products in the June quarter than any PC manufacturer sold in their entire PC line," Cook said as he returned to the stage.

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