Linked List: October 15, 2024

Tuesday, 15 October 2024

Apple Announces New iPad Mini, With A17 Pro and Pencil Pro Support ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today introduced the new iPad mini, supercharged by the A17 Pro chip and Apple Intelligence, the easy-to-use personal intelligence system that understands personal context to deliver intelligence that is helpful and relevant while protecting user privacy. With a beloved ultraportable design, the new iPad mini is available in four gorgeous finishes, including a new blue and purple, and features the brilliant 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display. A17 Pro delivers a huge performance boost for even the most demanding tasks, with a faster CPU and GPU, a 2× faster Neural Engine than the previous-generation iPad mini, and support for Apple Intelligence. The versatility and advanced capabilities of the new iPad mini are taken to a whole new level with support for Apple Pencil Pro, opening up entirely new ways to be even more productive and creative. [...]

Starting at just $499 with 128GB — double the storage of the previous generation — the new iPad mini delivers incredible value and the full iPad experience in an ultraportable design.

Interesting that it sports the A17 Pro, ~~not the regular A17~~. Update: Whoops, I got my A-series numbers confused — the A17 Pro is the chip from last year’s iPhone 15 Pro models, and, notably, there was no non-“Pro” variant. Still, though: an interesting chip to use for iPad Mini. Here’s a link to the tech specs for the 2021 6th-gen iPad Mini for comparison.

Also interesting that it still uses Touch ID, not Face ID. Not surprising though — the iPad Mini has always been sort of, but not quite, a mini iPad Air. And in the iPad lineup, Face ID remains a Pro-exclusive feature.