A reader pushes back on this post:
Those who think that Apple is following trends with the introduction of the iPad Mini are fooling themselves. I'm in consumer research, and I do a lot of phone and tablet work. I've done at least three studies this year speaking to over 100 people. The biggest complaints about the iPad are its size and its price. Its weight is too heavy to use it for what a lot of people want to use it for, and that's reading, with one hand. And it's price is way too high for the average American family, especially in these hard times – not when you can get laptops for the same price.
Education will be Apple's biggest market for the mini. By extension, that means parents. The current iPad is too big and heavy for most kids, but kids adore it. Alas the iPad is so large, parents worry about their kids handling them.
On planes, and I fly a lot, all I see are iPads encased in pillows to make them easier for kids to use them, as well as not destroy them when dropped. Taking off so much weight and so much size makes it that much easier for the educational market and parents to embrace them, all the way down to the kindergarten level. And judging by baby videos I have seen, even lower.
I can tell you that because I have researched it myself, but Apple has done their own research and consumer testing and figured it out. People want a smaller iPad, not a smaller tablet. And with the Mini, that's what they have delivered. It's going to be huge.
Another quotes from our post:
"Kit Eaton however sees another product that premiered yesterday as a classic example of Apple leadership: the extremely thin iMac." As a consumer, I couldn't disagree more. The new thin iMac comes with a very expensive price/performance ratio, and nothing in the device can be upgraded. Gee it's pretty, but if you need more RAM or a bigger hard drive or a better video card, you're just screwed – that pretty computer must be replaced in its entirety.
Another notes:
The new iMac is only thin at the edges; it's very thick in the middle. Apple's photos avoid angles that show this. Not that it matters – people don't carry these things around with them.
The Dish 