The mini has always given me the impression that it exists simply to drive sales towards the more expensive models. Although I’m surprised they still make it considering they’ve axed the mini iphone a few generations ago.
Personally, I don’t feel like any iPad is worth the cost though because of how limited iPadOS is.
I have the previous gen iPad mini (and iPhone mini as well…), and it’s a genuinely wonderful device. It’s the perfect size for idly reading the internet, PDFs, and books. Also, It’s great for propping up by my Mac at work to show me Mastodon, Lemmy, Messages, etc… that I can control with my Mac’s trackpad and keyboard.
But if I hadn’t got it as a present last year there’s no way I’d own one for what Apple are charging for it. It just is not worth £600+
Partly that’s because of iPadOS as a whole, but also because they’re charging in the region of iPad Air money for it while leaving out several iPadOS features that might make it a legality useful tool.
I never use Stage Manager on my Macs, but if I could access it on my iPad, then hook it up to a display and have it as a handy portable computer I’d be all over that. But Apple removed that from the mini, despite it having the guts to support it. Hell, even if activating it turned off the iPad’s display it would still be really handy. Nope, can’t even do that.
I have no idea what Apple keep selling the iPad mini, because they don’t really seem to give a shit about it, and it’s a shame.
Apple has fallen for the fanboys talking about how the android phones and android tablets are larger than the Apple devices, do that for 10 years and Apple now has continued to raise the minimum size of everything, all while, forgetting those that appreciate a light weight device, a small device, as well as a convenient tool that instead of taking up room can simply be connected to an external display or keyboard or other type of device to see those images larger The limitations of iPadOS is really less than people make it out to be, the point of a tablet device is for consumption and for viewing and for making that easily accessible and limiting what it provides to make the mobile experience optimum. What I mean by that is if they enabled iPadOS to have all of the macOS features, the simplicity of iPadOS would be lost.
