A17 Pro huh, that's a first for putting a pro chip in a non pro iPad, isn't it? I guess it's, as they advertise, to handle Apple Intelligence although I don't understand why they are doubling down on this _now_ while nothing from the newly announced AI stuff is available as of today...
I'm guessing the delays to Apple Intelligence came late in the process and it was supposed to release with the new iPhones? And then they just left hardware plans as-is when the software got delayed.
The A17 Pro (originally in the iPhone 15 Pro; now also in the iPad Mini) and A18 Pro (currently only in the iPhone 16 Pro) are the only chips Apple has produced with a "Pro" suffix.
Apple used to use the X suffix for bigger versions of their phone processors that went into iPads (starting with the A5X); that went away when the M-series was introduced.
And the "Pro" suffix itself doesn't seem to denote anything in particular-- there was never a non-Pro A17, and the "A17 Pro" going into the iPad Mini is itself a cut-down version of the chip that went into the iPhone 15 Pro (it has one GPU core disabled).
The alleged roadmap leak indicates they’re aiming for 2026/2027 foldable screens (no word on whether it’s horizontal or vertical) so if all goes according to plan, you would be right that this is the last update for the “iPad mini” device.
There was some chatter on Macrumors that they flipped the orientation of the controller board so that the Jelly scrolling will be gone when used in portrait mode. That was the #1 display complaint on the outgoing model, so if its true then I’d count that as a win on improving the screen.
> It makes sense to update the model with apple intelligence but that might not be enough for a lot of people to upgrade.
that's fine? it's a very mature segment - medium-price small screen tablet. it hasn't even really been updated since 2021, and that was basically new case+usb-c.
Mature segment? Is there any other tablet with a square aspect ratio that is smaller than 10"? Two years ago I was on the market, I only remember Microsoft's Surfaces, which are all 10", no other square tablets.
The base models maybe, but the Pros have crazy OLEDs that almost have me drooling. The speed hasn't changed much, i just got a 11 Pro with M1 and it isn't any faster in normal stuff than the A12 on my 12.9". I always get my Apple devices from used shops and got my 11 Pro for $250 when it was 2 gens old and feel I won't get the OLED one till I find one for $300ish.
120hz panels are dirt cheap at this point, look beyond the Apple ecosystem and they're everywhere at nearly every price point. Even barebones office monitors meant for doing spreadsheets are often ~100hz now, there's no reason to make them 60hz when faster panels are more or less the same price.
Many of these devices aren’t actually fungible commodities though.I tried to buy a phone in the $200 range and Android phones were so much worse than used iPhones. I they would drop calls and freeze on the dial pad during long calls where I was on hold. Tried two different models and had the same issues. I could have tried a used $200 Android but I was not wanting to try for a third Android. All I wanted/needed was to make important calls.
So I guess I don’t see them as commodities which implies fungibility.
I realize that there are bad Androids out there and the abundance of choice makes it difficult to sift through the good and the bad, but there are good Android phones out there in the $200-$300 USD range. My current phone is a bit over three years old and it is still very usable.
> All I wanted/needed was to make important calls.
Can I recommend you a 40€ phone? They've been making models that can do calls for a while now and they needn't cost as much as an Apple-branded device to do just that
> they would drop calls and freeze on the dial pad during long calls
Never heard that happen to anyone with any phone model. If you've ruled out some software-specific issue like a call recorder you've installed or so, that sounds borderline implausible. Then again, given the number of issues I experience with software (of any kind)...
They are hardly commodities. The build quality and lifetime of iPads is incredible compared to any other tablet I’ve ever used (typing this on a six year old iPad Pro that’s still going strong).
True, but they last long enough that you can get them second hand, whereas used products from other vendors tend to be junk not worth spending money on even at a cheaper price point.
There is a definite lack of worthy competitors to the iPad Mini in the market.
Most other tablets are 10" or larger. The only other contemporary tablets I've found in that size have had very low-end specs in comparison.
The iPad lineup starts at $350, and that's brand new, look used or refurbished and it becomes even cheaper. If that's too much for you, you'll be pressed to afford any computer.
The mini is the absolute sweet spot for me - enough portability that I don’t mind the many restrictions of iPad OS. But the A-line chips and low-quality screen are problems, and not being able to properly dock it at a monitor is a real hinderance. None of those are addressed here, unfortunately.
I can’t find any mention of Stage Manager being supported on this device - so either it doesn’t, or the help pages haven’t been updated yet.
I will say though the criticism of the A-series getting hot doesn’t make sense. If the A-series gets hot, the M-series is going to be boiling in that tiny chassis.
> I will say though the criticism of the A-series getting hot doesn’t make sense. If the A-series gets hot, the M-series is going to be boiling in that tiny chassis.
If were picking random stuff to compare it against, for $250 Motorola will sell you a phone with a 6.7", 395ppi, 120hz OLED screen. It also comes with a stylus and has 256GB storage standard.
Obviously these aren't directly comparable products but neither are iPads and budget laptops, and Apple asks $750 for a model with equivalent storage and a cellular modem. For a lot of people the screen probably is perfectly adequate but I can also see why some potential buyers would be pretty disappointed given the price point, especially since unlike the air apple doesn't even offer an upsell option at this size.
The M1 allows you to use it like a proper laptop for productivity: hook it up to an external display, keyboard and mouse, and it’s a perfect machine for ms-word, PowerPoint or excel. I have my iPad Air connected to a 32 inch monitor for video editing with Final Cut Pro.
> and not being able to properly dock it at a monitor is a real hinderance
Can you expand on that? It seems to support DisplayPort over USB-C, and there are a number of 1st and 3rd party adapters that have DP out, power in, and a USB2.0 plug for your other devices. What does “properly” docking it look like?
The A-series chips only support screen mirroring; with the M-class iPads you can have stage manager and multiple windows across two displays; and the main display runs at native resolution. It’s a far better (though still flawed) experience.
There are a bunch of UX differences between an iPad and a laptop while connected to a docking station that make using an iPad in that manner not quite satisfactory. For example, the iPad's screen always has to be on - while you can choose to either mirror or extend your desktop environment, you can't use only the external monitors and shut your case like you can with a laptop.
Was patiently waiting for the mini getting an update - i don’t care as much for the screen, CPU etc. but not moving the front facing camera to the side, hence landscape friendly position is beyond me.
The whole chassis is weak, old... One camera still? Lame... The thermals are mediocre, at best. And the iPhone 15 Pro I just got makes me look forward to the winter. I expect similar experiences with this. When you write/draw on it, it does get hot. Same battery life is not bad, but it could use some more when you use the Pencil.
Touch ID is another very very weird thing to keep. I wonder what sort of market buys that and they don't want to upgrade anything... It feels so weird...
If you check Apple's comparison, at least on that overview, it seems they changed only the processor, networking, that HDR thingy on the camera, and... that's all. Everything else is the same.
Speaking of screens, I wonder if they fixed the jelly scroll. It doesn’t bother me that much on my mini, but it would be ridiculous to keep that flaw as-is in the newer gen.
I'm guessing Apple is using an IPS panel meant for landscape orientation (i.e. the image scans from the top/bottom) in a device mostly used in portrait orientation. This causes rolling shutter distortion when scrolling contents.
It's basically screen tearing, apparently because the top and bottom of the display (or left and right in other orientations) refresh at different rates. iFixit suggests its a controller issue.
> Update, 9/28/2021: In response to our inquiry, Apple has told us that the "jelly scroll" issue on the 6th-generation iPad mini is normal behavior for LCD screens.
> Update, 9/30/2021: An iFixit teardown suggests that the iPad mini's more noticeable scrolling issue is a byproduct of how the display controller is mounted.
The real fix would be for them to stop being so stingy with 120hz panels, as long as they keep using 60hz ones they're going to be prone to jelly scrolling in one orientation or the other. With 60hz the best you can hope for is that the orientation you use the most often is the good one this time.
If you meant "not having Stage Manager", I'm genuinely surprised the A18 Pro wasn't considered powerful enough to run it, given that it outperforms the M1 that was. The only thing I could think of is that Apple thinks the smaller screen is too small for Stage Manager.
I still think they should support it anyway, even if only for three apps at a time on the primary display. iPadOS is weirdly bifurcated into two different window management strategies (Split View vs. Stage Manager) based on what device you bought, which is confusing. They should be expanding Stage Manager to as many devices as possible.
it allows you to enable stage manager on an ipad mini without problems and without needing to jailbreak or similar :). the only gotcha is, that the ipad mini doesn't support more than 1080p output, therefore, if you connect a 4k screen it will remain blank.
would love to know if the ipad mini 7 now supports 4k - would actually be a meaningful upgrade then.
That's cool and all, but 18.1 killed the exploit this uses to write the MobileGestalt file. Which means if you buy a mini 7 now, you're probably not going to be able to force-enable Stage Manager like this.
How long do we have on the 13 mini before it becomes so slow I have to get a new phone? I don’t know what I’ll do at that point. On the 12 mini now and can never go to a big phone.
Probably a couple of more years provided you can keep replacing your battery. I’m on a 13 Pro Max which has the same SoC as a 13 Mini and while I might want a battery replacement within the next year, the phone itself has no performance issues. I think the iPhone 12 model line is essentially in the same boat, just a little bit older and with worse batteries.
The battery was the main reason I moved from my 12 mini to a 15 (save for USB-C) — just wasn’t holding up, even after a replacement. I still hold out for a 17 mini, though.
My 3 years old iPhone mini 13 is still very fast, reliable, and I love every part of the phone. It's such an amazing phone that functions well. The only thing got worsened is the battery, now at 87% even though I always charge it to 80-85%, now I have to charge it to 100% to use through the day. I still have extra power (like 30%) for a whole day. Replacing the battery isn't a problem. If Apple does support it like other models, it should last another 4-5 years more. I have no plan to upgrade to anything as I don't see anything comparable on the horizon.
Nothing wrong with continuing to use the iPhone 13 Mini today: Apple CPU has been so far ahead of the competition that apart from on-device generative AI there’s nothing that hugely pushes it. For data, search for “single-core” and “multi-core” in https://infrequently.org/2024/01/performance-inequality-gap-...
Make iPhone Mini -> Mini only accounts for 10% of sales -> Cancel iPhone Mini -> Notice that 10% of iPhone customers haven't updated for 3 or 4 cycles -> Make iPhone Mini -> Suffer crippling corporate amnesia -> <...>
I'm expecting the brain worms to reach step 4 of the corporate consciousness cycle around the next generation or so.
I wonder if that was their attempt to make the iPhone SE have a legitimate place with the other iPhones? Not sure, but it is interesting that no matter what, they always sell the SE.
In that case the first six years of iPhone models were also minis. None were cancelled due to low sales. The original SE was also not cancelled due to low sales, it continued to sell extremely well for years after its release. Apart from the 12/13 minis, the only model that had low sales was the 5C, which is actually a little larger than the 5S.
The rule for the SE is that it always has the design of second most recent hardware design, regardless of size.
If Apple re-introduces a mini, that will be the first such 'cycle.'
It is interesting that one of their examples is a "community repair fair", they want to market a sheen of social responsibility without actually taking part themselves.
It is interesting that one of their examples is a "Mahjong Club", they want to market a sheen of board game enthusiasm without actually taking part themselves.
Drives in particular. Let them solder the memory if they absolutely have to, but exposing even an empty NVMe slot should be standard for laptops. Unfortunately, Apple makes a pretty penny off the storage surcharge so I wouldn't really anticipate that anytime soon.
What performance boost? As in, same software running for comparison on the hardware of interest, one soldered and the other not. I never heard that soldering your SSD on makes it faster...
It doesn't, Apples SSD performance is fine but unremarkable. Their current machines will do around ~6GB/sec read and ~5GB/sec write, which isn't even at the limit of socketed PCIe4 NVMe drives, nevermind the bleeding edge PCIe5 drives which can do up to ~14GB/sec read and ~12GB/sec write (albeit with excessive heat and power consumption for a laptop).
Soldering the RAM has legitimate performance benefits, but soldering the SSD is just to save space and upsell overpriced upgrades.
This might be nitpicking but 1) the ram is not integrated into the chip, per se, it's still discrete and soldered on a PCB right next to the CPU, and 2) the increased speed comes from additional memory channels built into the M-series CPUs, not necessarily the fact that the memory is closer to the CPU.
It is true that it's not currently feasible to have socketed memory in a laptop offering 8+ memory channels to enable 200GB/sec+ bandwidth, but you can absolutely get the same (or greater!) memory speeds as an M-series CPU from an x86 desktop workstation.
If Intel/AMD wanted to prioritize memory bandwidth, they could probably work with JEDEC or another industry org to develop a new standard for socketed memory with multiple channels per socket, to enable the kind of speeds that Apple offers. The fact that they haven't (to my knowledge) indicates to me that they don't see it as a big enough priority or benefit.
> 1) the ram is not integrated into the chip, per se, it's still discrete and soldered on a PCB right next to the CPU, and 2) the increased speed comes from additional memory channels built into the M-series CPUs
Thanks, I did not know this! I would have honestly have bought into Apple's marketing that the soldering is what allows them to make it more integrated and faster
You're welcome! In fairness to Apple, having shorter traces between the CPU and main memory does in fact decrease latency and power requirements. It's just not the only, or even the best, way to get more performance out of memory chips.
The CAMM2/LPCAMM2 standard is a new way of having replaceable memory which takes up less physical space and is faster, if you're interested. There are a few laptops (and desktops) out there using it already. It still only supports dual-channel memory, though.
As I said originally, my suspicion is that "200GB/s+ memory bandwidth!" might be good marketing copy and make for good synthetic benchmark results, but just isn't actually that beneficial for the average computer user in the real world. This could be why you don't see other computer manufacturers pursuing it, at least not in laptops.
> replaceable ram is not really a marketable feature these days
A week ago, I helped a family member select a laptop. One of the criteria is either sufficient RAM to begin with (16GB puts them into a price class above what they actually need for other specs) or upgradeable RAM. It's definitely something I look at for myself and for those around me also -- more so than in the past because nowadays it has become a problem...
The RAM is still very much bog-standard DDR4/DDR5 chips, soldered on a PCB right next to the CPU. Here's an example pic of an M3 motherboard. The CPU/GPU is under the metal piece with the Apple logo on it, and the memory is the two rectangular chips immediately above that.
Even when Apple laptops had removable solid state storage, it used a non-standard connector[1]. Very consumer and repair hostile. While OWC still made thirds party drives for these[2], few (no?) other companies did.
Hot air rework is more accessible than ever. This video is kinda over-the-top breathless, but removing components and reballing new ones isn't rocket science.
I disagree that the current state of an art will not change. Consider the solution-state as a vector. 18 years ago people were performing reflow repair with candles! [0] Pathfinding hackers are able to perform the task now more precisely and with consumer priced tools.
SMD and BGA are definitely headed in a direction of non-specialized solubility at an individual level. What will drive it most quickly is that it is easier and more precise than holding an iron, solder wire and two components together.
I have a mac, absolutely love it, hate windows and yet my next laptop will be windows because of that.
You don't realize how much it matters until it does, and then it changes everything. Always having to carry an external drive just because my email takes 150gb of the 256gb MacBook storage is even more annoying than windows puting candy crush saga on the start menu.
The total size isn't so surprising to me, many have large archives, but why would it all be local to your main or external drive instead of just loaded on-demand over IMAP or whatever?
Unfortunately with DDR5L speeds, they need to be embedded to keep signal stability, so you need to find at least a 16GB laptop which is STILL pretty gatekept with a higher chip like i7 so you have to pay $300 more for that extra 8GB, pulling a page from Apple. Luckily m.2 is still a thing and 99% of Windows still use it.
Why do you need 150G of mail locally? and why did you think it sufficient to bug the absolute minimum spec available?
I’m afraid though that the core premise of your comment is flawed. Storage and especially memory are increasingly soldered to thin and lights. Even professional grade laptops such as the Thinkpad X1 Carbon have soldered memory.
If you hate Windows, you should really consider Linux instead. Gnome is quite enjoyable and can be relatively easily made to behave similarly to the macos DE. Fedora works pretty well OOTB on most hardware. If you buy as Frame.work[1] laptop, Fedora will install and run very well.
[1] Dislaimer: I'm a community investor in Framework but have three of them because I like them a lot.
My next self-purchased laptop is also going to be one that is not a Mac and buying a 2-3 year extended warranty wouldn't cost half or one third of its price. It will also not increase its price by 25-30% if I choose to double the RAM (and by double I mean 8 to 16, not 32 or so). I asked an Apple fan once why Apple still has 8GB RAM even in their pro models and I got the response because it's Apple, you don't need more than 8GB RAM. And I actually realised why Apple gets away with such practises. They are like the 99.978% of Apple's customer base. They stand in queues to get the latest Apple device and then cry out of joy.
I bought a Dell laptop in 2007 and I was able to "deselect" Windows and it actually had reduced the price. I could do that in the third world and online and in 2007 (again!). I also got home repair in not a tier 1 city of that third world country. I think we went degradingly backwards from there.
Would be nice if Apple also introduced a new base iPad with at least support for a decent Apple Pencil. I want to buy my wife an iPad, but she wants to draw and the Apple Pencil USB-C doesn't support presure levels, so it is either a base iPad with an old Apple Pencil 1st Gen (that still is lightining) or paying extra for the iPad Air and Apple Pencil 2nd Gen/Pro. The fact that Apple Pencil USB-C doesn't support presure levels at ALL is infuriating too.
If she's looking to sketch or just doesn't mind not having color, I can't recommend the Kindle Scribe enough. I bought it for reading but it's become my combination work notes/presentation board/drawing tablet, and I absolutely love it. The premium pencil honestly smokes the Apple pencil and it feels so nice to use. I just wish it did color too.
She basically wants to draw notes and do some doodling, so it is not like it would make much difference and the price delta is huge between the base iPad and the iPad Air.
The Wikipedia article for the Apple Pencil has a compatiblity matrix that is very helpful in this regard, since it's so damn confusing.
I think if I was in the market for a drawing device on a budget I'd go with an iPad Air that supports the Apple Pencil 2nd generation. Something like the iPad Air 5th or 4th would do well.
It depends on her storage needs. If she’s making files she’ll probably not want the 64GB version. So you’d be looking at the 256GB base for $500 or the 128GB 11” Air for $600. That’s not that big a jump for the added utility.
I agree with the other poster; maybe look at refurb and a 2nd gen pencil.
Or just don’t get one. But it sounds like this is on the short list to buy for you two.
She lived with an iPhone 64GB up until last week and I expect that her tablet storage needs to be even smaller (e.g.: no photos). So yes, 64GB is fine.
> Or just don’t get one.
This is actually what I am going to do: wait until there is a better base iPad version. Unless I can get an older iPad Pro for a cheap price, but it is unlikely here in EU.
Apple doesn’t have a reputation for letting engineers slack. I have to guess they are working like dogs to meet some standard before they are willing to release.
They don’t have a reputation for releasing hardware without software to back it either. One way or another, an unprecedented process failure has occurred.
Well, the phone’s software works great. They just haven’t released those new AI features - which are supposed to come out on some older devices as well. And it’s hardly the first time Apple delayed a release.
IMO, the only thing weird here is the way the iPhone 16 demo day kept talking about these unreleased features front and center instead of the actual capabilities of the new phone. Probably that’s because the phone is so incremental and there was not much to talk about.
Can you name another time the software team has lagged so far behind the hardware release and marketing? Nearly every ad I’ve seen the world over has touted “Apple Intelligence” as if it’s a thing that exits, not some Coming Soon^{TM} pipe dream.
My money is on it being a massive failure if it ever does come out, the only thing stopping me from buying options is I don’t have a clue as to the timeline for when they’ll give up and ship whatever they have.
Seems like a page from the Tesla playbook. Musk kept promising customers that if they buy a Tesla _now_, they will have full self driving and can make money having it go to work as a robotaxi Next Year (TM). Without these promises, a Tesla would just be another car.
Not quite the same Ponzi scheme, but they promise a device "built for AI", so that when those features are ready, you'll get them. Without these promises, the thing would just be another tablet.
Do they have to necessarily keep that promise? Musk seems to be doing fine without. What's the alternative, holding firm against the hype? Not sure that'd do wonders for their stock price. Maybe Jobs' Apple would have done that. But I suppose the current Apple doesn't see much choice around riding hype cycles.
It clearly wasn't ready. My guess: the powers that be decided they had to make a public showing of being an AI company, hence the giant marketing push ahead of release.
It's unknown how useful any of this will be in day to day use-cases.
Apple of yesteryear would issue a patch update model and let this feature cook until it was ready for release. Current approach is sloppy in a decidedly un-Apple way.
You might be surprised as to how many are willing to make the splurge. Anecdotal, but I'm married to a high school teacher. She and several of her coworkers have been willing to eat the cost personally just to avoid using dated district-provided assets, which are often clucky and make the job worse.
I love iPad minis, but a keyboard folio for this size would be great. I've used this form factor with the iPad Air for writing, and it's perfect for carrying in a small bag. I know this is an expensive toy, though.
[*] For reference, the iPad Air with the Magic Keyboard is about as heavy as a 13" MacBook Air.
I bought and returned a 13" iPad Pro M4 because I couldn't get a Smart Keyboard Folio for it. Only the Magic Keyboard is available. I'm still using my 2018 iPad Pro.
Same, I actually bought a few of the Smart Keyboard Folios to use as they die. Upgraded to the M2 iPad Air, as I think it's the last of this form factor...
It is just such a shame they discontinued the keyboard. It makes for the perfect iPad with a full keyboard.
The size of the mini is really the best, but the external monitor support is very disappointing. Do jailbreaks etc. allow for native monitor resolutions or are we limited to the iPads screen resolution by hardware?
I still remember the Steve Jobs era when people would praise Apple for having a simple lineup of devices, in contrast to Android, which had some crazy amount of variants of every device. How times have changed.
What other large brand has a simpler lineup? Samsung released 22 phones just in 2024 with memorable names like C55 and M05.
Although I wouldn't mind if they got rid of one or two iPhone variants, or at least gave them more meaningful names. I have no idea what the difference between Plus, Pro and Max is. I only know that Pro doesn't mean pro, and that doesn't make it any easier.
Edit: also Steve Jobs was still alive when you could choose between four different iPod variants.
> I'll forever remember a different tablet, the Google Pixel C, as the best Android tablet ever made.. The Pixel C's design was just overflowing with potential.. like so many Google hardware products, few people ever had an opportunity to use a Pixel C. It never received a model refresh, and its spiritual successor, the Pixel Slate, was a total disaster. I felt at the time, as I still do today, that the Pixel C deserved a simple update with new components to give this hardware design more time to shine.
So far, no news on Pixel Tablet 2, other than Pixel Tablet being sold standalone without the dock.
It's mainly just the iPad lineup that's a mess, but it's optimized for there always being an iPad available for increasing budgets in $100 jumps, give or take. It's confusing to try and keep track of them all, but that's not really the point. What they have is anyone can walk into a store and say "give me an iPad, I'll pay $600" and they'll get a good device.
I don't get why some people get so worked up about bezels. I like being able to hold my devices without accidental inputs, and to me they look better anyway.
I wouldn't mind 3cm wide bezels and accordingly larger batteries.
Could be dynamic, example, watching a movie, no bezels. Remove the bezels from the top and/or bottom, that changes on the device orientation. Placed in a stand remove the bezels, add them back when picked up.
That sounds awesome actually. Makes me wonder how hard it would be on a rooted phone to just have it tell the software the screen is a few pixels smaller so you can touch chose sides safely, and remove the restriction again when you're in movie mode
Never heard of anyone making that but this would honestly sound like the first innovation in several years, not incremental like "GPS now finds a solution 2 seconds faster" and "the mobile data now uses 7% less energy" but something that is now possible that wasn't a feature before
This. Phones are already a real trade-off between usability and screen size. I've reached (or perhaps slightly gone over) the minimum amount of grabbing space I want on a phone and mine isn't quite the sleekest model
I was just thinking the same thing. Why couldn't they give it a tiny bezel, with a software option to put a virtual bezel if you want to hold it in a way it matters.
They could even give it only the virtual bezel on the left and right sides, in whichever orientation you're holding it, since you don't really hold it on the top or bottom.
Does anyone here have insight as to the differences between the various versions of Apple's "Smart HDR" feature? Interesting to see it took the leap from Smart HDR3 (previous model) to Smart HDR 4 (new model), and yet the latest iPhones released last month apparently use Smart HDR 5.
The version is tied to the Image Signal Processor (ISP) of the A-series chip. So the A17 has Smart HDR 4, while the A18 has Smart HDR 5.
Smart HDR uses neural image segmentation for tone mapping and other processing. In my opinion it goes way too far; trying to grab a faintly blue sky and make it as blue as possible, identifying a face and lightening any hint of a shadow, etc.
When people complain about iPhone photos looking over processed, this is why.
Well, they call it stage manager, but in iOS 18 (too) it only offers split screen and one window overlaid to the side. There is an example in the page somewhere.
You are correct. I would have sworn it was called Stage Manager in 17... For what it's worth, searching for "Stage Manager" in Settings returns only stuff in this multitasking page of settings.
All I’ve wanted is a pocket iOS device that I can dock and use for some desktop-like use cases. I had really hoped that the iPad mini would get stage manager for this reason. Oh well
In many ways (no pun intended :-)) I would relate to having an iPad mini and a much much dumber phone which was just text/chat and voice. I have gotten there because I'm constantly in this weird tension between wanting a bigger screen on my phone because the app I'm using and wanting a smaller phone so that it is easier to pocket and carry around. A friend of mine did the folding screen phone thing and that has its advantages but I really like a small phone (and ideally with a long battery life so no 1000 nit screens on it). Definitely first world/21st century problems :-). I do find engineering tradeoffs in product design an interesting thing though.
For me its a very nice bedside ebook reader, reddit machine, and video device. Its a perfect size for all those things, perhaps a bit too small for video but good enough. It can fit into a large coat pocket or a medium sized purse too.
I keep trying to get into my kindle but just can't for some reason. E-ink is nice but being able to get a nice glowing black background with white text is really nice and the page changes are so much more fluid than e-ink.
I don't get this whole "Too many distractions" shtick. If you don't have the self control to swipe away from your book to sneak in a round of Angry Birds, you'll probably end up pulling your phone out every 2 minutes to check your Reddit feed
Most of the modern "dumbphones" (or "feature phones") would do this just fine for you.
If you want one that can survive anything life will throw at it, look at the Sonim devices - the XP3+ (flip) or XP5+ (candybar). They're Android Go, have exceptionally good (week and a half, easily) battery life, hotspot just fine, and handle actual use a lot better than the KaiOS toys out there. Maybe 3.x is better, but KaiOS 2.x couldn't handle actual use for more than a few weeks without starting to lag, requiring you to remove texts from it so the interface wasn't glacial, and mine eventually just stopped bothering to notify me about incoming calls and texts, which is your one job... The Android Go stuff seems to actually hold up to sustained moderate use.
Funny, but for number one in your list, PalmOS 3 could do that in 1998 on a 16mhz 32 bit Motorola processor. It was just one of those attention to details that made the platform so nice to use.
> Most of the modern "dumbphones" (or "feature phones") would do this just fine for you.
Assuming you use something like WhatsApp, Facebook or something alike. Modern "feature phones" include built-in applications for messaging and calling, and you generally can't install anything custom on them.
I was just pitching this yesterday to my friend. My Pixel 8 Pro is a great phone, but in many situations I only want a phone that can show me my messages and answer my phone calls, and it's OK if its interface is my smartwatch and/or earbuds. I want it to be able to take over my mobile number on-demand, and relinquish it to my Pixel afterward.
I wish I could do this but I have yet to find a good Apple Watch replacement for owning and syncing music (rather than streaming it)
Is it not possible to sync MP3s to Apple Watches anymore? I have a really really old model, and I selected a few playlists on my iPhone, and when they change, the songs automatically sync to my Apple Watch.
Apparently Steve's posthumous roadmap focused on the idea that personal computers get 'smaller and closer to you' as time goes on. So the idea that an Apple Watch and AirPods could be all you need when travelling, etc. follows that premise.
There were back in the day. Apple really screwed up the development story for the watch as the initial watches just couldn't really do apps. They should have waiting for Series 3 before introducing apps and they still could do a lot to make things easier for devs.
If I was approaching the dumb phone thing I’d try something similar to this video - “dumbify” Home Screen app for iOS, setting as gray scale, screen time limits, etc.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7jVb1lLniEw
My best use case for the apple watch is I can keep it on everywhere. If I constantly have to think of the thing it’ll get annoying enough I want to get rid of it.
Integration with Fitness on Apple TV is extremely slick for HIIT and yoga.
Also, the third-party Intervals Pro app has been my go-to running app. I started with Apple+Nike since 2010 and a Fitbit Charge in 2015, but nothing let me customize my workouts as much as the Intervals app.
I own a Concept 2 rowing machine; I have detailed stats on every workout going back 19 years, and for the last 7 years or so I have heart rate info as well.
I have cognitive issues from treatments following an incomplete spinal cord injury and autoimmune problems. Managing my care is complex, with multiple drugs, appointments, symptom tracking, and scans required by a large team of specialists. My short-term memory is poor, though my long-term memory remains sharp. The drugs and chronic pain make it even harder to stay focused and manage these responsibilities.
My watch is essential in helping me keep up. It’s on my wrist from the moment I wake till the moment I sleep, ensuring I miss nothing important. I’ve restricted notifications to medical needs and use it to log symptoms or adverse effects immediately, preventing forgetfulness which was a problem previously.
Outside of my unique use case, many people I know with a watch have stopped carrying a phone altogether. They find it freeing, as the watch gives them essential tools without the distraction of a larger device. Its limitations are a benefit, allowing them to focus on the moment and carry less.
Super cool the Watch can be so beneficial to someone like yourself with actual important use cases, unlike most of us (read: me) where it's mostly gravy.
RE not carrying a phone, I think what mostly makes them something people need to detox from is notifications and social media fomo. Take those away and it's just a pocket computer.
For that reason I've leaned heavily into Focus modes and limiting notifications and have left most social media. Those have really helped a lot with being present.
You can probably get fairly close to do this by using an apple watch with a sim card
I used to leave the house with just my watch and it was great - I could read and send text messages, email, even take calls on my watch and have everything synced up to my phone at home. You can even download music to it and pair it to your airpods.
The missing piece here is just having a dumb phone - somehow I think that with some ingenuity you might be able to something that serves 80% of your needs here or something like that.
>…addicted to their phones by making Watch support exclusive to iPhone.
Buy a Garmin watch, battery life measured in weeks, and you’ll never have to re-enter your pin again because it moved on your wrist. You’ll still get great fitness tracking though and also notifications if you choose to sync them.
I would love to buy a Garmin watch but Garmin Pay doesn't support a lot of banks yet. It's a shame because their battery life is on a league of its own.
Back in the day when Android was KitKat and full of possibilities, I ran a Nexus 7 2nd gen and a cheap phone from my carrier. I'm not sure if it was enlightenment but it was closer to it than today, where I carry around a smartphone that's too big to use comfortably but still too small to use frequently for media.
A lot of people (myself included) want that, which is exactly why it’s not going to happen - Apple would much rather see you pay twice as much for an iPhone Pro Max
A pro of foldables is that you mostly use the outer screen, but the battery is big enough to handle the inner screen. So you get excellent battery life for daily use. If you only use the inner screen for reading in dark mode the battery life is also excellent.
Also at least for the Galaxy Fold, when folded the phone is narrow enough to use one-handed and hold securely.
I've gotten myself a Honor Magic V3 and I am blown away by how good this phone is. Screen quality, battery life, camera. For me this is the holy trinity. Unfortunately now I can never go back to normal phones. I am waiting for the Huawei Mate XT second gen and making the switch.
An alternate setup is LTE smartwatch, tws and foldable phones. You can do almost all dumbphone tasks and some more from the watch. It can be relatively distraction free, and you can leave phone at home for swimming/jogging/workouts. Foldable will give you decent camera and tablet when you need it and can be kept in bag or far enough.
I use the Unihertz Jelly Star alongside my iPhone 14 pro. It's a 3" android 14 phone running on a powerful soc with 8gb ram and 256gb storage. I have the same sim on both phones but I no longer carry the iPhone with me, I use it at home as an iPad micro.
The fingerprint reader isn't accurate enough so I use pattern lock for NFC payments. Texting on a 3" screen isn't much fun either, but I don't like texting anyway. At least it manages to run FUTO voice keyboard (whisper based) fast enough.
I often feel this way as well, but given the phone has replaced GPS in my car and my camera, I end up wanting newer stuff to keep those up to date. I've given up on Apple producing a magic device just for me, and accept that what we've got is pretty amazing considering the alternative is a backpack of devices to carry around.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 381 ms ] threadedit: oops I mixed up A Pro and A X
Apple used to use the X suffix for bigger versions of their phone processors that went into iPads (starting with the A5X); that went away when the M-series was introduced.
And the "Pro" suffix itself doesn't seem to denote anything in particular-- there was never a non-Pro A17, and the "A17 Pro" going into the iPad Mini is itself a cut-down version of the chip that went into the iPhone 15 Pro (it has one GPU core disabled).
It makes sense to update the model with apple intelligence but that might not be enough for a lot of people to upgrade.
Perhaps we're looking at a device that simply will be out of lineup soon (next few years).
I do like this form factor a lot though, well, eventually we'll get foldable phones to become mainstream I hope.
that's fine? it's a very mature segment - medium-price small screen tablet. it hasn't even really been updated since 2021, and that was basically new case+usb-c.
My 2014 ipad air 2 is only just starting to feel old.
What do you mean, the iPad mini has a higher ppi (326) vs iPad Air (264).
I think the issue is that, iPad OS is scaling the display to a weird resolution.
https://www.apple.com/ipad-mini/specs/
https://www.apple.com/ipad-air/specs/
So is storage and RAM but every OEM has their added vendor tax and so does Apple.
2TB Samsung pro nvme SSD is 170$, how much is 2TB Apple storage...
Same with screens.
Product differentiation.
Promotion is a way to make clients upgrade to iPad Pro. One of the very few left.
And adding OLED would make it the great for nighttime reading.
Apple has always been about premium price and quality but I agree that it's not for everyone and their needs.
Maybe their hardware is commodity (arguable), but the product + integrations are not.
So I guess I don’t see them as commodities which implies fungibility.
Can I recommend you a 40€ phone? They've been making models that can do calls for a while now and they needn't cost as much as an Apple-branded device to do just that
> they would drop calls and freeze on the dial pad during long calls
Never heard that happen to anyone with any phone model. If you've ruled out some software-specific issue like a call recorder you've installed or so, that sounds borderline implausible. Then again, given the number of issues I experience with software (of any kind)...
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/some-pixel-users-cant-dial-91...
https://www.slashgear.com/842545/why-antennagate-was-a-compl...
https://www.online-tech-tips.com/android-phone-wont-make-cal...
If the products are actually commodity, just buy something else.
sour grapes, plural noun, disparagement of something that has proven unattainable
> his criticisms are just sour grapes
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sour%20grapes
I also don’t get the complaint about the A-series chip. What does an M1 unlock in iPadOS that the A17 doesn’t?
I will say though the criticism of the A-series getting hot doesn’t make sense. If the A-series gets hot, the M-series is going to be boiling in that tiny chassis.
Depends on a particular A and M chip, tho.
Obviously these aren't directly comparable products but neither are iPads and budget laptops, and Apple asks $750 for a model with equivalent storage and a cellular modem. For a lot of people the screen probably is perfectly adequate but I can also see why some potential buyers would be pretty disappointed given the price point, especially since unlike the air apple doesn't even offer an upsell option at this size.
Can you expand on that? It seems to support DisplayPort over USB-C, and there are a number of 1st and 3rd party adapters that have DP out, power in, and a USB2.0 plug for your other devices. What does “properly” docking it look like?
If you check Apple's comparison, at least on that overview, it seems they changed only the processor, networking, that HDR thingy on the camera, and... that's all. Everything else is the same.
It's a tablet, not a phone. No number of cameras is going to make it into a good device for taking photos.
> Update, 9/28/2021: In response to our inquiry, Apple has told us that the "jelly scroll" issue on the 6th-generation iPad mini is normal behavior for LCD screens.
> Update, 9/30/2021: An iFixit teardown suggests that the iPad mini's more noticeable scrolling issue is a byproduct of how the display controller is mounted.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/2021-ipad-mini-suffe...
FWIW, my 5th Gen Mini doesn't have this issue.
Would it be a sweeter spot without those restrictions?
I hate that I can’t code on my iPad Pro.
I still think they should support it anyway, even if only for three apps at a time on the primary display. iPadOS is weirdly bifurcated into two different window management strategies (Split View vs. Stage Manager) based on what device you bought, which is confusing. They should be expanding Stage Manager to as many devices as possible.
it allows you to enable stage manager on an ipad mini without problems and without needing to jailbreak or similar :). the only gotcha is, that the ipad mini doesn't support more than 1080p output, therefore, if you connect a 4k screen it will remain blank.
would love to know if the ipad mini 7 now supports 4k - would actually be a meaningful upgrade then.
iPhone 13 mini was the last flagship smartphone with such dimensions.
Make iPhone Mini -> Mini only accounts for 10% of sales -> Cancel iPhone Mini -> Notice that 10% of iPhone customers haven't updated for 3 or 4 cycles -> Make iPhone Mini -> Suffer crippling corporate amnesia -> <...>
I'm expecting the brain worms to reach step 4 of the corporate consciousness cycle around the next generation or so.
SE1: 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6
Mini 13: 131.5 x 64.2 x 7.65
Counting the original SE as a mini is perfectly reasonable.
It's also quite clearly what the grandparent comment was referring to.
The rule for the SE is that it always has the design of second most recent hardware design, regardless of size.
If Apple re-introduces a mini, that will be the first such 'cycle.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size
Soldering the RAM has legitimate performance benefits, but soldering the SSD is just to save space and upsell overpriced upgrades.
Having replaceable ram is not really a marketable feature these days.
It is true that it's not currently feasible to have socketed memory in a laptop offering 8+ memory channels to enable 200GB/sec+ bandwidth, but you can absolutely get the same (or greater!) memory speeds as an M-series CPU from an x86 desktop workstation.
If Intel/AMD wanted to prioritize memory bandwidth, they could probably work with JEDEC or another industry org to develop a new standard for socketed memory with multiple channels per socket, to enable the kind of speeds that Apple offers. The fact that they haven't (to my knowledge) indicates to me that they don't see it as a big enough priority or benefit.
Thanks, I did not know this! I would have honestly have bought into Apple's marketing that the soldering is what allows them to make it more integrated and faster
The CAMM2/LPCAMM2 standard is a new way of having replaceable memory which takes up less physical space and is faster, if you're interested. There are a few laptops (and desktops) out there using it already. It still only supports dual-channel memory, though.
As I said originally, my suspicion is that "200GB/s+ memory bandwidth!" might be good marketing copy and make for good synthetic benchmark results, but just isn't actually that beneficial for the average computer user in the real world. This could be why you don't see other computer manufacturers pursuing it, at least not in laptops.
A week ago, I helped a family member select a laptop. One of the criteria is either sufficient RAM to begin with (16GB puts them into a price class above what they actually need for other specs) or upgradeable RAM. It's definitely something I look at for myself and for those around me also -- more so than in the past because nowadays it has become a problem...
https://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/M3-Macs....
All the ARM Macs are separate memory chips.
[1] https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-gu...
[2] https://www.owc.com/solutions/aura-n2
https://youtu.be/apEKAY11NQs?t=328
SMD and BGA are definitely headed in a direction of non-specialized solubility at an individual level. What will drive it most quickly is that it is easier and more precise than holding an iron, solder wire and two components together.
0. https://www.geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ib...
If that practice spreads to the MacBooks, you'll also need a CNC mill.
You don't realize how much it matters until it does, and then it changes everything. Always having to carry an external drive just because my email takes 150gb of the 256gb MacBook storage is even more annoying than windows puting candy crush saga on the start menu.
You have a very different email life than me. Is that like, all emails received in your life, or just huge attachments?
I’m afraid though that the core premise of your comment is flawed. Storage and especially memory are increasingly soldered to thin and lights. Even professional grade laptops such as the Thinkpad X1 Carbon have soldered memory.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-scourge-of-fully-soldered-...
[1] Dislaimer: I'm a community investor in Framework but have three of them because I like them a lot.
I bought a Dell laptop in 2007 and I was able to "deselect" Windows and it actually had reduced the price. I could do that in the third world and online and in 2007 (again!). I also got home repair in not a tier 1 city of that third world country. I think we went degradingly backwards from there.
I think if I was in the market for a drawing device on a budget I'd go with an iPad Air that supports the Apple Pencil 2nd generation. Something like the iPad Air 5th or 4th would do well.
I agree with the other poster; maybe look at refurb and a 2nd gen pencil.
Or just don’t get one. But it sounds like this is on the short list to buy for you two.
> Or just don’t get one.
This is actually what I am going to do: wait until there is a better base iPad version. Unless I can get an older iPad Pro for a cheap price, but it is unlikely here in EU.
IMO, the only thing weird here is the way the iPhone 16 demo day kept talking about these unreleased features front and center instead of the actual capabilities of the new phone. Probably that’s because the phone is so incremental and there was not much to talk about.
My money is on it being a massive failure if it ever does come out, the only thing stopping me from buying options is I don’t have a clue as to the timeline for when they’ll give up and ship whatever they have.
Not quite the same Ponzi scheme, but they promise a device "built for AI", so that when those features are ready, you'll get them. Without these promises, the thing would just be another tablet.
Do they have to necessarily keep that promise? Musk seems to be doing fine without. What's the alternative, holding firm against the hype? Not sure that'd do wonders for their stock price. Maybe Jobs' Apple would have done that. But I suppose the current Apple doesn't see much choice around riding hype cycles.
It's unknown how useful any of this will be in day to day use-cases.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BN_Q51d_wUFMs7ajdwI07ESmnmS...
Teachers get $55k-$72k depending on their qualifications. Not great, but not poverty levels either. If they want an iPad, they can probably get one.
[*] For reference, the iPad Air with the Magic Keyboard is about as heavy as a 13" MacBook Air.
It is just such a shame they discontinued the keyboard. It makes for the perfect iPad with a full keyboard.
Although I wouldn't mind if they got rid of one or two iPhone variants, or at least gave them more meaningful names. I have no idea what the difference between Plus, Pro and Max is. I only know that Pro doesn't mean pro, and that doesn't make it any easier.
Edit: also Steve Jobs was still alive when you could choose between four different iPod variants.
Meanwhile there are 4 variants of the Pixel 9. So clearly Google shows the same trend over time.
> I'll forever remember a different tablet, the Google Pixel C, as the best Android tablet ever made.. The Pixel C's design was just overflowing with potential.. like so many Google hardware products, few people ever had an opportunity to use a Pixel C. It never received a model refresh, and its spiritual successor, the Pixel Slate, was a total disaster. I felt at the time, as I still do today, that the Pixel C deserved a simple update with new components to give this hardware design more time to shine.
So far, no news on Pixel Tablet 2, other than Pixel Tablet being sold standalone without the dock.
Surprised though that they don't have an option with cellular so you can have always-on data access (i.e., with a data-only plan).
Updated: my bad, it does come with cellular -- it's just not advertised on the main product page
Will full coverage screens with a software driven, virtual bezel every be a thing?
Will nuclear powered phones with built-in fusion reactors that never need recharging ever be a thing?
I wouldn't mind 3cm wide bezels and accordingly larger batteries.
Never heard of anyone making that but this would honestly sound like the first innovation in several years, not incremental like "GPS now finds a solution 2 seconds faster" and "the mobile data now uses 7% less energy" but something that is now possible that wasn't a feature before
They could even give it only the virtual bezel on the left and right sides, in whichever orientation you're holding it, since you don't really hold it on the top or bottom.
Smart HDR uses neural image segmentation for tone mapping and other processing. In my opinion it goes way too far; trying to grab a faintly blue sky and make it as blue as possible, identifying a face and lightening any hint of a shadow, etc.
When people complain about iPhone photos looking over processed, this is why.
More discussion on official post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41848298
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102576
I keep trying to get into my kindle but just can't for some reason. E-ink is nice but being able to get a nice glowing black background with white text is really nice and the page changes are so much more fluid than e-ink.
Self control to not get distracted
I don't get this whole "Too many distractions" shtick. If you don't have the self control to swipe away from your book to sneak in a round of Angry Birds, you'll probably end up pulling your phone out every 2 minutes to check your Reddit feed
https://support.apple.com/guide/assistive-access-iphone/set-...
If you want one that can survive anything life will throw at it, look at the Sonim devices - the XP3+ (flip) or XP5+ (candybar). They're Android Go, have exceptionally good (week and a half, easily) battery life, hotspot just fine, and handle actual use a lot better than the KaiOS toys out there. Maybe 3.x is better, but KaiOS 2.x couldn't handle actual use for more than a few weeks without starting to lag, requiring you to remove texts from it so the interface wasn't glacial, and mine eventually just stopped bothering to notify me about incoming calls and texts, which is your one job... The Android Go stuff seems to actually hold up to sustained moderate use.
A) I had to manually enter captital I, apostrophe, and ‘m’ every time I wanted to write “I’m”.
B) New words (like brand and place names) displace common words in the built-in wordlist - that is, T9 gets worse the more you use it.
It was still an OK digital minimalist/detox device - the GMaps web app with voice search was good enough.
The Android Go devices you mentioned sound far better – I’m never touching KaiOS again.
Assuming you use something like WhatsApp, Facebook or something alike. Modern "feature phones" include built-in applications for messaging and calling, and you generally can't install anything custom on them.
Is it not possible to sync MP3s to Apple Watches anymore? I have a really really old model, and I selected a few playlists on my iPhone, and when they change, the songs automatically sync to my Apple Watch.
I’d love to go dumbphone and a Watch synced to an iPad at home, but this is not an option.
I've never found a compelling use case where I'd willingly buy another Apple watch.
Integration with Fitness on Apple TV is extremely slick for HIIT and yoga.
Also, the third-party Intervals Pro app has been my go-to running app. I started with Apple+Nike since 2010 and a Fitbit Charge in 2015, but nothing let me customize my workouts as much as the Intervals app.
My watch is essential in helping me keep up. It’s on my wrist from the moment I wake till the moment I sleep, ensuring I miss nothing important. I’ve restricted notifications to medical needs and use it to log symptoms or adverse effects immediately, preventing forgetfulness which was a problem previously.
Outside of my unique use case, many people I know with a watch have stopped carrying a phone altogether. They find it freeing, as the watch gives them essential tools without the distraction of a larger device. Its limitations are a benefit, allowing them to focus on the moment and carry less.
RE not carrying a phone, I think what mostly makes them something people need to detox from is notifications and social media fomo. Take those away and it's just a pocket computer.
For that reason I've leaned heavily into Focus modes and limiting notifications and have left most social media. Those have really helped a lot with being present.
I used to leave the house with just my watch and it was great - I could read and send text messages, email, even take calls on my watch and have everything synced up to my phone at home. You can even download music to it and pair it to your airpods.
The missing piece here is just having a dumb phone - somehow I think that with some ingenuity you might be able to something that serves 80% of your needs here or something like that.
Buy a Garmin watch, battery life measured in weeks, and you’ll never have to re-enter your pin again because it moved on your wrist. You’ll still get great fitness tracking though and also notifications if you choose to sync them.
Is this a problem for others? I’ve never had it happen to me.
Also at least for the Galaxy Fold, when folded the phone is narrow enough to use one-handed and hold securely.
The fingerprint reader isn't accurate enough so I use pattern lock for NFC payments. Texting on a 3" screen isn't much fun either, but I don't like texting anyway. At least it manages to run FUTO voice keyboard (whisper based) fast enough.