October 24th, 2012
I completely understand why Apple reversed course and went into the 7″ tablet market. It’s a real market and there’s no reason for APPL to just cede it to others. I think it was smart to make an iPad Mini.
That said, I’m not sure if I think they did the Mini smartly.
Will it sell initially? Sure. But a bunch of things jump out at me as potentially problematic right from the start:
1) The complexity of the product lineup suddenly goes from relatively simple to insane–there are now 54 flavors of iPad to choose from just at the Apple Retail level. One of APPL’s strengths has always been limiting choice for consumers because Jobs and Ivey knew what you wanted better than you did.
2) The price point strikes me as nuts. Or maybe just potentially nuts. I had originally thought that the Mini was meant to kill the Nexus 7, Kindle Fire, and other sub-compact tablets. But at nearly twice their price, I don’t see the Mini doing that at all. Instead, it looks like they were either trying to create a whole other category or just extend their own price-basement a tiny bit further down the scale.
Maybe that will prove to be really smart. I’m sure they’ve run the numbers on this. But if it is, it’s smart in a consultant-y kind of numbers-driven way. Not in a product design way. Which is to say, not in the way we traditionally think of APPL as being smart.
And if it’s not smart, then it’s just a weird move to make.
3) Here’s where (1) and (2) kind of merge. So say you wanted a cheap tablet. And you wanted an iPad. So do you buy the Mini, with the new chips and connectors and whatnot? Or do you spend just $70 more and get the iPad 2? It’s a real iPad! It’s big! But the connectors are old and the tech will be obsolete faster. It’s confusing.
I suppose APPL would say that the Mini let’s people make their own choices and that neither is wrong. And maybe they’re right. But that strikes me as the path to making widgets. You want to sell as many widgets as possible to as many people as possible. Because a widget’s a widget.
(4) Honest question: What’s the point of a 7″ tablet? Is it media consumption or productivity?
I ask because if media consumption is the prime use of a 7″, then you can be an APPL user everywhere else and have a non-APPL 7″ tablet. You’re going to stream media from apps like Netflix, Amazon, Google Play, ESPN, etc on your devices. You can do that on your Big iPad, your iMac, and, say, your Kindle Fire HD (or your Nexus 7). Where’s the benefit for being in the APPL ecosystem at the 7″ level? Basically, just iTunes, right?
All the other benefits of being on iOS center around how nice it is to use when you’re doing stuff. But if, at the 7″ level, you’re mostly consuming, and not doing, then how much value-added are you getting from being on the Mini?
This question points the way to something could actually be good for tech consumers: The ability to play some of these big companies against one another. Having a single tech overlord is kind of scary. But if we wind up in a world where we can cling loyally to APPL for most devices, but split consumption between content ecosystems such as Amazon, ESPN, and Netflix, and then still be able to use a few non-APPL devices, like a Windows 8 or an Android 7″ tablet, that’s the best of all worlds because it gives us maximum consumer choice and keeps everyone honest.
So maybe a $329 iPad Mini isn’t such a bad thing after all.
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Does anyone know where I can get a G4 Cube? Steve liked those.
“iPad Mini is now the future . . . until then.” — Jonathan Last Online October 29, 2012 at 1:19 pm
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