Exclusive: 'iPad mini' part numbers reveal Apple plans 12 configurations in two colors - Page 2

Originally Posted by philipm 
So much speculation with no official announcement. What will Apple stock do if nothing happens?

Go back up like normal.

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Originally Posted by philipm 

So much speculation with no official announcement. What will Apple stock do if when nothing happens?

fixed

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Originally Posted by lilgto64 

 

You sure about that? 

 

http://www.colormatters.com/color-and-design/are-black-and-white-colors

 

This whole site goes completely around the point and is less than helpful in that it attacks the problem form the point of view of physics.  

In fact, "colour" is not a scientific term (the article itself talks about two completely different and conflicting scientific explanations for "colour"), but an artistic one.  

For an artist, black and white are not colours, nor can they be.  

Simply put, black and white provide for different shades (by adding black) and tints (by adding white) of the same colour.  

Since this separation into colour and shade is the same way all humans have described and used colour in their daily lives for many thousands of years now without change, It's safe to say that the most practical and widely used description of colour tells us that black and white are not in fact, "colours" (regardless of the arguments of misguided physicists).  

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Originally Posted by Andysol 

 

You mean the event that was supposed to happen this week with invites that were supposed to go out last week?

 

Or the unannounced event next week with the invites that haven't gone out this week?

Part number lists are usually pretty solid evidence, I think we'll see something shortly.

So four models: P101, P103, P105, P107, two are "BTR".  Each of those is split A/B and good/better/best.

As others have stated, A/B is obviously black and white, and good/better/best is likely 3 capacities.

I don't agree with any of the speculation on what the models are though.  The "BTR" groups them into two pairs. This means 2 carriers + wifi doesn't make sense (what's the second wifi model?), and neither does 3 carriers + wifi (not two pairs).

Here's my bet:

wifi @ 8, 16, 32 GB

wifi + 3G @ 8, 16, 32 GB

retina + wifi @ 16, 32, 64 GB

retina + wifi + 4G @  16, 32, 64 GB

The retina model may include other upgrades such as faster processor/graphics, or improved camera.

This covers the full range of the market from low-price for kids/educational to high-end for people wanting full features in a smaller form factor.  I don't think this is an instance of over-complication so much as Apple compensating for not have a "last year's" model of the iPad mini for the low end.

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Originally Posted by Gazoobee 

 

This whole site goes completely around the point and is less than helpful in that it attacks the problem form the point of view of physics.  

 

...

 

Since this separation into colour and shade is the same way all humans have described and used colour in their daily lives for many thousands of years now without change, It's safe to say that the most practical and widely used description of colour tells us that black and white are not in fact, "colours" (regardless of the arguments of misguided physicists).  

The site also misses an important perspective: biological.  Black and white are perceived by a separate mechanism from colours (rods vs cones).  This would support the stance that neither black nor white are colours. Although this whole argument is just semantics...

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Originally Posted by bluefish86 

 

Here's my bet:

wifi @ 8, 16, 32 GB

wifi + 3G @ 8, 16, 32 GB

retina + wifi @ 16, 32, 64 GB

retina + wifi + 4G @  16, 32, 64 GB

 

 

I like that. This sort of what I had in mind but I just didn't think it through as throughly as you did.

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Originally Posted by mstone 

I like that. This sort of what I had in mind but I just didn't think it through as throughly as you did.

Yes, I might quibble that the 3G is probably 4G in the non-retina.

Here are some configurations and numbers to play with.

Underlined are the sweet spot configurations.

It is assumed that there is value to continue to offer the iPad 2 as a full-size  mid priced tablet for education, special enterprise needs that are price sensitive.

     Mini             iPad2       iPad3         SSD

  *  $199                                             08 GB

  *  $249      * $299                           16 GB

  *  $299       * $349       * $499        32 GB

                     * $399        * $649       64 GB

                                        * $799      128 GB

 LTE $100     3G $100      LTE $100

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Originally Posted by Flaneur 

'

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Originally Posted by Rogifan 

honestly I think it's too many SKU'S. what's the reason for needing 8, 16, 32 & 64 other than marking has come up with a "starting from" price target and operations/finance says the only way we can meet this target is to offer it in 8GB.

A new tack in your FUD campaign: too many SKUs!

SKU-gate! Apple is losing it! ("under Tim Cook" is optional).

The 8G will make millions of people happy, especially in schools, especially in China, and wherever American/Western geek data-consumption appetites do not prevail.

The "SKU" requirement is due to the nature of the beast -- these are appliances, as opposed to computers that can be upgraded in the field.  With appliances, one size does not fit all...  you select the size (SKU) you need based on the jobs you want it to do...  If your needs change -- you buy another appliance.

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Originally Posted by Gxcad 

I have to agree with bruce k, I am not sure about adding the iPad mini to the lineup and what they are trying to accomplish. The only good reason I can see for doing this is to appeal to the size and weight needs of people that want a smaller tablet, NOT a cheaper tablet. If Apple are worried about the lower price segment I think they should wait till iPad 4 then have the iPad 2 cover the $299 price point, maybe even release a month early, like in February. Apple don't want to risk cannibalizing their high end, higher margin iPads, not to mention diluting their 'premium' brand. Then again, Apple could be right - they usually know what they are doing.

I would guess that Apple has "plans" for the iPad Mini that go far beyond the traditional * usage of tablet and book reader devices.

* Ha! After 2 years, we have "traditional" tablet uses 

The same applies to a high-end tablet.

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Originally Posted by Rogifan 

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Originally Posted by Mac_128 

Not only that, but why would Apple only release a 32GB and 64GB model of the iPod Touch, if 8GB is more than enough for most people? Even the 4th gen Touch is offered in 16GB min configuration. Is this because the Touch is supposed to hold a minimum amount of music?
So what is the tablet supposed to hold? In addition to a healthy music catalogue, would think a mini-tablet would primarily be used to hold movies, books and games. All of which are considerably larger files than mp3s. A larger screen is also going to encourage more photographic usage, and a huge collection of higher res photos will fill up 8GB in no time. While anecdotal, my mom has a 16GB iPad, and she downloads so many family photos that every 3 months or so, she has to clean it out to make room for new, and that's about all she uses it for besides crosswords and books. I have a 16GB iPad too and am constantly having to drop apps, delete music, movies and photographs, to make room for new. This is especially problematic when I get ready to shoot a new movie, or take more pictures and have to figure out what I don't need in that moment. I had to buy the camera kit in order to get a $30 64GB SD card to carry around movies when I travel, which while easy to do, is outside the capacity of the average user, and is not officially supported by Apple.
If Apple is so concerned about user experience, 8GB is going to quickly become a problem for the average tablet user with no real idea about how much or little 8GB represents in practical use when they purchase it.

I have a 32GB iPhone and have very little space left. Magazines are huge. I have Spotify music cached for when I'm at work and can't use Wi-fi and don't want to use up cellular data plan. I'm sure 8GB would be ok for some but to me it seems all about meeting some price point. As if Phil Schiller told Tim Cook we have to have a starting point of $249.

The last time I looked at magazines on iDevices, they were huge storage hogs.   But, this was because of the way they were designed.   Basically, instead of interactive text/image pages that you could manipulate (pan, zoom, increase font size,  etc.) you had a static, high-resolution image of each magazine page...  even worse than that, you had 2 sets of these images --- one for portrait and one for landscape.  This is terribly wasteful!

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Originally Posted by DaHarder 

Apple really should avoid releasing an 8gb model just to reach a lower price-point (unless it's solely for the EDU market) as such a paltry capacity on an iOS device leaves very little room for anything.
Other 'mobile OS' devices can often get away with such a small capacity as their apps tend to be (much) smaller in size than iOS offerings, but with a mere 7.25 or so user accessible storage on an 8gb iOS device, users will likely quickly become frustrated with running out of space, with no option for exspansion.
We'll See...

I know a very large number of people who basically use their iPad for email/web browsing/FB, plus a few apps, while storing little to no media. For them, 8GB would be more than enough. Realize that there are different types of people with different use cases. ie. my parents would never need anything more than 8GB. They're probably using 2 at most, and it's not increasing. I'd say on a VERY large percentage of iPad, the 16GBs is mostly going unused. 

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Originally Posted by Rogifan 


8GB at $250 when Google is supposedly coming out with a 32GB nexus 7 for roughly the same price is ridiculous. I understand paying a premium for Apple stuff but even that seems a bit of a stretch.

Except, the app situation on the nexus is complete shit. I own one. Seems like I'm using a massive cell phone most of the time. Also, thats a hypothetical product. The current one is 16, and I hardly use any of it on mine, and I feel its the same for many owners. 

For what it's worth, I'm seeing a lot of iPads used around town (Austin, TX) as point-of-sale devices, kiosks, and advertising boards. A cheaper, 8GB iPad would be fine in this role and in some cases the smaller screen size would actually be a plus.

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Originally Posted by BuffyzDead 

If Steve Jobs was still with us,

These would have been coded as

 

Great, Greater, Greatest
 

Insane, insaner, insanest!

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Originally Posted by Rogifan 

marking has come up with a "starting from" price target and operations/finance says the only way we can meet this target is to offer it in 8GB.

This is a problem how?  You don't think that Apple makes design trades in order to hit specific price points and incentivize upsell?

Apple's product lineup is as carefully engineered as the products themselves. It strikes me that the base model on most Apple products is so-so.

Originally Posted by Rogifan 
Not once have I said Apple doesn't deserve to charge a premium. All I'm saying is 8GB at $250 or $299 is a bad idea. 8GB at $199 would be better.

8GB at "give the user $400,000,000 to take one off our hands" would be even better.

You have to look at what this thing is on its own to be able to see why the SKUs are the way they are.

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Originally Posted by Rogifan 


I have a 32GB iPhone and have very little space left. Magazines are huge. I have Spotify music cached for when I'm at work and can't use Wi-fi and don't want to use up cellular data plan. I'm sure 8GB would be ok for some but to me it seems all about meeting some price point. As if Phil Schiller told Tim Cook we have to have a starting point of $249.

Wait, you're saying Apple makes design/feature/spec trade-offs so that they can hit certain pricepoints? Woah, my mind is blown! 

Seriously, do you not realize that every device, from its CONCEPTION, is designed to hit a target price? You think they just designed the iPad without regard to price then randomly priced it at $499? No, their goal was to hit that price from the get go, and it was meticulously designed with that in mind. There's nothing wrong with doing so as long as major quality compromised aren't made. Considering an iPad mini might solely be used as web portal by many, 8GB would not fall into such a compromise. However, making it from shitty plastic, with a shitty screen, laggy performance, etc WOULD be a problem. Thankfully, based on Apple's history this will not be the case. 

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Originally Posted by SolipsismX 

I'd think Good, Better, Best refers to storage capacity not to wireless connectivity.
Is there are just two colors and 3 different capacities that leaves two types within each capacity. That seems to point to a WiFi and 4G LTE variety for two base carriers configurations. 2 carriers x 2 wireless types x 3 capacities x 2 colors = 24 SKUs.

But how do you have two carriers for the Wifi version??

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Originally Posted by Rogifan 


Now this makes more sense.

Then no one will go with Ipod touch.

Originally Posted by Zhongqi Li 
Then no one will go with Ipod touch.

Device that can fit in a pocket vs. device that can't fit in a pocket. 

I figure people will still buy an iPod touch.

I still believe they will release a mini as well as a revamped 9.7" iPad with a thunderbolt, maybe a newer processor or cooler battery.
 

Good, better best =  16, 32, 64GB

A/B = Black/White.

101/103 = WiFi only(101) / 4G+WiFi (103) Mini

105/107 = WiFi only(105) / 4G+WiFi(107) New iPad.

They'll probably introduce the A6 into the larger iPad and the lightning connector to start getting everything on board with it.

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Originally Posted by DaHarder 

Apple really should avoid releasing an 8gb model just to reach a lower price-point (unless it's solely for the EDU market) as such a paltry capacity on an iOS device leaves very little room for anything.
Other 'mobile OS' devices can often get away with such a small capacity as their apps tend to be (much) smaller in size than iOS offerings, but with a mere 7.25 or so user accessible storage on an 8gb iOS device, users will likely quickly become frustrated with running out of space, with no option for exspansion.
We'll See...

It's far worse than you say.

I have a couple of iPod touches running iOS 6.0. Settings:General:About yields the following:

8GB model     Capacity   6.4 GB

32GB model   Capacity 28.2 GB

If you sync photos you have to leave a bunch of space free. If you use it to take photos you have to leave even more empty. That means an 8GB device really only has 4 GB of usable space for music, apps and the data your apps store.

Contrary to information out of Germany I think Apple will include 16GB in the base model iPad mini. I also think they'll continue to charge $100 more for the 32GB model. It's outrageous! If the iPad had a microSD slot you could add 16GB for just $9.

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Originally Posted by Flaneur 


Right, or, device that will fit in pants pocket vs. device that will only fit in jacket pocket or purse.

I just tried putting a Kindle Fire into my jacket. It wasn't very successful. Quite a bit of the unit hangs out of the pocket putting it at high risk of coming out (falling or getting help from someone else's hand).

The iPad mini will likely be noticeably bigger than the Fire so I don't think it'll fit into pockets comfortably.

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Originally Posted by Tallest Skil 

 

Device that can fit in a pocket vs. device that can't fit in a pocket. 

 

I figure people will still buy an iPod touch.

Not the new model at the new prices.