#FF00AA

After the iPhone 6 Plus’s introduction, I caught myself wishing I’d soon be able to buy an iPod touch of the same size, which was completely idiotic and led me to realize that the device I really wanted already existed, and was called iPad mini. As it turned out, the 5.5-inch iPod touch hasn’t happened yet, but Apple did launch a new iPad mini and, more importantly, discounted the older one to almost iPod touch prices, so… here I am, happy owner of an iPad mini 2.

For some reason I had spent the past two years thinking that the “proper” iPad was the 10-inch model, everyone using the smaller tablet was fooling themselves, and they were missing an essential part of the experience. Well, I guess I was the fool. The Mini is (slightly) more comfortable to hold, (slightly) easier to carry, and does everything just as well as an iPad Air. Even drawing and landscape typing are pretty comparable. The only real difference is for reading full-page comics and scanned magazines, completely unthinkable on the Mini — but it wasn’t a great experience on the 10-inch screen either, so that’s not much of a selling point for the bigger iPad.

That means my iPad Air is now for sale, and I suddenly understand much better why the Mini didn’t get a CPU or design upgrade last week: offering an iPad mini with the same components as the Air, and just as functional as the Air, but selling for $100 less even though there was no way it cost $100 less to produce, was obviously unsustainable. Just look at Apple’s results for last quarter: the problem isn’t so much the stagnating unit sales (the iPad was never going to enjoy the same numbers as the iPhone, for a number of reasons) but the average selling price in free-fall ever since the iPad mini’s introduction. That’s a curve that Apple needs to correct.

Maybe a better strategy would have been to discontinue the 10-inch iPad altogether two years ago, replacing it with the Mini at or around the same price (because “this is what the iPad was always supposed to be”), while introducing a 12-inch iPad Pro at an inflated price point. That’s now off the table, and Apple is taking the opposite approach, aiming the now cheaper iPad mini squarely at the iPod touch’s customer base. There’s still no good reason to buy the newest iPad Air instead of either of the Retina Minis (end users don’t, and shouldn’t, care about the more powerful processor), so I guess the average iPad selling price is going to fall further — but maybe this time they’ll make it up in volume.

And there’s still the option of launching an iPad Pro next year. (And me buying it.) But, if that ends up happening, the lower end of the range didn’t need to see its prices fall so low.

Anyway, I don’t know why this post ended up sounding like one of those asshole analysts’ lectures. The original point was, the iPad mini is great. It feels more like a giant iPhone than a netbook running iOS, while doing everything an iPad can be asked to do, and I wish I’d bought it last year.