With much delay, Apple was taking its time rolling out a new, smaller iPad onTuesday at the California Theater in San Jose, proof that the tablet market is heating up and consumers are hungry for more options in that category.
Twenty six minutes into the event, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller asked rhetorically: "You knew there'd be something called 'mini' in this presentation didn't you?"
And then he brought out a crazy-thin 5 mm iMac, 80 percent thinner than the previous model, with thin glass and no air gap between the glass and display. The audience whooped and cheered.
The event kicked off with Apple CEO Tim Cook reminiscing a little about the past and listing a whole bunch of sales numbers.
He talked about the iPod Touch - which sold over 3 million new iPods total. He talked about the iPhone 5, calling it the "fastest selling phone in history."
He also recapped features like iMessage, saying there have been more than 300 billion iMessages sent to date, and that Apple now has more than 1.5 billion books in the iBooks store - customers have downloaded 400 million of them.
Fifteen minutes into the event, Schiller took the stage to announce a 15-inch Macbook pro with Retina display that he called "gorgeous."
And then a bigger announcement: He introduced a 13-inch MacBook pro with Retina display, stereo speakers, FaceTime HD camera, dual mics and a backlit keyboard- and the audience clapped. It is .75 inches thin and weighs 3.5 pounds - almost a pound lighter than previous generations. He also said that this new notebook as 4 million pixels - four times the pixels of the previous generation. And it cost $1,699 - $500 less than the 15-inch MacBook Pro.
But that's not what everyone was waiting for - the announcement of the mini.
Many predict that the mini will be great for people wanting to take it along on airplane trips, jaunts to the pool and for school children to use in the classroom.
"A lot of schools are saying they want the iPad for every single kid, and this would be a cheaper option than the iPad," Leander Kahney, editor and publisher of the Cult of Mac in San Francisco, said in an interview earlier this week. "Instead of going to a computer lab, the kids could bring the mini to each and every class."
Aside from school kids, Kahney said one of his colleagues is already poised to sell his iPad 3 for a mini, because he wants a lighter device to throw into his travel bag.
"This is the iPad you would take to the beach or the pool," Kahney said. "The regular iPad can function more like a laptop and be kept at home."
No one knows the price point for sure, but tech analyst Larry Maggid said he thought the mini would have to cost less than the third-generation iPad (which starts at $499) and the iPad 2 (which starts at $399). His best guess was that it would cost as low as $199.
And Kahney said to be competitive, the iPad mini would have to be comparable in price to the Kindle Fire, which is now starting at $159. Wilson Rothman of NBC News said the magic price point would be $249.
All this goes to show that the tablet market is heating up. Google is expected on Oct. 29 to introduce a new high-end tablet from Samsung and LG's Nexus 4 and a new 32GB Nexus 7 tablet — all from tech media reports this weekend. And Microsoft's surface tablet is already on backorder.
And for Apple diehards jones-ing for some new tweaks in more of their favorite products, consumers can also expect to hear more about a new MacBook Mini and a 13-inch MacBook Pro with a high-resolution retina display at the Apple conference as well.
Kahney added that the only criticism so far that he's seen of the new yet-to-be-revealed iPad mini is by some Wall Street analysts, who wonder what effect the smaller iPad would have on the regular iPad sales. Rob Cihra with Evercore Partners wrote a note last week to investors saying that he thought Apple would abandon the $400 iPad 2, and instead, sell 26 million iPad minis throughout the holiday season.
"But overall, people seem to be real excited," Kahney said. "It's supposed to have a fairly large screen with high definition, have a great battery life, and be a cheap way to get into the Apple eco-system."
Stay tuned, NBC will give you the actual details Tuesday as Apple reveals them.
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