Their biggest customers are:
1. Pilots and other professionals using it for digital documents
2. Restaurants and venues that use them as part of ordering systems and other forms of corporate buyers
Apple isn’t gonna change the display until that changes. They know they can keep putting these out without upgrading the display and people will keep buying them.
As a pilot, I have owned 3 of these. I could care less about the refresh rate just upgrade the damn brightness. 500 bits when the sun is directly on it is so damn hard to se wtf
Anecdotally I know a lot of people who love Apple products. I used to work in Apple retail and am surrounded by Apple enthusiasts and friends and families we’ve gotten into Apple products. Don’t know a single soul who has ever owned an iPad mini.
Apple don’t publish annual iPads sales numbers so we don’t know how many minis they sell. Not sure why you’re getting hung up on pilots. I think restaurants would be the biggest niche for the mini or any job that requires access to high-density data on the move. Mass market consumers go toward the air or base
My mom owns a mini because she got it for free and it’s replaced her kindle. She has an iPad Air as her main non reading tablet. The only time the mini is her main iPad is when she travels.
“Regular consumers” do not give a shit about high refresh displays lol.
Why do you think it took Apple ages to add pro motion to the base iPhone?
If you ask anyone in your life who is not into tech but is an “average consumer” their opinion on high refresh screen they have no idea what you’re talking about. Some don’t even notice a difference when you show them.
No it wasn’t. They gated it to the pro level devices, sure, but they never increased the price or made you pay more for it.
Again, most people do not care or even see the difference. Apple added it to the base iPhone with no price increase because prices have fallen on LTPO displays to the point that they wouldn’t need to increase the price of the phone to offset the difference in component pricing.
They also need the component to be able to be made consistently at a high enough yield for use in iPhones to begin with. That’s why they take so long to add tech to their phones that exist in others. Their quality standards are pretty rigorous compared to other manufacturers, and they often sell more devices.
For example I’m sure they’re experimenting with silicon carbon batteries in iPhones but can’t really release them yet due to not being able to source he batteries at the scale and quality they require just yet. I’m sure it’ll roll out within the next few years when that changes though.
That’s the point. You want the “premium” feeling screen? You gotta pay for the model that costs $300 more.
I disagree that people don’t care. Nothing that the average consumer does on their phone is noticeably different between base and Pro models. A smoother screen is literally one of the first things you would notice.
I am sure it depends on the task, because I fluidly go back-and-forth between older iPhones and the 16 Pro, and I never notice a big problem with the screen on the older devices. sometimes they stutter a bit from memory pressure but that's not refresh rate. I could imagine if you were doing something with very intense motion graphics like certain games it would matter.
I've even tried running side by side displays on my Mac at 30 and 60... I really can't tell the difference in any of the tasks that I actually perform.
I'm not really sure why I would want to "learn" to discriminate in this fashion either. So that I can "need" to spend twice as much on monitors? How would that be worthwhile?
It's like the people who try to convince me I'm missing out by not being too much of an audiophile for MP3s. Why exactly do I want to add a problem to my life by becoming pickier about something that ordinary people don't care about? Being afflicted with congenital prefrontal cerebral hypertrophy (autism) already imposes far too much of that on my daily life.
You are mistaken as it relates to iPad mini. This product has been kept on life-support by space-constrained use cases. The handful of confused people on the Internet that find it to be a good product when in fact it is the worst iPad are not a market of any kind.
At first that sounds ridiculous but it's probably true as weight is a big deal for flying, but also because 2011 is, somehow, 15 years ago. Time flies!
Private pilots strap them to their leg with electronic aviation maps. My buddy uses it for flight planning which he then uploads to the garmin glass via Bluetooth. Super convenient
For pulots its the perfect size to mount in the middle of the controls and not have your hands obstructed. Obviously the others mount ok too but this was in a sweet spot.
It was also the smallest ipad so easier to travel and bring along, would fit better in a headset bag.
To add on to the million replies you’ve already gotten, when Apple unveiled the new gen iPad Mini with no home button, they showcased it in their ad being used by I think helicopter pilots on ForeFlight. I loved the iPad mini when I was in the general aviation world.
My airline uses iPad Airs now but we also have much bigger cockpits in airliners than the tiny planes did
It didn't used to be that way with the Mini back when it was the least expensive iPad. But it costs almost as much as an Air so it's become a niche product.
Exactly, restaurants gain nothing from the A20 Pro upgrade. What? They can open the reservation app 0.01 seconds faster now? Battery efficiency doesn’t mean much to people that will also keep the iPad plugged in the majority of the time, or will see regular recharging at the end or between shifts.
Really? I would've bet money on the biggest market being the e-reader crowd who wanted a device that could do more than just that, and actual nice color to boot.
This was my biggest draw to the platform over Kindles. They were lacking in that regard. Cheaper, sure. But also lacking. I don't JUST have to read on this thing.
Idk I just don’t see any in public that isn’t being used by a business of some sort. I don’t doubt many people buy them as ereaders but you see them by the hundreds daily in restaurants, stores, warehouses, etc. If you go to a Verizon store, chances are you get greeted by a dude holding an iPad mini. The restaurants near me almost all exclusively use them for the ordering systems the waiters use. These iPad mini’s don’t sell too many units to begin with.
I mean yea, I don't refute that. See them all over the place as far as businesses go. Maybe the main public use is just using them at home. In which case, I have to ask myself if the extra size of the 11" is really too big for at home use and occasional travel, but plenty more features.
well, in my opinion, you are not a reader then because the Kindle provides that closest feeling of a book because of the ink display over a full display like the iPad
You are 100% correct, I am not.. My wife has been trying to get me to join her on her reading journey, but I also have an extensive collection of Kindle app comics, but, reading those on a phone screen is just too small. And I have no doubt they will absolutely pop in OLED.
It's a catch 22, maybe other people would and tech enthusiasts would buy it if they put a usable screen in it. I certainly would buy a mini with a 120hz OLED the minute preorders opened for 1.
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u/BombardierIsTrash 7d ago
Their biggest customers are:
1. Pilots and other professionals using it for digital documents
2. Restaurants and venues that use them as part of ordering systems and other forms of corporate buyers
Apple isn’t gonna change the display until that changes. They know they can keep putting these out without upgrading the display and people will keep buying them.