I saw it in my inbox before I'd even had coffee yesterday: an invitation from Apple, dated for October 23rd, with the tagline "We've got a little more to show you" sitting under a photo of an Apple logo that's clearly been squeezed down smaller than usual. Subtle it is not. By the time I'd finished my first cup, every gadget site I read had basically the same headline up: iPad mini, confirmed in all but name.
And that's the part that's been bugging me all day, actually. Not whether it's happening, because obviously it's happening, they might as well have just put a tiny iPad on the invite and saved everyone the trouble. What's bugging me is the name itself. "Mini" has never meant "better" in Apple's lineup. The iPod mini got replaced by the nano. The MacBook Air is the one everyone actually wants, not some "Mac mini" energy device (well, the Mac mini is its own weird little box, but you know what I mean). Calling this thing a mini before it's even out the door kind of sets expectations that it's the lesser iPad, the one you get if you can't afford the real one, and I don't think that's a great way to launch a product you presumably want people to be excited about rather than resigned to.
The price guessing has already started too, and it's the same argument I've seen play out for the regular iPad every single year. Half the internet is convinced it'll come in around $249 to compete with the Kindle Fire and the Nexus 7, which, sure, would be nice, but I'd put real money on it landing closer to $299 or even $329. Apple doesn't really do "compete on price," they do "compete on being the thing you wanted anyway and paid extra for." I've been wrong about Apple pricing before (I genuinely thought the iPhone 5 would hold at $199 across the board and, well, it mostly did, so maybe I'm 1-for-2 lifetime), but this is a company that has never once undercut a category just because two Android tablets showed up cheap. They'll price it wherever they think people will still buy it, and honestly they're usually right about that number.
Small tangent, but it feels relevant: I still haven't forgiven Apple Maps for sending me the wrong way down a one-way street near my apartment two weeks ago. I ended up parked half on a curb, phone yelling at me to make a U-turn onto a road that does not, in fact, allow U-turns, while an actual person walking their dog stopped to watch. Tim Cook's apology letter was nice and all, pointing people toward Google Maps and Bing and whatever else in the meantime, but it doesn't undo the fact that I was late to dinner because a map app couldn't find a Trader Joe's that has been in the same spot for at least six years. So there's something a little funny about Apple sending out a shiny new "we've got more for you" invite while that whole mess is still fresh. New hardware doesn't fix old software, and I'll be curious whether the smaller tablet ships with the same map that thinks my neighborhood grocery store doesn't exist.
None of this is going to stop me from watching the keynote stream on the 23rd, obviously. I've watched every single one of these since I started this blog, half out of genuine interest and half because it's basically appointment viewing at this point, like a show I've committed to even during the boring seasons. I just think it's funny how confident everyone already is about a product that, technically, hasn't been announced yet. We've seen a squished logo and a pun. That's it. That's the whole leak. And somehow half the tech press has already written the review.
Two weeks out, then. I'll probably eat my words on the pricing thing, I usually do.