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Apple Unveils New iPad Mini and More Powerful iPad

Oct 23, 2012  •  Post A Comment

Apple has taken the wraps off a number of new devices, with the centerpiece of the latest product rollout being the new iPad Mini — a competitor for smaller tablets such as the Nexus 7 from Google and the Kindle Fire HD from Amazon, Deadline.com reports.

But the new device may have been a disappointment to tech investors, with the report noting that Apple shares fell during the company’s presentation — and were down about 2% in mid-afternoon trading.

“Apple says the iPad Mini’s 7.9 inch screen compares to the 9.7 inch screen for its larger iPads,” the piece notes. “The company says the total screen area is 35% larger than the 7-inch screen rivals. But iPad Mini’s screen resolution is 1024 X 768 — which means it’s not as sharp as the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD.”

The piece also notes: “The iPad Mini is 7.2 mm thick, about 25% thinner than latest iPad. It weighs .68 pounds. All of the software for the iPad will work on the Mini, unchanged. The iPad Mini has an A5 processor, FaceTime HD camera in front and 5MP iSight camera in back. Beginning November 2, models with 16 GB of storage and communicate via WiFi will sell for $329 (a higher price than the Google and Amazon competitors) with 32GB versions for $429 and 64 GB $529. Two weeks later iPad Minis with 4G cellular communications will go for $459, $559 and $659.”

Apple also announced a fourth-generation version of the iPad with a more powerful processor and a new Lightning connector. The device comes at a starting price of $499 with 16GB of storage, the piece reports.

“Execs also introduced thin and light versions of the MacBook Pro,” the report adds. “A 13-inch screen model is .75 inches thin — 20% thinner than the current 13-inch MacBook — and weighs 3.57 pounds, about 1 pound lighter. It has a Retina display with more than 4M pixels. Base configuration with 2.5Ghz dual-core i5 processor, 8GB RAM and 128GB of memory will go for $1,699. A model with a 15-inch screen will start at $2,199.”

Also announced was a new thin iMac, with the base model Mac Mini going for $599 and featuring a 2.5Ghz dual-core i5 processor with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive, the report notes. The unit also comes in a server edition with two 1T hard drives, selling for $999.

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