Apple drops a new iPad Mini with new chip and Apple Intelligence promise

Apple’s surprise October event turned out to be a press release about a new 7th gen iPad Mini with the company’s new A17 Pro chip and Apple Intelligence.

Apple’s new A17 Pro powered iPad looks exactly like the previous generation with no discernable hardware changes this time around. Apple has managed to open up the color pallet of the iPad by introducing a new blue, purple, starlight and space gray for this seventh-generation tablet.

Despite looking and feeling like the previous generation, Apple has beefed up the tiny tablet with a base configuration of 128GB of storage and 64GB of memory for the reasonable price of $499. Other configurations go up in price with the addition of 256 and 512GB of memory for $599 and $799 respectively.

Customers can also outfit the new iPad Mini with Wi-Fi Cellular with support for Wi-Fi 6E. Apple also amped up the transfer speeds of its USB-C port that can now shuffle data along at up to 10Gbps.

As for the Apple Intelligence (AI) part of the iPad Mini, it gets the same future promise as other recent Apple devices.

In its press release, Apple emphasizes a handful of AI-powered experiences iPad Mini users can expect to land on the device when Apple Intelligence finally starts rolling out that include:

• With Writing Tools, users can refine their words by rewriting, proofreading, and summarizing text nearly everywhere they write, including Mail, Notes, Pages, and third-party apps.

• Siri becomes more deeply integrated into the system experience and gets a new design with an elegant glowing light that wraps around the edge of the screen when active on iPad. With richer language-understanding capabilities, communicating with Siri is more natural and flexible. Siri can follow along when users stumble over their words, can maintain context from one request to the next, and now, users can type to Siri. Siri also has extensive product knowledge to answer questions about features on iPad and other Apple devices.

• In Photos, the Memories feature now enables users to create the movies they want to see by simply typing a description, and with the new Clean Up tool, they can identify and remove distracting objects in the background of a photo — without accidentally altering the subject.

Additional Apple Intelligence features will be rolling out over the next several months:

• Image Playground allows users to create playful images in moments.

• Image Wand is a new tool in the Apple Pencil tool palette that can transform a rough sketch into a polished image.

• Emoji will be taken to an entirely new level with the ability to create original Genmoji by simply typing a description, or by selecting a photo of a friend or family member.

• Siri will be able to draw on a user’s personal context to deliver intelligence that is tailored to them. It will also gain onscreen awareness to understand and take action with users’ content, as well as take hundreds of new actions in and across Apple and third-party apps.

• With ChatGPT integrated into experiences within iPadOS 18, users have the option to access its expertise, as well as its image- and document-understanding capabilities, within Siri and Writing Tools without needing to jump between tools. And privacy protections are built in so a user’s IP address is obscured, and OpenAI won’t store requests. Users can access ChatGPT for free without creating an account, and ChatGPT’s data-use policies apply for those who choose to connect their account.

• Designed for the unique capabilities of iPad, Calculator delivers an entirely new way to use Apple Pencil to solve expressions, as well as basic and scientific calculators with a new history function and unit conversions. With Math Notes, users are now able to type mathematical expressions or write them out to see them instantly solved in handwriting like their own. They can also create and use variables, and add an equation to insert a graph. Users can also access their Math Notes in the Notes app, and use all of the math functionality in any of their other notes.

• In the Notes app, handwritten notes become more fluid, flexible, and easy to read with Smart Script and the power of Apple Pencil. Smart Script unleashes powerful new capabilities for users editing handwritten text, allowing them to easily add space, or even paste typed text in their own handwriting. And as users write with Apple Pencil, their handwriting will be automatically refined in real time to be smoother, straighter, and more legible.

• With new Audio Recording and Transcription, iPad can capture a lecture or conversation, and transcripts are synced with the audio, so users can search for an exact moment in the recording.

• New levels of customization come to iPad, and users have even more options to express themselves through the Home Screen with app icons and widgets that can be placed in any open position. App icons and widgets can take on a new look with a dark or tinted effect, and users can make them appear larger to create the experience that is perfect for them. Control Center has been redesigned to provide easier access to many of the things users do every day, delivering quick access to new groups of a user’s most-utilized controls. Users can even organize new controls from third-party apps in the redesigned Control Center.

• The Photos app receives its biggest update ever, bringing users powerful new tools that make it easier to find what they are looking for with a simplified and customizable app layout that takes advantage of the larger display on iPad and helps users browse by themes without having to organize content into albums.

• Users have new ways to stay connected and express themselves in Messages, with all-new animated text effects, redesigned Tapbacks, and the ability to schedule messages to send at a later time.

Apple’s new Pencil Pro will also get support for the new iPad Mini which translate into users getting access to experiences like the new barrel roll and haptic feedback that larger iPads get.

According to Apple’s website, pre-orders for the new iPad Mini start today and general availability begins on October 23, 2024.