People online seem to be complaining not only about the screen or whatever, but the fact that the design is the "same old boring design since 2021". Does no one remember anything from more than 1 generation before when a new product gets released? The iPad mini basically had the same exact design from 2012 until 2021, for 5 generations! It's now a slab of glass with small bezels and Touch ID in the lock button, with all the good internals that the iPhone 15 Pro had, what more could you want from a design of the smallest iPad they sell? I don't understand the complaints about design changes, as if Apple should change designs of products every other year just because.
I didn’t expect it this year as such, not least because iPhones historically had a new design followed by an S release without complaint, so this would be an ‘S’ cycle. I think the lack of parity with the Air 6 has been a factor: screen to body ratio is higher on the Air, so the screen size could have been increased to without changing the footprint of the device. The 8.3 inch size was, when it came out, a little smaller than rumoured, which perhaps created disappointment which wasn’t resolved here (and nor was the jelly scroll even though they’ve had 3 years to do it.)
The Air also has an M chip. Thermals would seem to prevent the Mini from having the same at least at the present time, and while the move to Pro phone chips is welcome, it’s a binned version of last year’s rather than this. It should have been the full A17 Pro or a binned A18 Pro, IMO.
Hopefully the fact that the Mini has gone from a current gen chip (Mini 5, Mini 6) to a previous gen one in the Mini 7 will mean that the Mini 8 comes in 2026 rather than 2027.
