Report: Supply chain mobilizes to make iPad Mini

7/8/2012 11:58 PM EDT

the traditional way as in pretend you have a product ready for production at the half year point and have unnamed people or wires whatever than means here,

and release that hyperbole just as another ARM vendor actually has a real quad core ready for the millions of visitors to the http://www.london2012.com/ 2012 Olympics ready to buy this Quad Nexus 7 device

7/9/2012 11:50 AM EDT

Are you suggesting that talk of an iPad Mini is only a spoiler tactic and the product will never materialize?

The value of certain Taiwanese companies' share prices were reportedly moving on the rumors.

7/9/2012 6:05 PM EDT

that is exactly as it appears to me based on the timing and the prior http://ycharts.com/companies/AAPL/sga_expense (selling, general, and administrative) expenses.

you can clearly see the slow half yearly ramp to the 9th month for 2 or 3 years now to maximize their peak selling

this year is special OC given there are millions of visitors to the UK games 27 July - 12 August

Google has a new and cheaper Cortex quad product to sell there right now, apple has their old dual devices at a higher price, it sure looks like an attempted "spoiler" to me, just as in prior years that their 7" was said to also appear but didnt.

now i wont say that their apple hyperbole product will "never materialize" as you put it, it may or not ,and if so it may also become useful to them when the other ARM vendors also produce cheaper and faster Quad updates to their lines later in the year as expected.

7/9/2012 11:48 AM EDT

Steve Jobs is reputed to have said Apple would introduce a 7-inch iPad over his...

But it is also understood that his objections were based on screen resolution. The iPad Mini resolution is meant to be almost as detailed as the iPad 2 display.

And smaller would mean it could fit in a pocket.

7/9/2012 3:28 PM EDT

Still holding on to the "guts is a differentiator"? My friend, that was tossed in the dust bin a few years ago with the Content Era. But we'll see if that that holds true this Fall.

7/9/2012 7:30 PM EDT

:grin: remember where you are here gatorfan, it can get very complicated looking at all the different threads you can come to this point in time and say or not we are past the "guts is a differentiator" as you put it.

or you can take the active or the passive view ;)

"A Differentiator is a circuit that is designed such that the output of the circuit is proportional to the time derivative of the input. There are two types of differentiator circuits, active and passive."

i look at it this way as reasonable middle of the road guy that doesn't like the extremes.

will we really get to the point that whats inside doesn't matter so much, sure, are we there yet , No not by a long way today.

for instance we are told even as its just started in the retail markets that multi-core will have problems in 10 years time with lower power see links to Mike Muller - ARM, Inc DAC Video Archives here http://www.dac.com/49th+dac+_2012_.aspx

now IBM went 8 core, Intel 6 core and mostly 4 core over the longer term, whereas the ARM vendors have gone from mono core to quad core in a very short time frame and still have some ways to go there as yet with 64bit quad and possibly Many core just as Intel are now trying with their commercial knights corner.

now if the real "guts is a differentiator" no longer applies then many electronics engineers might as well pack up now and forget making better electronic guts and move over to sales... OMG

and i always wonder if if guts didn't really matter today to the apple buyers than why even make a ipad2 and ipad 3 and the hyperbole 7" mini that will have the same dual core in there after all the guts don't matter right.

sure frank the average consumer may be oblivious to the guts but even they are getting tired of slow dual core slow ram devices today when they know that new kit is said to be faster than their old kit ready for the bin.

7/9/2012 5:57 PM EDT

I have to agree with gatorfan here. Most consumers know or care little about hardware specs.

But a smaller iPad at a much lower price than the big one? They will jump all over that!