The Seventh Generation of the iPad Mini: A Big Update for Apple Intelligence and the Future of Air, Air, Pro, A17
The iPad lineup got an upgrade earlier in the year, which included the M4 chip to the Air, redesigning the Pro, and a lower price of the base model. The Mini, as it has in the past, looked like the odd tablet out, which made some people wonder whether Apple was actually planning to keep making the Mini. But it seems Apple’s just happy keeping the Mini on a slightly different update cadence from the rest of its tablets.
The last-gen Mini was a pretty big overhaul, with a new design and a USB-C port along with a bunch of spec upgrades. It is not terribly surprising that this Mini looks a lot like the last Mini because that was the first redesign since the original Mini. The big spec bump makes sense, too: as Apple goes all-in on AI and Apple Intelligence, it needs all the power it can get on basically every device in its lineup. The new device will be able to do hardware-accelrated ray tracing, which should make some high-end games look better, but this is clearly aAI-focused upgrade, despite the fact that Apple mentioned it in their release.
The Mini is similar to theSE in that it has fans who really love its smaller dimensions, but Apple has always claimed that there aren’t that many of them. Yes, pilots love their iPad Minis, but it seems clear that most people prefer the big screen to the small one.
Putting this chip inside the iPad Mini means it can support Apple Intelligence—a suite of artificial intelligence tools coming in iOS 18.1. It makes the iPad Mini the cheapest option for features in the lineup. Other supported models include the 5th-gen M1 iPad Air, 6th-gen M2 iPad Air, 5th-gen M1 iPad Pro, 6th-gen M2 iPad Pro, and 7th-gen M4 iPad Pro.
There are more significant changes inside. The same processor that is in the iPhone 15 Pro is also in the A15, which was upgraded to an A17 Pro. While the previous model offered a 5 percent jump in performance, with the six-core unit, the company claims it delivers a 30 percent boost in performance. The neural engine is twice as fast as the other one.
Three years have passed since the last iPad refresh and now the seventh generation is here. In lieu of a live event, the company quietly announced the new tablets through its online newsroom. Is the headline featuring this device? Apple Intelligence is provided by Apple. Artificial Intelligence features are not available for theiPhone 16, but they will be available later this month via the new operating system.
