It’s not the product, it’s the pricing woot has. It’s pathetic to say the least. If someone was willing to take last years model for a $70 savings I’d suggest going after Apple’s refurbs for an additional $80 savings.
Technically, the mini is a completely new design, not based on the iPad 2, and the new iPad Air is a larger version of the mini’s design.
Like you said though, the mini is still great.
The 3rd gen is not “slightly” slower–it’s the slowest-operating of all 5 generations (7 generations counting the minis) because it had to drive 4x the pixels of the previous generation with only double the horsepower. That’s why it was so short-lived–8 months from introduction to being discontinued–and why they’re available so cheap now.
So while I do think the screen was a worthy tradeoff vs. the faster-operating iPad2 and I skipped the upgrade to the 4, if I had it to do over I would have waited for the 4 and there’s no way in hell I’d buy a 3rd gen now.
From a hardware perspective, the Mini is absolutely based on the iPad2. Same processor, memory, GPU, screen resolution, etc. The size, design of the case, and cellular radios (if so equipped) were new, but the basic guts are iPad2 all the way.
iPad 3, 4, and Air support LTE, along with both generations of Mini.
Has anyone gotten their IPad yet? Mine is not even showing up in stuff I bought. I have emailed support but that was about 4 or 5 days ago. That is pretty bad that you don’t get a response back in that amount of time.