Meet the iPad’s little brother — it’s as thin as a pencil and as light as a pad of paper.
Apple unveiled its highly anticipated iPad mini yesterday, a tech marvel with a screen about two-thirds the size of the larger tablet.
“We were going to compare it to a book, but books are much heavier — so we went with a pad of paper,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president.
“This isn’t just a shrunken down iPad. It’s an entirely new design.”
The iPad mini is 23 percent thinner and 53 percent lighter than a regular iPad — it weighs in at a mere .68 pounds.
The device, which boasts 10 hours of battery life, starts at $329 for the 16-gigabyte model.
Apple will start taking orders on Friday, and the Wi-Fi-only models will begin shipping on Nov. 2.
Although the mini has the latest hardware, its display is lacking.
It doesn’t come with Apple’s high-def Retina Display — first featured on the third-generation iPad released earlier this year.
So, in terms of screen definition, the mini’s 1024-by-768 resolution makes it more closely comparable to a tiny iPad 2.
In a surprise move, Apple also revealed a fourth-generation iPad to replace the model released just seven months ago — to the dismay of some customers. This latest iPad features Apple’s new chip — the same as the iPhone 5 — which doubles processing speeds.
It also comes with the new, smaller Lightning connector, replacing the 30-pin dock connector.
The mini will compete with the main tablet’s rivals, such as Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD and Google’s Nexus 7. With a 7.9-inch screen, the mini’s display is about 35 percent larger than the competitors’.
But the $329 price tag means customers will shell out much more than what they would for a Kindle ($214) and the 16-gigabyte Google Nexus 7 ($249).
The mini’s higher-than-expected price sent Apple’s stock plunging from $630 per share to $617 just minutes after being announced.
“Charging $329 is definitely pushing it compared to other tablets . . . but Apple has never been interested in competing primarily on price,” said analyst Eric Slivka, who runs MacRumors.com.
“Apple prices its hardware to make a profit — and the capabilities and design it puts into those products show up in the selling prices,” he added.