A few days ago, Apple released the results for its 2024 fiscal fourth quarter (which ran from June 30, 2024, to September 28, 2024) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. The fiscal fourth quarter is typically a less important quarter for Apple. The fiscal quarter that we are in right now—the first fiscal quarter of the new fiscal year—is the one that is typically Apple’s big revenue quarter because of holiday sales. Apple’s 2024 Q4 was also unusual this year because Apple accounted for a one-time charge of $10.2 billion resulting from a long-running tax case that Apple lost in the European Union relating to Ireland. But Apple is such a big company now that it can pay someone $10 billion and still have a profitable quarter. Revenue was $94.9 billion, which is an all-time record for Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter and up substantially from $89.5 billion this time last year. If you want to get all of the nitty-gritty details, you can listen to the audio from the announcement conference call on the Apple website, or you can read a transcript of the call prepared by Jason Snell of Six Colors.  Apple’s official press release is here.  Here are the items that stood out to me.

iPhone

• Apple’s iPhone revenue for the quarter was a record $46.2 billion, up 6% from this time last year. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that this was a result of sales growth in every part of the world where Apple sells iPhones.
• Apple CFO Luca Maestri—who appeared for the last time on an earnings call because he is transitioning to another role as he prepares for retirement after a decade in this position—noted that the number of active iPhones reached an all-time high this quarter.
• iPhone revenue was 49% of all Apple revenue this quarter, which is consistent with the last few years.

iPad

• Apple’s iPad revenue for the quarter was $7 billion, up from $6.4 billion this time last year and only slightly down from $7.2 billion this time two years ago. $7 billion in iPad sales is a great number for Apple. As I mentioned three months ago, it is pretty rare for Apple to have a quarter with over $7 billion in iPad sales and when that does happen, it is often during a fiscal first quarter where there are holiday sales. To reach $7 billion, and to do so in the months of July, August, and September where there are no special reasons for higher-than-normal iPad sales is pretty impressive.
• Well over 50% of people buying an iPad are buying their first iPad.
• iPad revenue was 7% of all Apple revenue—pretty close to Apple’s Mac revenue, which was 8%.

Other

• Cook mentioned that the Apple Vision Pro Vision Pro now has more than 2,500 native spatial apps and is compatible with over 1.5 million iPad apps.
• AI is a big focus for Apple right now, so of course Cook finished his prepared remarks by discussing this technology: “As we close out the year, we have the best lineup we’ve ever had going into the holiday season, including Apple Intelligence, which marks the start of a new chapter for our products. This is just the beginning of what we believe generative AI can do, and I couldn’t be more excited for what’s to come.” Cook also noted that iOS 18.1 adoption is twice as fast as iOS 17.1 adoption, presumably because of customer interest in AI.
• Services, which is a subset of Apple’s revenue that includes everything from the App Store to Apple TV+, saw an all-time record of $25 billion, up 12% year-over-year.
• Apple noted that the quarter marked the 10-year anniversary of Apple Pay and the 5-year anniversary of the Apple Card. Maestri noted that the Apple Card was ranked #1 in customer satisfaction among co-branded credit cards by JD Power for the fourth year in a row.
• Cook noted that the emails he has been getting from people taking advantage of the new feature to use AirPods Pro 2 to run a hearing test and act as a hearing aid are “staggering and heartwarming.”
• Over 75% of people purchasing an Apple Watch are purchasing their first Apple Watch.

There were so many announcements and releases from Apple this past week, and as a result, boy is there a lot to talk about in this week’s episode of the In the News podcast. We start by discussing the new Mac announcements, especially the very interesting M4 Mac mini. Next, we discuss our initial experiences with Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.1. (When discussing the new Apple Intelligence features in Photos, I compared what Apple is doing to the iPad app from Pixelmator, and I was surprised to hear right after we finished recording that Apple is purchasing Pixelmator.) We also discuss the ability in iOS 18.1 to conduct a hearing test and to make AirPod Pros 2 work as a hearing aid, and more.

In our In the Know segment, Brett and I each have a similar tip about Apple Intelligence and notifications, except that we come at the tip from exact opposite directions.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice. You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

Have you heard the good news? With iOS 18.1 now released, you can now use AirPods Pro 2 to check your hearing. I tested my hearing this week, and my iPhone concluded that my hearing was fine. My wife might sometimes disagree [insert rim shot here]. On the other hand, former practicing attorney John Voorhees of MacStories ran the test and learned that he had some minor hearing loss. Next, he used the AirPods as a hearing aid, and he says that it made a big difference. I’ve heard others say that if you already have expensive ($1000+ hearing aids), those are probably better. That makes sense. But for the countless people who have hearing issues but haven’t yet done anything about it, they now have easy access to a solution—perhaps using devices that they already own—that may noticeably improve their lives. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Apple updated many of its computers this week to add a super-fast M4 processor, more RAM, and more. I especially enjoyed the write-ups from Jason Snell and Dan Moren of Six Colors with their thoughts on the M4 Mac mini, the M4 MacBook Pro, and the M4 iMac. My home computer is an M2 Pro Mac mini, so I certainly don’t need a new Mac mini, but as Dan More points out, that doesn’t make the new Mac mini any less tempting.
• If you are interested in an iPad instead of a Mac, Apple released the iPad Air (M2) just a few months ago, and I think that it is the best iPad for most professional users. Unless you want a luxury iPad or you have specific reasons to use a top-of-the-line model (in which case, get the iPad Pro), the iPad Air is perfect. And Amazon is running a substantial iPad sale right now, with some models selling for under $500.
• I noted earlier this week that one of the useful new AI features in iOS 18.1 is Clean Up for Photos. But is it ethical to use it? In an article for Six Colors, Joe Rosensteel explains why you can use it with a clear conscience.
• There has been a lot of talk about what you can do with Apple Intelligence in the new iOS 18.1. But what if your device doesn’t support Apple Intelligence? Juli Clover runs down what else you get in iOS 18.1, such as the ability to record phone calls.
• Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac discusses changes in Apple Music in iOS 18.1.
• In the upcoming iOS 18.2, if you cannot find the perfect Emoji to use, you can just use AI to create one that matches the style of other Apple Emoji with the Genmoji feature. Nick deCourville of The Mac Observer provides some humorous examples.
• Allison Sheridan of Podfeet Podcasts discusses the pros and cons of the Apple Notes app.
• John Voorhees of MacStories notes that Apple has made a minor update to the Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and Magic Trackpad to add support for USB-C. I regularly use a Magic Keyboard and a Magic Trackpad with my iPad and my Vision Pro, and it is a little annoying that I still need to use Lightning to charge them. I wish Apple had added even more new features to these accessories, but adding USB-C is better than nothing I suppose.
• Voorhees also weighs in on Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.1, concluding that it is somewhat of a mixed bag. I agree with that assessment.
• Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac recommends the THIRDREALITY Smart Color Night Light if you are looking for a HomeKit-compatible night light. It is $29.99 on Amazon.
• Roderick Scott of Wirecutter recommends iPhone cases for the iPhone 16 line of devices.
• I very much enjoyed the first season of Presumed Innocent on Apple TV+, which tracked the book by Scott Turow. David Snow of Cult of Mac reports that while there will be a second season, it will feature a new female lead as the star and a new story, an adaptation of the upcoming book Dissection of a Murder by Jo Murray. Interesting. By making this more of an anthology, Apple TV+ could have an unlimited number of seasons of this legal thriller, and that sounds great to me.
• And finally, here is a new video from Apple that shows, in a comedic fashion, how quickly you can use Apple Intelligence to create a Memory Movie. I see that Scott McNalty called this ad “smug and gross” but I think it is cute. And I can confirm from the ones that I made this week that you really can create an AI Memory Movie very quickly.

Yesterday, Apple introduced new products such as a new iMac and updated versions of accessories (keyboard, trackpad) to support USB-C instead of Lightning, but the biggest introduction was the release of iOS 18.1. Although only a “.1" update in terms of numbers, this is a major update because it is the beginning of Apple Intelligence on the iPhone, iPad, and more—assuming that you have a new device that is ready for Apple Intelligence.

Apple plans to introduce Apple Intelligence features over time, and features that are ready today are not as impressive and useful as many that are coming in the future. Even so, there are some big changes. For a more comprehensive overview of everything that is now available in Apple Intelligence, I recommend the following articles:

• Juli Clover of MacRumors: Everything You Need to Know About Apple Intelligence
• Jason Snell and Dan Moren of Six Colors: Apple Intelligence .1 Review: A small start of something big? 
• John Voorhees of MacStories: Apple’s Commitment to AI Is Clear, But Its Execution Is Uneven 

Note that to use Apple Intelligence, not only do you need to download iOS 18.1 but you also need to open the Settings app, tap Apple Intelligence & Siri, and then ask to join the waitlist to get access to this beta software. For me, permission was granted in about an hour.

In this post, I’m just going to touch on a few Apple Intelligence features that I tried out yesterday.

Siri

The look of Siri is all new. Utter those famous words “Hey Siri” and your iPhone screen becomes surrounded by a wave of color and the screen ripples. For now, I think that the effect is pretty cool, but I wonder if it will become stale over time.

Siri is also a little bit smarter than before. If you stumble over your words, Siri is more forgiving. You can ask limited follow-up questions. You can use your iPhone while you are talking to Siri. And you can ask Siri questions about how to use certain features of the iPhone (or other device you are using). It is sort of like having an Apple Genius from the Apple Store built-in to SIri.

I’d love to see even more improvements in Siri, but this is a good start.

Photos improvements

The major new addition to the Photos app is the ability to remove unwanted items from photos. This is a feature that third-party apps on the iPhone and iPad have had for years, and of course, it has also existed in computer software like Photoshop for a long time. But it is useful to have a great version of this feature built-in to the Photos app. Here are two quick examples.

First, I recently scanned an old picture of me when I was a baby, but it had lots of dust and scratches on it, plus parts of the picture had started to decay and change colors. So I decided to see what I could do with those problems in the new Photos app. Here is the original scan (tap to see larger), which is very much what the actual photo looks like:

I simply zoomed in and circled every dot or every area of the picture that I wanted to fix using the new Clean Up feature. Most of the time, Photos instantly did what I wanted. Sometimes, the effect wasn’t as good, so I would undo, adjust the selection, and then try again. It didn’t take long to have a version of the picture that removed everything that I wanted:

Then I adjusted the colors, and the final result—while not nearly as good as a modern picture—was much better than what I started out with.

This feature is also useful for removing unwanted objects in photos. For example, here is a picture that I took of the beach during a vacation:

But what would it look like if I removed all of those pesky people from the sand who were interfering with my view? And while were are at it, how about losing the big boxes that hold rental beach chairs. Easy peasy:

Modifications like this obviously have some ethical implications, depending on what you are doing with the photo. But if I have a wonderful picture of my family that would look so much better if I removed that one guy in the background, I can do it and have no trouble sleeping at night.

There are other Apple intelligence changes in Photos that I look forward to trying, such as improved search capabilities and the ability to create a Memory Movie just by describing what to include, but I need to give Photos time to index all of my Photos before I can try that one out.

Proofreading

Even the best writer can use a good editor. Grammarly is a helpful product because it can often find mistakes in your writing and offer suggestions to improve your writing, and it does so virtually instantly and automatically without you needing to get another human involved. In Apple Intelligence, Apple has added a Proofreading feature that makes similar suggestions that may improve the quality of your text.

This sounds really useful. However, in the tests that I ran last night, I disagreed with perhaps 75% of the suggestions. Indeed, some of them made no sense to me at all. To be fair, I often disagree with Grammarly as well, but not nearly this much.

I like the idea of adding a built-in proofreader to Apple products. But it needs to work much better than it does now. I think that Apple released this feature before it was ready.

Summaries

Apple Intelligence loves to offer you the ability to create summaries. Have a long email string? Tap one button at the top in Mail to summarize all of the emails. Looking at an article on a webpage is Safari that seems rather long? Tap the button to use Reader View and then tap Summary. And in lots of other places, the iPhone and iPad in iOS 18.1 offer you the ability to create a summary.

Sometimes, this feature works, and when it does, it is neat. But in my limited tests so far, the accuracy of the summary seems rather hit-and-miss. Moreover, I’m not even sure how useful a summary is to me in most of these cases; I’m going to probably need to, or at least want to, read everything anyway.

Let’s start at the very beginning

These initial tools are interesting, and in the case of the Photos app seem pretty helpful, but this is just the beginning. Some features are still half-baked, and some features like writing aids don’t interest me very much. But I suppose that I wasn’t all that useful when I was just a baby in the picture featured above, and I can certainly do much more now. Apple emphasizes that we will see even more Apple Intelligence features in iOS 18.2 this December, and then we will see even more next year. Now that we have iOS 18.1, the age of Apple Intelligence is now upon us. Hopefully, as Apple has the time to work on more sophisticated features, it will develop into something that is really special.

iOS 18.1 will be available in just a few days, so Brett and I begin this week’s episode of the In the News podcast talking about what you should look out for when you install the update. For example, if you have an AirPods Pro 2, you can use the hearing test and hearing aid feature. If you have a modern iPhone or iPad, you can use the first few features that are a part of Apple Intelligence to do things like proofread your writing, remove unwanted things from a picture, use descriptive words to search for photos or create a Memory Movie, improve your notifications, and more. We also discuss initial reviews of the iPad mini, an interesting interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook, nostalgic picture and immersive movies on the Apple Vision Pro, and more.

In our Where Y’at? segment, we discuss (another) example of catching a campaign sign thief using an AirTag.

In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a tip for changing the noise cancellation mode of AirPods, and I explain how you can fix problems with the YouTube app on an Apple TV by updating the software.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice. You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

Next week, Apple is going to have an exciting week of announcements. In addition to revealing new Macs, Apple will release iOS 18.1, which will include the first examples of Apple Intelligence. For example, you will be able to use Photos search to find photos and videos simply by describing what you are looking for. It will also let you use your AirPods Pro 2 as a hearing aid (in the U.S. and Canada, at launch). Perhaps more interesting is what Apple will include a few months later in iOS 18.2. John Gruber of Daring Fireball says that 18.2 will include “categorization and priority inbox sorting in Mail, Genmoji, Image Playgrounds (including Image Wand, where a rough sketch in Notes can be transformed into a detailed image), and ChatGPT’s integration for more complex “world knowledge” requests. And, for iPhone 16 users, Visual Intelligence.” If you have a new iPhone that can support Apple Intelligence, your device is about to become much more interesting. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Federico Viticci of MacStoriews reviews the new iPad mini, concluding that it is a great additional device for those special tasks that are not handled quite as well on other devices.
• Jason Snell of Six Colors reviews the new iPad mini, and he says that it is “great for kids, for people who prioritize reading over productivity, and generally for anyone who can fit an iPad into their lives—but there’s not a whole lot of space to fit into.”
• Good Morning America got a first look at how Apple used its audio labs to turn the AirPods Pro into a hearing aid.
• Chris Welch of The Verge tested the new hearing aid features in the AirPods Pro 2 and is very impressed.
• Nicole Nguyen of the Wall Street Journal also tested the hearing aid feature and calls it a potential life changer.
• Ben Cohen has an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal Magazine based on his interview of Apple CEO Tim Cook. There are lots of interesting little details in here such as Cook’s favorite beverage, all of the devices that Cook uses—and I do mean “all”—his view of the Apple Vision Pro, and more.
• In a post on 9to5Mac, Zac Hall explains why the Apple Vision Pro is the ultimate nastalgia machine thanks to the way that it lets you look at your photos. I couldn’t agree more. Here is one example: my teenage son often has limited tolerance for looking at my old photos. However, because panorama photos are so incredibly immersive on the Vision Pro, he was interested in seeing one of my recent ones the other day. Then he started swiping back to see earlier panorama photos. And then again. And next thing you know, he had looked at every single one that I have, going all the way back to my oldest panorama photo from 2005 (created by stitching together pictures using Photoshop). As he looked around in each immersive panorama, I followed along (in 2D) on my iPad, we talked about where each picture was taken and what the experience was like there. It was a fantastic father-son bonding time that would not have been possible without the Vision Pro and its impressive ability to show off these types of photos.
• As impressive as a panorama photo is on a Vision Pro, spatial videos are even more impressive. For a while, it was pretty much only Apple offering spatial videos, and every time I watch a new one I find myself wanting more. I recently discovered a Vision Pro app called Immersive India by Parjanya Creative Solutions. This app features incredible high-quality spatial videos of numerous locations in India. There is no narration, but the views of places like Mumbai, Varanasi, Rajasthan, Delhi, and Odisha are impressive. And the app is free.
• Hopefully, we will soon see even more impressive spatial videos that don’t come from Apple because Zac Hall also reports at 9to5Mac that Vimeo now has a visionOS app that allows spatial video sharing. I tried it out last night, and it is neat to see 360º videos where you are in the middle of the action. Unfortunately, the definition of these videos, for now, is far less than the 8K per eye that you get with Apple’s videos (and that Immersive India app) so while the videos are immersive, they can be a little blurry. I’m sure that this will improve in time for 360º videos on both Vimeo and YouTube. And hopefully, we will soon have a native YouTube app for the Vision Pro.
• Azad Balabanian has published what is truly the definitive post on using a Vision Pro while you travel.
• You can use an iPhone as a book reader but it might not be very comfortable holding it in your hands for a long time, plus your hands can cover the text. Juli Clover of MacRumors reports on a new $40 product called Bookcase from Astropad that makes it easier to hold your iPhone when you are using it as an e-reader.
• Clover also reports that the newest state to add a state driver’s license to the Wallet app on the iPhone is the Hawkeye State: Iowa.
• AirTags can be used to track stolen items. And with the election in the United States so close, that can unfortunately include stolen campaign signs. Lucas Ropek of Gizmodo reports on a woman in Missouri who had grown tired of her Kamala Harris signs being stolen so she placed an AirTag on one of them and was able to find the criminal and report him to the authorities. (I posted a similar story in July about a candidate running for a county position in Florida.)
• When people need help, the iPhone is often the tool that delivers that help. But Juli Clover of MacRumors reports on a woman in Australia whose iPhone led to her problems: she dropped it between some rocks, and then when trying to recover it, she “slipped and fell three meters and became stuck between two large boulders, hanging upside down by her feet.” Yikes. It took hours to free her. Yikes again.
• And finally, Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal interviewed Apple Vice President Craig Federighi to discuss Apple Intelligence. It’s a good interview that describes Apple’s cautious approach to the exciting world of AI.

Apple updated the iPad mini this week, So Brett Burney and I begin this week’s episode of the In the News podcast discussing what has changed from the model that Apple had been selling for the last three years and the advantages (and disadvantages) of using a small iPad. We also celebrate ten years of Apple Pay, discuss a financial-related AI feature coming to the iPhone in just a few weeks, discuss the ins and outs of sending text messages via Satellite, talk about expanded Caller ID for companies, address the latest version of the Clicks keyboard, and talk about the newest CarPlay app, the AirPods 4, and surgeons using the Apple Vision Pro.

In our In the Show! segment, we discuss two great shows on Apple TV+—Slow Horses and Bad Monkey—as well as a third movie coming next month called Bread & Roses.

In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a tip for switching pens in Notability (and GoodNotes), and I share some tips on using Apple Pay.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice. You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

Ten years ago, I wrote about a new service that Apple was debuting called Apple Pay. I ended that post by saying: “Apple Pay doesn’t yet work with every credit card, and for now only works in some stores. As the service expands over time it will become more and more useful. But whenever I am shopping somewhere that does support Apple Pay, I can’t imagine a reason that I would ever pay any other way.” This week, Apple issued a press release to note the 10th anniversary of Apple Pay. And of course, today, it does work with just about every credit card and just about every store and I use Apple Pay to pay virtually everywhere that I go. Indeed, just last weekend, I was asking my teenagers if they needed some cash for when my wife and I were out of town, and they looked at me as if I had two heads, reminding me that they could just pay with their iPhone wherever they go. Of course, sometimes the tables are turned and I’m the one who is amazed that others don’t appreciate Apple Pay as much as I do. For example, when I use Apple Pay, I virtually always pay with my Apple Watch, not my iPhone, and I’m amazed at the number of times that a cashier will look at me in amazement that I just paid with my watch. Seems like they would see that all the time by now? Well anyway, kudos to Apple for debuting and popularizing Apple Pay, and I look forward to using it for at least another ten years. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Adam Engst of TidBITS wrote the best article that I have seen describing how to use the Messages via Satellite feature in iOS 18. I recommend that you read this article now so that you will know what to do if you find yourself in a situation in which you need to communicate but there are no working cell towers near you.
• iPhone Roadside Assistance via Satellite, a close cousin of Messages via Satellite, is now available in the United Kingdom according to Tim Hardwick of MacRumors.
• Earlier this week, I discussed the new iPad mini (A17 Pro). Ben Lovjoy of 9to5Mac explores the reasons why there are relatively few changes between this model and the prior version of the iPad mini.
• David Sparks of MacSparky says that some people want an iPad mini Pro. That would be a nice device, but I suspect that the market for it would be pretty small.
• At some point very soon, Apple is going to release iOS 18.1 with some of the first Apple Intelligence features. Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac reports that one of them will be to add AI to the Wallet app in the form of notification summaries. For example, as Ryan explains, instead of giving you a lot of different notifications about a lot of different expenses you had yesterday, the app can just say “You spent [$amount] at Disney World yesterday.” I’ll have to see how this works, but this type of very personal AI might be useful.
• Later on this year, I suspect that we will see iOS 18.2. Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reports that one of the new features in 18.2 will be enhanced caller ID for businesses that sign up with Apple. For example, if you get a call from Walgreens, you might see the Walgreens logo—not only a quicker way to see who is calling, but also a confirmation that the real business is the one that is calling you. This sounds like a good idea.
• Kyle Chayka explains in an article in The New Yorker how the ability to take pictures on an iPhone has made him fall in love with photography again. (As a reminder, even if you don’t subscribe to The New Yorker, you can read those articles if you subscribe to Apple News+.)
• Jason Snell of Six Colors reviews the new AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation. His verdict is that the noise cancellation is not as good as the AirPods Pro, but if the AirPods Pro don’t work for your ears, perhaps the AirPods 4 will be a better match for you.
• The brand new Apple Watch Series 10 has a retail price of $429 for the 46mm case and $399 for the 42mm case, but you can already get them both at a nice discount if you purchase from Amazon. (That’s an affiliate link.) I’m surprised to see these nice discounts considering that the product is still so new.
• William Gallagher of AppleInsider wrote a fascinating article about how surgeons using an Apple Vision Pro can not only do their job better but it can also reduce pain for the surgeon because they don’t have to keep twisting and turning to see different screens around the operating room.
• Devon Dundee wrote a comprehensive review of visionOS 2 for MacStories.
• If you miss the keyboard on your Blackberry, Clicks is a hardware device that provides something similar for the iPhone, and Fernando Silva of 9to5Mac says that the new version for the iPhone 16 models adds lots of improvements over last year’s model.
• Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that you can now order Chick-Fil-A—or, at least, repeat a prior order—using the Chick-Fil-A app on CarPlay.
• It makes me so mad whenever I see something showing how the Taliban’s treatment of women in Afghanistan has been so insanely oppressive. How can this be happening in our world in 2024? David Snow of Cult of Mac discusses an upcoming Apple TV+ movie called Bread & Roses that tells the story of women being stripped of their human rights as the Islamic fundamentalists took control of Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2021. It debuts in a month (November 22, 2024), and I suspect that this film will be quite powerful.
• One of my favorite shows on Apple TV+ is Bad Monkey, and I’m thrilled that there will be a second season. And perhaps there will even be three seasons or more. Co-creator Bill Lawrence and lead actor Vince Vaughn were interviewed by Max Gao of The Hollywood Reporter. Don’t read that article until you have finished the first season, but when you have, the article is a great read.
• In addition to finishing the first season of Bad Monkey, I also just finished the fourth season of Slow Horses, another amazing show on Apple TV+. It was amazing. If you haven’t started watching Slow Horses yet, I’m so jealous that you have four fantastic seasons to start watching now! Paul Tassi of Forbes predicts that we will see season five around August 2025, and Apple itself announced this week that it has ordered a sixth season. That’s great news.
• And finally, here is a cute video called Who Said That? in which members of the cast of Slow Horses guess which Apple TV+ show a line came from. It’s only 90 seconds long, and it’s fun:

Of all of the products that Apple makes, the iPad mini is often the one that I have the most difficulty discussing when I talk to lawyers and other professionals. Should they consider getting a product that is so small that you have to squint to read legal briefs on it? Indeed, the height of the iPad mini, 7.69-inch, is only about an inch taller than an iPhone 16 Pro Max at 6.42-inch. And yet at the same time, I’ve owned an iPad mini in the past and I still remember how lovable that device is. It’s so small and light that you feel like you can take it anywhere. It’s like your little buddy. And while the height may be only slightly more than the biggest iPhone, the width is 5.3-inch—much more than the approximately 3-inch of an iPhone. So the device feels like an iPad, not an iPhone. Just a much smaller, much more portable, iPad.

For me, as much as I loved the iPad mini when I owned it, I didn’t use it enough to justify upgrading it over the years. And as my iPhone models got larger, the iPad mini felt less necessary. But I know that many people still love the size and weight of the iPad mini, and for them, yesterday was a great day because Apple announced the first upgrade to the iPad mini in three years.

Apple is currently calling this new device the iPad mini (A17 Pro), but considering that the prior model was called the iPad mini (6th generation), I wonder if at some point Apple will start calling this the seventh generation of the iPad mini. Whatever you call it, the new iPad mini is everything that you loved about the prior model, except that it now has a better processor—no, not the latest and greatest, but fast enough that this device will be able to handle Apple Intelligence when it debuts later this month. Here are more details.

The size

There is no real dispute about the best feature of the iPad mini: the size. This newest iPad mini is the same size as the prior model: 7.69-inch x 5.3-inch x 0.25-inch and weighs the same (about 0.65 pounds). But perhaps the more important thing to note is that the new iPad mini is essentially the same size and weight as every iPad mini that has ever been released, all the way back to the first generation introduced in 2012. If you think of the size of a 5×8 photograph, this is about the same dimensions—albeit thicker and heavier.

When I reviewed the original iPad mini in 2012, I noted that this small size makes a “drastic impact on how you use the device” because it is so small and light that you find yourself wanting to carry it around much more frequently. You can hold it in your hand forever without your hand getting tired. And not only is it easy to carry in a briefcase or purse, but you might be able to get away with carrying it in a larger pocket.

As someone who loves the larger screen of an iPad Pro, it won’t surprise you that I consider the small size to be a serious disadvantage for reading legal briefs, reviewing exhibits, and working on documents that have fixed dimensions. Obviously, you need to shrink the size of the document to see it on a smaller screen. You may need to squint to read some text. But for other types of documents and apps for which there is no pre-set right margin, where the text is dynamic and will fill whatever size screen you have—things like a webpage or an e-book—you can make the text size whatever works best for your eyes. You simply see fewer words on the screen because of the smaller screen. And for this type of reading, the iPad mini is fine.

The screen

The screen on the new iPad mini is very similar to the model that was introduced three years ago. The screen size is the same at 8.3-inch The screen is not as nice as the one that you get on the iPad Pro, but it is very similar to what you get with the latest iPad Air. In fact, if you think of the iPad mini as an “iPad Air mini,” that’s pretty close to the mark.

Power

Apple currently sells a single low-end iPad model called the iPad (10th generation). It is aimed at the education market and I don’t recommend it for any lawyers or other professionals, so let’s ignore it for now. Every other iPad model currently being sold (two models of the iPad Air and two models of the iPad Pro) uses an M2 or an M4 processor. This new iPad mini instead uses the somewhat slower A17 Pro. That’s the same processor that was used in the high-end iPhones introduced in 2023: the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max. But of course, the A17 Pro is slower than the A18 that is found in the 2024 models of the iPhone.

What does all of this mean? It means that the new iPad mini is much faster than the model introduced three years ago, and it is close to but not quite as fast as the other iPads being sold. But for most people who purchase the new iPad mini, I doubt that they will notice that it isn’t quite as powerful as an iPad Air or an iPad Pro. I suppose it would have been nicer for this iPad mini to use the same M2 as the current iPad Air, but in the real world, few people are likely to notice much of a difference.

Other improvements

The faster processor—fast enough to support Apple Intelligence—is the main difference between the new iPad mini and the one introduced three years ago. But there are a few other smaller improvements.

First, this new iPad mini supports the latest and greatest version of the Apple Pencil: the Apple Pencil Pro.

Second, the cheapest model of this new iPad mini has 128GB of storage space, up from the 64GB of the prior model. That’s a noticeable improvement, and if you don’t plan to keep tons of videos and documents on this device, 128GB is probably enough. You can also pay more for 256GB or 512GB if you plan to store lots of media and large documents.

Third, the new iPad mini works supports Find My. Thus, you can locate it if you misplace it.

Fourth, there are minor improvements to the connectivity. You get Wi-Fi 6E instead of the prior model’s Wi-Fi 6. You get Bluetooth 5.3 instead of the prior model’s Bluetooth 5.0. And the new iPad mini supports USB-C with USB 3.1 Gen 2, which means that the speed when transferring data over a USB-C cord is up to 10 Gbps, twice as fast as the USB 3.1 Gen 1 on the prior iPad mini model.

Price

The price is essentially the same as before. The starting price remains $499, although as noted above that comes with 128GB instead of the prior 64GB. For an additional $100 you get 256GB, or for an additional $300 you can get the 512GB model for $799. For all of these models, if you want built-in cellular, you need to add another $150 (plus the cost of a cellular data plan, which varies depending on your carrier).

This makes the iPad mini only slightly cheaper than the iPad Air. The 128GB iPad mini is $499 and the 128GB iPad Air is $599. But I suspect that people who love the iPad mini would get it even if it was the same price or even more expensive than the larger iPad Air because they prefer the more compact size.

Conclusion

For most attorneys and other professionals looking to get serious work done, the iPad Air is the best choice. If you want a premium product with a better screen and other extra features, the iPad Pro is fantastic (I love mine), but the iPad Air is the sweet spot for getting work done. But if portability is really important to you, and if the things you will primarily read on your iPad use dynamic text like a website as opposed to text of a fixed size as compared to the total document size like a PDF document—or if your eyesight is better than mine and you are OK with reading those documents on a smaller screen—then the new iPad mini is worth considering. The compact size makes the iPad mini the friendliest of all the iPads. I’m glad that Apple is continuing to make the iPad mini and now offers a model with a beefed-up (albeit not top-of-the-line) processor. The iPad mini has always been a niche product, but the people who love it really love it.