Apple Announces iPad Air and New iPad Mini, 1st-Gen iPad Mini Receives Price Drop

<p>During its October event&comma; Apple announced the new refreshes to the iPad lineup&colon; the iPad Air and the new iPad Mini&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Starting with the iPad Air&comma; Apple slapped it with the &&num;8220&semi;Air&&num;8221&semi; moniker since it now weighs 1 pound&comma; compared to the previous generation iPad&comma; which weighed 1&period;4 pounds&period; The iPad Air also got thinner&comma; now at 7&period;5 millimeters versus the previous generation&&num;8217&semi;s 9&period;4 millimeter thinness&period; It contains the A7 chip found in the iPhone 5S&comma; which adds support for 64-bit applications&period; The iPad Air has a 5-megapixel iSight rear camera and a FaceTime HD front-facing camera&comma; while also packing 10 hours of battery life&period; The iPad Air goes on sale November 1st&comma; with the 16GB Wi-Fi model retailing for &dollar;499&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The iPad Mini&comma; meanwhile&comma; received a major upgrade in the form of its screen &&num;8211&semi; packing a 2048 x 1536 7&period;9-inch Retina display&comma; the same display found on the iPad Air&period; It&comma; too&comma; contains the A7 processor and the M7 co-processor&comma; while also packing a 5-megapixel iSight rear camera and a FaceTime HD front-facing camera&period; It will be available &&num;8220&semi;later in November&comma;&&num;8221&semi; with the 16GB Wi-Fi-only model going for &dollar;399 and the base LTE model going for &dollar;529&period; If you have a limited data plan&comma; you may should use Wi-Fi instead of <a href&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;buybackboss&period;com&sol;what-is-lte-on-iphone&sol;">LTE<&sol;a> whenever possible to save on data usage&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Not everyone needs a Retina display&comma; though&comma; which is why Apple decided to lower the price of the 1st-generation iPad Mini&comma; from &dollar;339 to &dollar;299&period; Strangely enough&comma; the iPad 2 is still sticking around at that same &dollar;399 price point&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;