Apple’s 2021 iPad Mini gets a massive overhaul

Between miniLED screens and some major changes coming to iPadOS 15, Apple kept revamping its iPad after exceptional sales in 2020. The latest rumor? This fall, the iPad Mini will get a refreshed design that does away with the home button in favor of thinner bezels.

In one bulletin Going through 9to5 MacBloomberg’s Mark Gurman notes that the new Mini “should launch” for this fall and that it will be the “biggest overhaul in nine-year history” of the device. He also said that the new Mini will sport a new processor. This indicates that Apple has been busy revamping several product lines to accommodate the move to its own Apple Silicon. As for what the new Mini might look like, a previous Gurman report describes a device reminiscent of the ipad air-aka smaller glasses and maybe no home button. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo also noted last year that the iPad Mini could a 7.9-inch miniLED display, a bit like this year 12.9-inch iPad Pro, but made no reference to an increase in height. (miniLED is also supposed to arrive next year’s 11-inch iPad Pro too.) A few months later, he then said that the iPad Mini’s screen should be somewhere between 8.5 and 9 inches, up from the current 7.9 inches.

These would be more important updates than the 5th generation iPad Mini, which launched in 2019. This added support for Apple Pencil, as well as an A12 processor. Additionally, new software upgrades to iPadOS 15 are expected to help the tablet become a more viable work device, a goal Apple has been pursuing for years but has yet to quite succeed.

Gurman also noted that another larger iMac powered by Apple Silicon could also be on the way. We saw the buzz around a giant iMac earlier this year, and initially, it led us to expect something in the vein of Apple’s 32-inch Pro Display XDR monitor. What we ended up seeing in Apple’s Spring Loaded event was a bit bigger 24-inch iMac M1 in a bunch of new colors. In May, Bloomberg reported the reason we haven’t seen the iMac Big Boy is that Apple has taken a break from development to better focus on its little brother. It’s unclear if the bigger iMac will be ready in time for fall, but Gurman says the device is “on the way” and should be powered by a newer processor.

Either way, we probably won’t have to wait any longer to find out. The company typically holds an event in September to show off its latest and greatest products, as well as release the latest versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS. The past year has been a bit of an outlier, with three launch events due to the pandemic smearing product launches left and right. This year we are still in full swing a shortage of chips, but let’s keep our fingers crossed that this is one big event in 2021 and not multiple mini-events.