Apple’s iPad mini has come to life and will be available for preorder on October 26th.

Despite the fact Steve Jobs publically stated that 7-inch tablets would be “dead on arrival” some two years ago, it looks like late 2012 was the right time to launch a 7.9-inch device, in what can only be described as an act of blasphemy.

The additional 0.9 inches make a difference and not all of us think the iPad mini will be dead on arrival, despite the fact that it has an underwhelming spec at a rather steep starting price of $329. You can get more details about iPad mini spec in our article here.

The key point of iPad mini is that this iPad 2 spec’d smaller version has the same 1024x768 screen and Apple’s ecosystem has some 275,000 applications ready to go. This is the number that Apple's VP of product marketing Michael Tchao quotes in the iPad mini introduction video that can be found here.
 
Since the mini me iPad has the same resolution and feature set, all the applications look and feel the same. It’s just a tad smaller and fits in one hand.

The applications are not “scaled up phone apps, these are powerful apps that take full advantage of iPad mini beautiful display“ Tchao claims. This is a direct attack on the quite popular Nexus 7 and the rest of the Android gang.

It was also surprising that Apple used Johnny Ive, the “cool midlife kid” looking Senior VP of design tells us that Apple believes that 7.9 inches is exactly the right size, and again, one of the reasons Apple opted for the extra 0.9 inches might be the fact that Jobs killed the 7-inch program with his comments. It seems no one dares go against his will even today.

We personally think that 7 inches is the right size for commuters and someone who spends a lot of time in trains, planes and automobiles. We really love the Nexus 7 and with that in mind we have absolute confidence that iPad mini will be a hit as end users will appreciate slightly smaller and a lot thinner and lighter mini.

True, the hardware is underwhelming for the most part, but the next generation iPad mini should address these shortcomings next year.