Apple's smallest iPad may be hours away from its biggest overhaul ever. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman suggested in a post on X that a new iPad mini could be announced today — if not today, tomorrow at the latest, according to MacRumors. The timing fits a pattern Gurman laid out: "OLED iPad mini today, M6 iMac and MacBook Pro on Tuesday and touch MacBook Pro on Wednesday would make sense."
It's the keynote-less launch week, stretched across three days instead of one stage show. Invitees to Apple's Los Angeles experience on Wednesday, October 28 are expected to get hands-on time with the mini alongside touch-enabled OLED MacBook Pros, a 14-inch M6 MacBook Pro, and an M6 iMac.
The rumored spec sheet is the real story. The iPad mini 8 is expected to run Apple's A20 Pro, built on TSMC's 2nm process, with up to 1.5× faster CPU performance and 2.5× faster GPU performance than the A17 Pro in the current model — plus a "dual 16-core Neural Engine" totaling 32 cores. RAM jumps from 8GB to 12GB, which also unlocks customizable Siri AI voice pace and expressiveness. The display itself goes OLED, larger, with slimmer bezels — though Apple reportedly tested both 60Hz and 120Hz ProMotion panels, and it's unclear which one made the cut.
The rest of the list reads like Apple finally treating the mini as a flagship: a landscape front camera, Apple's N1 chip with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, a custom C1X or C2 modem for cellular models, a redesigned speaker system with no visible speaker holes, and IP-rated water resistance for the first time.
What hasn't changed is the direction of the price. The current iPad mini starts at $599 after a $100 increase in June, which Apple attributed to skyrocketing RAM and storage chip prices. With a costlier OLED display on top, the next model might be even more expensive. The mini's identity as the cheap, pocketable iPad is quietly being retired — what's left is a small tablet with flagship silicon and a flagship price.
If Gurman's three-day cadence holds, the mini lands first and the touch MacBook Pro closes the week. The question to watch isn't whether the mini gets OLED — it's whether Apple can sell a $649-or-more small tablet a year after raising the old one's price by $100. The specs say yes; the price tag has to do the convincing.
— via MacRumors