Who is Apple’s new iPad mini even for?

There’s finally a new iPad mini shipping out later this month, and it’s been a long time coming — the last one launched all the way back in September 2021. In fact, the mini has been on a slow update cycle for a while now, with the iteration before 2021 having shipped in 2019. Even today’s new hardware is only a minor update, the only meaningful enhancements being an A17 Pro chip — the same one used in the iPhone 15 Pro — and support for the Apple Pencil Pro. Apple brags about Apple Intelligence, but that’s software, and won’t even come to the mini (or other iPads) until supposedly the end of October.