Farhad Manjoo on the iPad mini.

Launching the iPad mini may be purely a reactive, defensive move for Apple. But when you’re as big as Apple is now, you can play offense and defense at the same time.

I whole heartedly believed that the 7" market was going to fail but with the Google Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire's selling at $199, those devices captured an audience. Heck, I even bought the Nexus 7 but I'll admit, it'll be up for sale when my iPad mini comes in. Is the $129 premium worth the ecosystem of apps to you?