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iPad Mini/Nano beta-tester: Of course it's real

Pocket-size voice fondle-slab's existence confirmed

Comments Our world exclusive yesterday disclosing Apple's pocket-sized, enhanced version of the recently announced iPad fondle-slab device has drawn a good deal of excited comment. Naturally there could be nothing tastier than whipped-up hype digested, excreted, eagerly gobbled up again and finally plopped onto a plate for your Friday delectation, so here it is. Yum.

First up, as we reported, the mini voice-enabled iPad does indeed exist and is in the hands of beta testers. Reg reader jeffrey 1, indeed, is a member of this select group and wrote in to congratulate us on penetrating the famous iron curtain of Jobsian secrecy. He also offers an obvious bit of Apple disinformation as to the device's name:

I have been reading this story on my beta iPad Nano, keep up the good work

It should have been needless to say that in fact, of course, a pocket-sized iPad with full voice capability is an iPhone. Just our little joke, inspired by someone noticing a Jesus mobe on a desk in the office yesterday* - at the height of the hypegasm - and exclaiming "my god, it's a tiny iPad".

There were those, however, who didn't get it. takuhii, for instance:

wouldn't a pocket sized version fo the iPad otherwise be known as the iPhone??!!

Several others chipped in along the same lines, and Reader Christian actually wrote in to say:

Ehhhhhh I thought a pocket iPad already existed and it was called an iPod Touch. There would not be much difference between the two when you think about it. I doubt Apple is working on such a device when they already have an iPod Touch / iPhone. If they are, I bet they will call it the iPad Mini. It would have to be somewhere between the size of the iPhone and the iPad... but would that actually fit in your pocket?? Maybe a large coat pocket... All this to say I strongly doubt they are working on this. Chris

To which Christopher Rogers' responded:

HAHAHAHAHAHA You tit.

There were also those who genuinely felt that there is a yawning market gap between the large and small Jobsian stroker-pad devices.

I fell for it. I liked the idea of the ipad but it fails in so many ways, largely it is far too BIG. I was hoping for something around 8", 16:9, with voice and multitasking. A device somewhere between the size of an iphone and the ipad (with more power) is what I really want.

Though some seemed to have their tongues in cheek - like SuperTim:

That sounds BRILLIANT!!!!!! I cant wait for it, my iphone just doesnt cut it, but if i could get some kind of smaller tablet with a phone in it and seriously reduced battery life, i would snap it up!

"El Reg needs to maintain some decorum appropriate for a news source". Oh lord

Others followed up the crying need for enlarged iPads, which could be permanently installed on a desk. For instance Ian Ferguson:

Man, imagine, a MASSIVE iPad on your desk, with a keyboard - it would be just like a common-or-garden iPad in it's dock, standing upright at a slight tilt. The keyboard could connect by Bluetooth, and other things could too, maybe a mouse? Best of all, as you wouldn't need to move it around, you could plug it straight into the mains!

I'm telling you, Apple is the FUTURE.

There was also some complaint about our total lack of journalistic integrity here at the Reg "Laie Techie" comments:

The past few days, I've spotted articles on El Reg which are better suited to The Onion. Is this to be the norm? I like humor as much as the next guy (can't wait for the next episode of BOFH), but El Reg needs to maintain some decorum appropriate for a news source.

One might quibble that the article was factually correct in all important respects, after all: the device described does exist, and so do our sources - we know a man who has occasionally been "close to Cupertino", he just doesn't work for Apple. And it seems fair enough to say that the iPhone is still developing, and thus that its owners are in a sense beta testers.

But we won't even go there, because the story was filed in Bootnotes - which, for anyone who doesn't know, generally means that it is either from a dodgy source, based on wild speculation, outright fictional or all of the above. And you know that when we say those things, this really isn't one to take to the bank.

To round the week off, we'll just note what we consider to be far and away the most wildly unfair criticism of the piece, from an anonymous coward:

1/10 too subtle.

And with that, surely, it's time to be off to the pub. Have a good weekend. ®

*Oh yes, the dread brotherhood of the fanboiyim reaches even into Vulture Towers.

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