Until recently, I was an iPad Mini denier. A tablet with a 7- or 8-inch screen feels like the worst of both worlds to me—too big for simple e-reading, too small for serious Web browsing, games, and photos.
And Apple has historically been a creator, not a joiner, so the idea that the company would want to jump on the mid-size tablet bandwagon and compete with the likes of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google, RIM, and Samsung just seems out of character to me. Very un-Jobsian, in a word. So I chose to believe that the rumors were untrue, and that they’d eventually die down.