To compete with the cheaper Kindle Fire HD and Nexus 7. Less costly for Apple to make the mini.

Meh, 164 PPI isn't bad, and this resolution allows them to run legacy iPad applications unscaled.

isn't bad?

The original android g1 had greater PPI (180) than this thing.

Smartphone versus tablet is not really a fair comparison.

The pixel density for the new iPad mini sits between the iPad 2 and iPad 3 with Retina display. As far as I'm aware, no one was complaining about the iPad 2 display.

In any case, I suspect the choice of resolution was driven more by compatibility concerns (i.e. it can run iPad 2 apps unscaled), and this paves the way for a 'Retina display' iPad mini at some point in the future.

I ask since when are apple products judge by "isn't bad"?

And yes, it is this resolution solely to support legacy applications, possibly to reduce costs. But i can only speculate on the latter.

It certainly isn't great, but it's positively, definitely the best alternative. I'm one of the biggest retina fans - I just love Retina displays. But having two choises (retina screen, no piggybacked app - non-retina screen, run every single app without modification) I'd definitely choose non-retina.

I suspect: 1) compatibility (no need to redesign retina apps to fix the now absurdly small touch targets), and, 2) cost (lower resolution screens are probably easier to produce)

My guess is they didn't do retina because it would introduce yet another resolution they would need to support and also it would add expense to an already not cheap build.

Two reasons: price and ease of development. The non-retina display means that apps won't need to be updated to run on the new device, which is a big win for developers.

The GPUs required to run it would currently take up way more space and (figuratively) melt straight through the mini's smaller battery; not to mention price.

If you went to 28nm (current TSMC size, used by Qualcomm and NVidia for a few quarters already) from 45nm (size of A5X) then maybe not.

Apple just went through a die shrink to 32nm (starting with the 3rd-gen aTV and refreshed iPad 2), not doubting we'll see Apple go another stop smaller but not for a totally new product like this.

Apple generally releases a non-retina device first, for a couple reasons.

Mainly, they are usually on the cutting edge of manufacturing technology for their parts. This year it is lamination, and there are only so many factories capable of doing this kind of lamination. I think doing the lamination for a retina display at this size would have restricted the manufacturing options and that capacity they'd rather put into the new iMac, Macbook Pros and retina iPad.

Secondly, cost. Retina is 4 times the pixels, and presumably significantly more expensive. A smaller display like this at the same resolution as the original iPad is going to be closer to retina than the original iPad.

Thirdly, it gives a nice upgrade for the future, to incentivize people to replace their device in a year or two. When the cost of the retina technology has dropped enough they can upgrade the mini to the same resolution as the iPad retina.

For new products, Apple tends to choose a mix of cutting edge and safe. The A5 is currently in volume production so it is a safe choice, where it was cutting edge last year, for instance.

Apple also has a food-chain. The newest processor goes to the newest product, and the secondary products (like the iPod touch and now iPad mini) which are in more price sensitive market positions (for instance the iPhone is subsidized by carriers but the iPod touch is not) tend to get the established one-generation-behind processors that are already cheaper to make. This way the A5 design lasts longer and the manufacturing capacity that is making it can keep making it.... while the A6 works on the lower feature size (requiring a more cutting edge fab).

For instance the A6 is, I believe 20 or 22 nonometeres, while the A5 was made on a 32 nanometer feature size.

A6 is 32nm, A5 was originally 45nm and then was reduced for the new iPad2 to 32nm.

Intel might be fabbing at 22nm, and probably some DRAM and NAND is on 22nm, but nobody is doing anything complex on 22nm right now. The rest of the ARM industry is on 28nm, and one of the things Apple gets by moving to TSMC is 28nm (TSMC are generally ahead of Samsung's fabs, but not by that much).

This is mostly just silly. They generally, historically, have released almost no products with retina at all. They've barely been using it for a year and have integrated it into just 4 products now across their entire catalog, zero of which went retina on their second generation.

I also don't think they're withholding retina or cpus from anything so they can introduce that feature in coming years, this technology is moving crazy fast, it's already expected in higher end phones and tablets and after that it becomes normal.

Cost is the only reason they'd withhold anything, they target a market and what that market can pay and then they cram as much as they can into that price without sacrificing their enormous margins.