Apple Is a FollowerS  Apple never wanted to make the iPad Mini.
It was forced to, by an army of tiny tablets laying successful
siege to its empire. The company's conceded a lot of ground to
Amazon and Google already. And it's not the first time this year
it's had to play catch-up.  With every new release, it becomes
increasingly clear that Apple's no longer the pace car for an
entire industry. Maybe that transformation from leader to
follower was inevitable. But that doesn't make it any less
jarring.  The iPad Mini is an obvious and bloated—both in size
and price—response to last year's Kindle Fire and this summer's
Nexus 7. Before it came the iPhone 5, Apple's limp concession
that people actually do want bigger phone displays. And before
that? Apple Maps, a full-on admission that Cupertino had badly
miscalculated the importance of first-party software. iOS 6
users are footing that bill while Apple scrambles to make up the
seven-year lead it gifted Google.  Compare the Apple of 2012,
then, to the Apple jugger