The real reason for an iPad mini: Kids and Education. I’ve been thinking along these lines for a couple of months now.

Anyone who’s ever watched a five-year-old kid handle and drop a full-size iPad knows why a smaller iPad would be a great thing for kids. As a plus, their hands are already smaller, so they won’t need sandpaper as Steve Jobs once jibed. Indeed, education is becoming a very big thing for Apple these days, so a cheaper and smaller iPad makes a lot of sense in that realm. Remember, Apple made a big push into digital textbooks in January of this year. A lower-priced iPad would fit in perfectly with this push into the world of education and revolutionizing textbooks.

And yesterday I finally saw an article on 9to5mac.com that actually brought this reason up and examined it well.

Of course, it probably won’t be called iPad Mini. I’m thinking something more like iBook maybe? That’s a trademark Apple’s used before. So hopefully it shouldn’t cause the kind of problems iPhone and iPad have. And it fits the use case for this mythical new device. What do you think?

I’ll try to elaborate more on this… But in the meantime, check out this view on the matter from John Gruber at Daring Fireball as well. And this from Dan Frakes at Macworld.