On Thursday, October 16, Apple took the stage in Cupertino, California and announced new products. The event itself was pretty low-key, especially compared to the event in September that saw the arrival of new iPhones (and a ton of other stuff). Unfortunately for anyone expecting a worthwhile upgrade to the iPad mini with Retina display, all you got instead was a short stick.

The event was pretty straightforward, insofar that it existed mainly to recite the features that we heard about earlier in the year, and remind us of all the cool things that our iOS-based devices running iOS 8 can do when paired to Macs running OS X Yosemite. Of course, if you really want to get the full experience you’ll want to upgrade to a new iMac with a Retina 5K display. Or, maybe you want to stick to a new tablet.

And if you do want a new tablet, Apple certainly has you covered. The company has a whole host of tablets to choose from now, but all of them are basically slight iterations of one another, so the real goal here is to get you to pay for the top-of-the-line model. That’s obviously always the goal, but it’s never been so obvious as it is this year — at least, not as far as I’m concerned.

After this event came to a close, I found myself looking at the iPad mini 3 and just shaking my head. This is a device that Apple couldn’t even find the time to really talk about, and of course when you get down into the specifications of the device, that’s not a surprise at all. The iPad mini 3 is, far and away an iPad mini 2 with a new color option, a new storage option and Touch ID support. That’s it.

That barely constitutes a 3. That should be an iPad mini 2S.

I honestly didn’t expect Apple to give much time to the iPad mini, though. However, I was expecting more than what I saw today, and that’s simply because I at least thought they’d upgrade the model in general. Keeping the exact same specifications as last year, but adding a Touch ID sensor is not an upgrade in any real sense. Just throwing in another storage model, and a new color, don’t actually help matters, either. The iPad mini 3 is a huge letdown.

But, let’s be clear here and just admit that this is obviously part of Apple’s plan.

A few years ago someone probably told you, or you heard it form somewhere indirectly, that the iPad mini was going to be a major product for Apple, and right after its launch the iPad mini was indeed a big seller. But, now that Apple has a huge smartphone with the iPhone 6 Plus and its 5.5-inch display, you’re probably hearing a lot of this: “I don’t need an iPad mini anymore.” Why? Because people are switching to the huge phone, and if they are keeping a tablet (as many people are), they’re going with the larger iPad Air.

Apple obviously recognizes this, and that’s why the iPad Air 2 is such a worthy upgrade over the previous generation. This is the upgrade the iPad mini with Retina display should have received, or even the iPad mini 2 for that matter. But, instead, Apple decided to skip over the iPad mini lineup for all intents and purposes, focus their attention on the iPad Air 2, and release another competitive, powerful tablet into the market.

So, let’s just get the inevitable out of the way, Apple. Let’s just get the iPad mini phased out of the lineup altogether. If you, as a company, are barely going to give it any attention, why should consumers? I am actually a fan of the iPad mini lineup, and I let my daughters play with the tablet quite often, and I was planning on upgrading this year. That’s just not going to happen now, though. Not even a little bit. The iPad mini 3 is a nonstarter for me, right out of the gate.

Which is why I’m falling right into Apple’s plan, and already eyeing the iPad Air 2 as my next tablet purchase. If I do upgrade this year, that’s going to be what I pick up, and I hope that if this is indeed Apple’s plan, then I’m helping move along the process to see the iPad mini lineup phased out. At this point, with bigger iPhones on the market, and apparently all the rage, there just doesn’t seem to be much of a push to get the iPad mini support anymore.

I’ll be sad to see it go.