Several of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s comments made during an interview this week at Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital D10 Conference could be taken as further indication of an upcoming iPad Mini release.

Quick Background
The current round of rumors and speculation regarding Apple coming out with an iPad Mini in 2012 is increasing to a fever pitch. Apple’s supply chain has systematically done its job as far as “leaking” to South Korea, China and Taiwan media just enough info to keep the discussion going, and growing, regarding a 7-8 inch iPad.  There are now close to 10 million mentions of “iPad Mini” on the Internet, according to Google’s search engine.

Market Conditioning
There’s now only one major task left that Apple must accomplish from a market-conditioning standpoint prior to it announcing the release date for the iPad Mini, and it’s a little tricky. And it has to be done in stages. And that is to help people understand that Steve Jobs would have been a huge proponent of the smaller iPad.

Back in October 2010, Jobs became quite vocal about his dislike for the 7-inch tablet form, saying, among other things, that he didn’t think you could make a great tablet with a 7-inch screen. His negative statements were made about six months after Apple had come out with its original tablet and just before RIM was to introduce its 7-inch Blackberry Playbook.

“Awesome”
Now that Steve Jobs has passed on, however, his words have taken on, to some, the aura of Holy Scripture. Steve Jobs can’t be here to tell us that he changed his mind, or that he cracked the code, or that maybe he had just been bluffing back then.

Apple would probably never say its co-founder had been bluffing. Nor would the company ever say that Jobs had been wrong in any way.  However, Steve might be able to say it himself all defacto-like via Tim Cook.

AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka writes that during Tim Cook’s D10 interview Tuesday night in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Cook shared that Steve Jobs had been an awesome flip-flopper.

Flip-Flopper typically has a negative connotation. But “Flip-Flopper” combined with “Awesome” and “Steve Jobs” sounds, well, kinda awesome. Cook was speaking in general terms here about Jobs and not specifically about a particular product.

Kafka idicated that Cook appeared to be quite impressed with Job’s ability to quickly change his mind.

“I saw it daily. This is a gift,” Cook related in this week’s interview regarding Jobs, “because things do change, and it takes courage to change. It takes courage to say, ‘I was wrong.’ I think he had that.”

There you have it. Pretty brilliant interview. Jobs probably helped.

iPad Mini Price
Rumors indicate the iPad Mini will be aggressively priced between $200 and $250. At that price range, some speculate that there might not be enough margin in it to be worthwhile for Apple to provide the high performance level as its latest iPad tablet design, the third generation that came out in March. But the company may not have to make very much profit per device. Market Research firm Arete Research (per The Inquirer) estimates that Apple currently takes in about half a billion dollars per quarter in iPad Smart Cover sales alone.

Joe Hopkins,  New Tablets News