Apple Unveils “the New iPad”
Yes, “The new iPad”, not the iPad 3, or the iPad HD, and no doubt millions of people will rush to buy one. In Q4, Apple sold 15.4 million ipads – which is more than any PC manufacturer sold of theirPC lines.
I upgraded to a Google Galaxy Nexus phone a few weeks ago – and for a short time actually had cutting edge tech for both smartphones and tablets. That is always going to be a short-lived experience.
The new iPad features a higher resolution display, quad-core processor, better camera and HD 1080P video recording (like the iPhone 4s). Has 4G LTE – including on Rogers, Bell and Telus – and apparently retains the same battery life. It has some voice support, but not Siri (not Siri??).
They have upgraded and added features to apps like Garageband, iMovie, and iPhoto.
So improved – but not such an improvement that people will be compelled to upgrade (other than fanboys). Pre-orders start today, with shipping March 16.
They will continue to sell the iPad 2 at a lower price.
For now there is no doubt that Apple is the market leader that dominates and defines the tablet space. But don’t count the competition out yet, particularly Android and Microsoft Windows 8 based tablets. These might cure the most frustrating thing in my view about the iPad, which is its insistence on controlling file management in its own way.
One of my Smarter Colleagues said of the iPad (and iPod touch) that “it makes easy things easy, some hard things easy and some hard things … impossible”.
This is a riff on the design principle that one should make easy things easy and hard things possible. Making certain file-system operations impossible is arguably a really dumb thing. It’s the computer-designer equivalent of making it illegal to limp. You generally don’t want to limp, but sometimes you just have to!
–dave
Cory Doctorow has had some interesting things to say about who controls your machine, and who should control it. Not only Apple wants to tell you what you can and cannot do with your machine, though it is one of the most notorious.
Interesting that that business model basically failed with the Mackintosh, because it drove all the developers to the PC, which had all the programs. Because of the cool factor of the iPhone and iPad – and maybe a different deal for developers too, I don’t know – Apple got all the apps anyway.