Apple Announces a New iPad and Fails to Name it
Apple announced the newest iPad on March 7th - and actually referred to it as the “new iPad” rather than iPad 3 or iPad HD (or even iPad 4G). Why? I haven't heard a good reason yet, so I'll make one up. Perhaps Apple had a name in mind and at the last minute encountered a road block (legal or otherwise) to using it. I hope we'll hear more on this soon. I don't think the name "the new iPad" will make a lot of sense a few months from now.
As predicted by almost everyone, me included, the new iPad has
• The same basic form factor
• The “Retina display” with twice the resolution in each direction (4x pixels overall)
• An A5X processor
• An improved camera
• The same basic pricing, and reduced pricing for the previous generation iPad 2
The things many of us wondered about were 4G LTE networking and Siri.
The good news on the carrier networking front is that 4G LTE was included as an option, which suggests not only great performance for the device when away from WiFi, but signals an upcoming iPhone 5 with LTE. More than that, it signals confidence on Apple’s part that Verizon and AT&T will have the nationwide infrastructure to support millions of LTE devices and to do it very soon.
The Siri story is less clear. While the new iPad doesn’t support Siri in the way that it exists on the iPhone 4S, it does include new voice functionality. It support voice dictation in four languages and makes this capability available to third party applications.
Overall, another nice incremental upgrade, and I'm sure the Retina display will be stunning. For those who don't have an iPad or who have the first generation, I think it's a winner. For those like me with an iPad 2, probably "pass for now."
Will you be buying one? Leave a comment and let us know.
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