So yesterday was the big Apple event at Yerba Buena, "It's Showtime," and I stayed up way later than I should have refreshing liveblogs like some kind of teenager waiting on concert tickets. Worth it? Eh, mostly.
The headline is they dropped the "iPad 3" name entirely. Its just "the new iPad." Which, fine, I get the branding logic (no more version numbers to worry about, very iPod-esque) but it also means every review from now until forever is going to have to write out "the new iPad" like some awkward mouthful, and in six months when they release ANOTHER one, is that also just "the new iPad"? Somebody in Cupertino thought this through less than they think they did.
Specs-wise the thing that actually matters is the Retina display. 2048x1536, 3.1 million pixels, which Apple kept repeating is more pixels than a 1080p TV. Ive been staring at my iPad 2 screen for a year now and didnt think it looked bad exactly, but Ive seen a couple photos comparing text rendering side by side and yeah. Its not subtle. Text on the old display is going to look fuzzy to anyone whos used the new one for a week, the same way going back to a non-retina iPhone 4 felt like a downgrade after using a 4S.
Under the hood theres the new A5X chip, quad-core graphics (still dual-core CPU though, which is a little funny given how much they hyped the graphics side), a 5 megapixel camera that can do 1080p video now instead of the sad little camera on the iPad 2, and LTE support on both AT&T and Verizon models. That last one is the one Im actually kind of jealous of. My phone has LTE and its stupid fast in the couple spots near me that actually have coverage, so an LTE iPad sounds great in theory. In practice Id probably use it twice a month and regret paying extra for it, which is the story of my life with data plans.
Pricing stayed exactly where the iPad 2 was: $499 for the base 16GB WiFi model, going up from there, LTE models starting at $629. Ships March 16th, preorders are already up. I will not be one of the people camping outside a store for this, Ive done that exactly once in my life (an Xbox 360 launch, dont ask, it was cold and I regretted everything by hour four) and Im never doing it again.
They also quietly updated the Apple TV in the same event, which honestly might matter more to me day to day than the iPad refresh does. New Apple TV does 1080p now instead of being capped at 720p, faster A5 chip inside, same $99 price as before. I've got the older black puck hooked up to the TV in the living room and its been totally fine for Netflix and podcasts, but if this one's the same price and does full 1080p Im not sure I have a good reason not to just swap it out when it ships on the 16th too.
Anyway. No huge surprises if you were paying attention to the rumor sites beforehand, which I was, obsessively, per usual. The screen is the real story here and everything else is a nice-to-have wrapped around it. Curious whether Ill actually notice the difference enough in daily use to justify upgrading from a barely-year-old iPad 2, or if Ill just be one more person carrying around a perfectly good tablet because a slightly better one exists now. Probably the second one. That's usually how this goes.