Apple Announces iPad 2: A5 Dual Core, 2 Cameras, Thinner

[Zimmy68]

I knew the Retina and SD card were going to be shot down.
What I didn't expect were the expected improvements to be completely ignored.

I thought the following were going to be a slam dunk for them to even bother...

Improved resolution (even if it wasn't Retina)
Reduced Bevel - this would have an immediate effect that would make the iPad 1 look like it was from the 80s.
Thunderbolt (not that I care but why bother releasing this tech with nothing to use on it)
Reduced glare screen

So this isn't a decent upgrade for current owners.
The best things mentioned today, I can get on my iPad 1 with the OS update.

I was literally shocked that they showed the same wallpaper and layout that looks 2 years old to me.

The size is the biggest plus.

Apple is known to double capacity, this time, nothing.
I can't wait for the day when 32 is the minimum.


Twice as fast? So what when the devs will be writing for the first processor.

 

[CJM]

The iPhone 4 DOES have a higher resolution than the previous iPhones, therefore a higher DPI.

So much derp on this forum, you wouldn't believe.

As for the iPad 2, never owned one so it's a case of waaaaant.
But then would it all be in vain if a high-res, high-dpi iPad came out in Autumn?

 

[clukas]

Hold it for a second. So with the "Hotspot" Feature i could use the 3G connection from my iPhone4 to browse the web on my iPad 2? If so, i wouldnt have to purchase the 3G version. Can anyone confirm this working?

Thats correct!

 

[Dr Kevorkian94]

i wonder if i can sell my ipad now? lol

 

[MacAddict1978]

Everyone seems to have missed the biggie.

New AirPlay.

Apps streamed now.

Apple just challenged consoles HARD and no one has noticed yet.

My iPhone controller will be able to control apps on my iPad, my Mac, or my Apple TV.

Wow.

Wooow.

How did you miss this? This is HUGE.

Not "new" Air Play. It's "working" Air Play. This was how it was advertised before, but magically when the update came down half the functions were stripped along with Air Print. How did you miss that? It's a bug fix! Only Steve Jobs though can make people swoon over something announced ages ago that came out broken.

Consoles? Yes, we all love virtual controllers on a touch screen for hard core gaming. This update should eliminate the stutter in a lot of games which came from the iPad being a bit underpowered the first time. Up to 9X faster graphics is like saying 20% more free. It's a play on numbers.

Streaming apps.... um, where did you arrive at this? I missed the announcement of streaming apps to my tv. I can finally show my pics and vids from my iPhone like I was told I could do months ago via the Apple TV. Connecting to home sharing via an IOS device other than Apple TV is NOT app streaming. It's content streaming. But with a dongle you can put them on your TV. Hope you have a really long HDMI cord or a couch close to the TV.

And your iPhone already acts as a remote for all those things. They said nothing about apps... content streams.

Now I do think we'll soon be flicking angry birds on the big screen via Apple TV, but that's not what they said today. I think that's going to be a big feature of IOS 5 and an update to the Apple TV

 

[Analog Kid]

Still stuck at 64GB of flash... That's really what's held me back from buying the first iPad, and nothing else of consequence seems to have changed.

 

[KPOM]

Thunderbolt (not that I care but

So this isn't a decent upgrade for current owners.
The best things mentioned today, I can get on my iPad 1 with the OS update.

That's the point. 15 million bought the first iPad. Largely, this one isn't for them. It's aimed at the rest of us who didn't buy the first iPad and are comparing it to the Xoom and the rest of the competition.

 

[Caliber26]

After a year of owning an iPad, I will say that I wish I had 3G sometimes. So whenever I upgrade, I'll be getting the 3G version. I often took my iPad and MBP with me, when in reality, if I had 3G, I wouldn't need to.

You have to consider the upcoming release of iOS 4.3 and its hotspot feature. My roommate has an iPad 3G and he has never used it. Why pay $130 (plus usage) for something that's seldom used? Granted, I know nothing about your travels or how often they are but, for the average person, we're usually within a wifi zone. I think the iPhone nicely fills in for those times when you need internet access on the ago, such as a train/bus ride. But if you must have your iPad online, turn on the hotspot on your phone for the duration of your trip.

 

[TonyBarber573]

Each of you hating on this are unhappy that your iPad 1 is now out of date.

Deal with it, or buy a new one. Simple enough.

 

[SeniorGato1]

.91 MP Camera???

720p is actually 1280x720 or .91 MP

 

[JohnnyQuest]

Each of you hating on this are unhappy that your iPad 1 is now out of date.

Deal with it, or buy a new one. Simple enough.

You're mature.

 

[dwd3885]

Not "new" Air Play. It's "working" Air Play. This was how it was advertised before, but magically when the update came down half the functions were stripped along with Air Print. How did you miss that? It's a bug fix! Only Steve Jobs though can make people swoon over something announced ages ago that came out broken.

Consoles? Yes, we all love virtual controllers on a touch screen for hard core gaming. This update should eliminate the stutter in a lot of games which came from the iPad being a bit underpowered the first time. Up to 9X faster graphics is like saying 20% more free. It's a play on numbers.

Streaming apps.... um, where did you arrive at this? I missed the announcement of streaming apps to my tv. I can finally show my pics and vids from my iPhone like I was told I could do months ago via the Apple TV. Connecting to home sharing via an IOS device other than Apple TV is NOT app streaming. It's content streaming. But with a dongle you can put them on your TV. Hope you have a really long HDMI cord or a couch close to the TV.

And your iPhone already acts as a remote for all those things. They said nothing about apps... content streams.

Now I do think we'll soon be flicking angry birds on the big screen via Apple TV, but that's not what they said today. I think that's going to be a big feature of IOS 5 and an update to the Apple TV

you are right. you can only airplay video, photos and music. You won't be able to 'airplay' games like angry birds or anything. only videos photos and music. Now, you CAN hook up your hdmi to a tv and mirror it. but then, you have a $500 gaming system hooked up with a cable.

 

[Shagrat]

They don't see it because they just like to whine about it not been the perfect fantasy they can imagine, I wonder if they will ever have GF if they think the same way.

I think the expression is..let me see...

LOL!

"Giving this GF a miss 'cause a better one will be long soon..."

 

[MacAddict1978]

Hold it for a second. So with the "Hotspot" Feature i could use the 3G connection from my iPhone4 to browse the web on my iPad 2? If so, i wouldnt have to purchase the 3G version. Can anyone confirm this working?
Thats correct!

Thats correct!

If you were smarter than I was and kept an unlimited data plan, that would be very wise indeed. CNet just did a test and the iPhone lasted nearly 6 hours as a hotspot streaming video. Pretty impressive.

 

[fredoviola]

that case alone is BRILLIANT!!!!

Hahaha, I can't believe people are actually complaining about this! It's awesome!

 

[Northgrove]

No real killer feature, or unexpected one, but there are a lot of minor improvements here that really add up.

iPad 2 especially seems "future proof". That may be its best feature. That it comes with a fresh, speedy CPU and GPU with preserved battery life. Nothing more annoying than having future iOS (think iOS 5 & 6) features that won't be available on your device because it's too slow or incompetent... I'm almost 100% sure that iPad 1 will lose support at least one iOS generation before iPad 2, and that can really matter. It's the software that makes these devices. I wouldn't even have considered an iPhone if it wasn't for the iOS ecosystem, or a MacBook Pro if it wasn't for OS X.

 

[kiljoy616]

I think facetime is absolute crap, i dont think it can compete with skype, at least until they make a windows client (and maybe a linux one which propably wont happen).

And we care why? Skype is good, facetime is good, it just depends what someone wants to use. You can use either one, but why whine about one or the other been better, use what ever you decide is better for you and not the other.

I like both just happen that facetime is built into the iphone 4 and skype is a download. I use both.

As for video conference, I would like higher resolution but considering how bad internet is in so many places and lets not talk about hotels I can't see how a 720p video conference would be able to keep up. Maybe in a few years we will actually have connection to the internet that make sense and not the half ass stuff we have today.

Either way I am impressed with the white one and will be buying one for my wife's birthday so she can travel with it and leave the big, ugly, bulky Dell Laptop at home.

 

[ac4155]

With 2011 being the year of the iPad 2 i'd say we are less likely to see an iPad 3 this year.

And I did not think we would see iPad 3 this year anyway.

 

[shstiger2009]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Seems as though you were watching a different presentation. Here, let me help you out.

Almost as heavy.

So you admit that it's lighter than it was before.

Same price is doing me a "favor" with all the competition offering thinner, lighter, cheaper, more open OS?

Please share with us the thinner (there aren't any) and lighter (there aren't any) and cheaper (there aren't any) options. Please highlight the ones that get 10 hours of battery life also. I'd also like notations next to the ones that have rear HD cameras. Please don't include tablets that you can't actually purchase (no vaporware!). Xoom is thicker than the iPad (.5 to .34 inches) and weighs more (1.6 to 1.3 lbs).

I know we all hate flash, but the reality is 25% of the top 100 pages on the net still use it, so we can either have access to it or not have access, they go with #2 to try and make a statement

I think what you mean to say is we can have access to it, or have a usable battery. You'll notice that the Xoom didn't even ship with flash (although it's entire campaign was based on that). They can't get it optimized to have decent battery life. See: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26574892@N07/5475257624/

Comparing your year-old platform to one that hasn't even been released yet?

Um, yeah. He has a point. Take RIM for example, which has upgraded the Playbook THREE times and hasn't shipped a single version.

It's all just a mess, this is Android's year.

Yep. They've had so much success!

I was really hoping they'd wow us with something to give all the new Android tablets a run for the money.

I'm not buying, more for the rest of you.

The good news is that nobody is buying the Android tablets, so there should be plenty of those for you. Their battery life is terrible (3 hours on one!), and they have minimal apps available for them. The funny thing about all of the competing tablets is that they are at the top of their games. It just doesn't get any better from here for them. They have NO clue where a tablet fits in the market.

I just want to let you know you are my new hero. That is all.

 

[Full of Win]

"Design has not soul" Hilarious..just what is this supposed to mean?

No soul? It means its bland.

 

[juicedropsdeuce]

Windows Vista Revisited

.
Wow Apple! How many SKUs do you need? Three memory sizes based on pure greed - 32gb should be $500. 3G x 3 for both Verizon and AT&T instead of a global device that would encourage price competition for data plans.

And Jony I've calls a white paint job a redesign. Maybe in England it is.

Jobs, get some more rest. You've just 'flummoxed' a lot of customers too.

 

[aluren]

I think the new design is a huge feature, being thinner and lighter. It will feel even better in the hands. I just need to know if they bumped the ram to 512mb and I'm sold.

 

[dwd3885]

Hold it for a second. So with the "Hotspot" Feature i could use the 3G connection from my iPhone4 to browse the web on my iPad 2? If so, i wouldnt have to purchase the 3G version. Can anyone confirm this working?
Thats correct!




If you were smarter than I was and kept an unlimited data plan, that would be very wise indeed. CNet just did a test and the iPhone lasted nearly 6 hours as a hotspot streaming video. Pretty impressive.

right. of course streaming video for 6 hours would put you over the 2gb cap. lol.

 

[zorinlynx]

Has there been any word on Verizon data plan pricing for the iPad and how it compares to AT&T? I can find nothing on this subject!

 

[hayesk]

Negative
- No LP/TB Support (no port or controller) makes this a relic before its even sold
- RAM ???
- No ‘world’ model; its either CDMA or GSM.
- Screen Resolution is the same
- No super-special daylight viewable screen
- Design has not soul
- GPS not on the Wi-Fi model
- No vibration motor for alerts or games

Have you seen the size and power requirements of the Thunderbird controller chip? Did you really expect it to be able to work on a tablet? Seriously?

"World model" is only useful for travellers who have to stick with Verizon in the US and travel out of country a lot (where GSM is king). How many of those people do you think there are - that don't already have a world phone that can tether? Seriously, what other reason do you need a "world model?"

Screen resolution wasn't expected to change - well, by anyone who wasn't kidding themselves on the current state of video card and battery technology.

Super-special daylight viewable screen? So the iPad is lacking because it doesn't have imaginary technology? That's funny.

"Design has not soul?" Uhm... ok, I'll give you that one. Ha ha.

GPS not in the Wi-Fi model - hmm... I'll actually give you that one, but I believe the GPS modules are in the same chipset with the GSM/CDMA.

No vibration motor for alerts? Huh? You don't carry an iPad in your pocket. Vibration won't alert you to anything if it's in a briefcase, backpack, bag, etc.