Apple to Announce Second-Generation iPad Within 3-4 Weeks?

[RBR2]

Why? To do what? What does or can this Tegra2 platform do, that the iPad isn't doing or can't do?

As explained before, to handle HD resolution screens and HD content as well as other graphics related matters. In case you never took notice, the Tegra 2 has two A9 processor cores as well as dedicated graphics processors. It is simply a much more advanced SoC than Apple's apparently rebranded SoC. Apple wanted to be first out of the gate and so put the iPad in production with something that would be good enough and available in quantity.

Although Steve is death on Flash, the Tegra 2 is capable of dealing with it. Even without Flash, video content is demanding of the system.

To maintain a leadership position Apple needs to do more than a tepid warm over of the iPad (1) in my view. You may have a different opinion.

 

[jealousguy86]

sooo now that we know the iphone 4 is coming to verizon on Feb. 10,

 

[dlundgren]

I want a higher-res display

The display on the original iPad is terrible - so bad, in fact, that I sold mine. It's as bad as the old iPhone, and it creates problems for people trying to consume content. It was no accident that iPhone 4 came out after iPad - once the Retina display came out, the original iPad's display instantly looked awful by comparison.

I think (hope) the iPad gets a higher-res screen (not 300dpi, necessarily, but materially enhanced) - otherwise, I'm not buying. Would prefer a high-res screen to any of the other things I've seen mentioned (cameras, etc.).

 

[Terminal.app]

I think (hope) the iPad gets a higher-res screen (not 300dpi, necessarily, but materially enhanced) - otherwise, I'm not buying. Would prefer a high-res screen to any of the other things I've seen mentioned (cameras, etc.).

I agree, and I for one would like to encourage the use of the term "high-res" instead of "Retina display", it's a painfully silly marketing term that means nothing. Most of the people I've heard saying "Retina display" over and over again have no understanding of how things like resolution, pixel count, pixel pitch, etc., even work. The 22" IBM T221 monitor @ 3840×2400 is a Retina display, I guess.

 

[jealousguy86]

just

 

[GnillGnoll]

You might argue that this lack of development was not primarily due to technological difficulties but merely because the need for higher-res screens of that size never arose; however, even in that case, I'm guessing that it's going to be much more difficult to take a 10" screen to twice the pixel density than it was for a 3.5" because the industry still has a lot of R&D to put into this before they can provide anything at a reasonable price.

Because of this, I think it's probably not a good idea to expect the same kind of evolution for iPad displays as for iPhone displays - do you agree or am I missing something here?

Depends on what you consider "the same kind of evolution". If that means "keeping the same resolution until the third gen, then doubling it in the fourth gen" I'd consider that the pessimistic scenario.

157 ppi on 10" screens (1366x768) is available today, even in relatively cheap devices (e.g. Dell Mini 10). The same is true for 170 ppi in 7" (1024x600). I'd be quite surprised if next year's CES comes without 200+ ppi tablets at 10" (e.g. 1680x1050) being announced. If Apple waits longer than that, they'll be way behind everyone else. Which, of course, wouldn't be unlike the iPhone 3GS.

I know that technically, Apple has started to support anti-aliasing with the release of iOS 4.2, but due to the fillrate limitation, it is basically unusable as it cuts down framerates by three-fourths, meaning I've never gone over 15fps, and somehow produces very washed-out colors at the same time.

That's quite surprising, anti-aliasing should be relatively cheap on the iPad (though you still may hit a performance cliff due to vsync). When you tried it, did you use the OES_framebuffer_discard extension to discard the contents of multisampled renderbuffers after the downsample blit?