Apple to Launch 'iPad HD' This Fall Alongside Pro Apps?

[RobertMartens]

Apple Unveils Final Cut Pro HD 2004

"HD" as a marketing term. It's just so 2007.

Final Cut Used the HD moniker in April 2004. More than 7 years ago, ouch. iMovie used it in January 2005. Everybody and their brother put HD on their new iPad apps and then suddenly stopped.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

This boggles my mind. I have an iPhone 4, which I love. I bought an iPad 2 recently, and I can't tell the difference in screen resolutions. Is it because I hold the devices at difference distances from my eyes? Likely. But never once, not for a second, have the words "low res" entered my thoughts in regard to the iPad.

I read a fair bit on my iPhone, books etc. Stuff at similar sizes on the iPad is clearly fuzzy since it has a lower resolution (eye resolution, not screen resolution). I've found it a little frustrating to read on. As an example, reading a magazine (regular print magazine that's in pdf form on the iPad like in that magazine app, I forget the name) I find I have to zoom in because otherwise small text is fuzzy and gives me eyestrain reading it for too long. If it had a similar display to the iPhone in terms of DPI then this wouldn't be necessary.

 

[iMule]

This sounds too much like that iPhone nano rumor back in '09. I think this is completely fabricated. Apple would keep their lips sealed. Things like this will make people wait. Lots of people who have iPads also have iPhones. It seems way to close to a new iPhone and iPod touch line.

I think this might be a touchscreen Apple TV of some sort. That's been going around for a while (an actual television).

 

[Blorzoga]

That seems so unApple-like. (to release a slightly better product with an add on to the name). I'm not saying it's bad, but just unusual.

It's like the jump from
Palm Pre -> Palm Pre Plus
Droid X -> Droid x2

Yeah, the iPhone 3GS was so un Apple-like.

 

[RobertMartens]

Apple is still a company in for profit and they have to please and answer to their stock holders and investors too.

I never get this sentence. I listen to the stockholder meeting tapes. They never say anything. It's all secret. You bet on a company by buying their stock and then they have to answer to you, how cool is that. (Sounds like a recipe for disaster)


And profit, with 60+ billion in the bank and no debt for 10 years. We are worried about profits?

 

[MovieCutter]

Why are people having a problem with Apple making iPad more of a prosumer product?

They tried it with iWorks first; then iMovie and Garageband. There's going to be a time when Xcode would be fully functional on a machine like that and we'd be creating apps for iPad and iPad like devices using those devices themselves.
2 years - 4 years - 10 years? Who knows but there has to be a beginning and Apple shouldn't be shy in experimenting these things on iDevices. They are the future for most people.

That wasn't my point...I love the iPad. My point was that it makes sense that Apple would dumb down Final Cut to a point where they think it'd actually be usable on an iPad

 

[iGod 2.0]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

iPad HD...seriously?????? Again, Steve Jobs made it clear people...2011 is the year of the iPad 2.

 

[RobertMartens]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

iPad HD...seriously?????? Again, Steve Jobs made it clear people...2011 is the year of the iPad 2.

It's true he said that. And I think he meant it. You could see it in his eye.

 

[sinsin07]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

iPad HD...seriously?????? Again, Steve Jobs made it clear people...2011 is the year of the iPad 2.

Yeah, two new iPads. iPad 2 SD & iPad2 HD. Two iPads, both with iPad 2 in the name. That should satisfy your fixation on the uterances of Steve Jobs and the number two.

 

[MattInOz]

I really like the "Pro Apps" idea that has been kicking around since the first year of the Apple app store. What we have now is Vaudeville with anyone that can write an app is on stage.

Time for a premium app store with a placement fee of around a $1000 (yes a thousand) a year. If you can't afford that, you don't belong there and are probably coding out of your cellar or bedroom.

That will shake down the field good, app prices can be at a professional level to where you can afford staffing. promotion and such. If an app is really good, it will go from the lower tier store to the upper tier store with the right investment.

Surely if your App is good enough for a professional market then you can already charge enough to cover staffing, promotion and such. Not sure how charging a gatekeeper fee and moving you away from eyeballs. How many people will go the this Pro appstore knowing the pricing will be higher than it needs to be to cover the gatekeeper. Maybe you need to look at a bit of bootstrapping demand outside the appstore use that to drive a kickstart presents in the store.

 

[skellener]

iPad HD? Pro Apps? Oh, please.....

iPad 3 in 2012.

Pro Apps? For what? FCPX on iPad? Apple has already shown their contempt for Pros with FCPX. Apple has moved on from "Pro" apps. They do consumer apps. Apps for the masses, not Pros.

Both of these rumors are complete B.S.

 

[Tobsterius]

Ahhhh! So that explains why the launch of FCPX was a mess. They ported it to the wrong platform...

The entire program feels very much like the FCP team received a memo simply stating "Design it to work on the iPad as well."

 

[bopifas]

I like this idea

I would welcome the expansion of the iPad lineup. One size rarely fits all. Just look at Apple's notebook lineup.

The expansion of the iPad line-up offers consumers great choice and more frequent line-up updates. An iPad Pro could offer great screen and camera resolution, greater battery life, more storage and RAM and additional ports such as hdmi or SD card reader.

Plus Apple could spin a product line expansion as greater choice for consumers. Maybe it could lead to a lower price of the iPad 3 as it becomes positioned as the entry level Pad and receives modest tech upgrades.

This would work for me. How about you?

 

[skellener]

I would welcome the expansion of the iPad lineup. One size rarely fits all. Just look at Apple's notebook lineup.

The expansion of the iPad line-up offers consumers great choice and more frequent line-up updates. An iPad Pro could offer great screen and camera resolution, greater battery life, more storage and RAM and additional ports such as hdmi or SD card reader.

Plus Apple could spin a product line expansion as greater choice for consumers. Maybe it could lead to a lower price of the iPad 3 as it becomes positioned as the entry level Pad and receives modest tech upgrades.

This would work for me. How about you?

Might work, but still won't see an iPad 3 until 2012. Still won't be any such thing as a "Pro" iPad app from Apple.

 

[ma2ha3]

I do not know what world apple executives is living in.
If they think it is OK for people who line up in front of their store every morning to wait for ipad 2, then after weeks, they finally get their hand on the spanking new ipad 2 in spring. In Autumn, it is already obselete.

I cannot imagine it is fine by all means.

I cannot believe and accept this, I will have to see it with my own eyes to believe how apple betray their fans.

 

[AidenShaw]

Apple knows Apple fans

If they think it is OK for people who line up in front of their store every morning to wait for ipad 2, then after weeks, they finally get their hand on the spanking new ipad 2 in spring. In Autumn, it is already obsolete.

But *it is OK* - as evidenced by the fact that a huge number of the people who lined up in the spring will also line up in the fall, to replace their obsolete spring Ipad 2s.

 

[Blondie :)]

Really?

How often can one company update a product and expect it to sell so much? I mean really...they're adding a higher resolution screen. If that's literally the only thing they're changing in order to call it Ipad HD, that's ridiculous IMHO

 

[cmaier]

But *it is OK* - as evidenced by the fact that a huge number of the people who lined up in the spring will also line up in the fall, to replace their obsolete spring Ipad 2s.

I'd buy one.

 

[lilcosco08]

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iPad HD...seriously?????? Again, Steve Jobs made it clear people...2011 is the year of the iPad 2.

It's still an "iPad 2"

 

[Dinø]

Everything Apple has done, from developing a way to create Universal apps at launch, to making all their apps Universal, to encouraging Universal development at their conferences, to iCloud has pointed at them not wanting the store clogged with two versions of every app with only resolution between them. The only thing to suggest otherwise is one's personal belief that Apple is actively hostile towards their customers, which given that they are a company selling consumer goods prized for their user experience, seems pretty conspiratorial to me.

Apple could easily update their App Store policy to prohibit developers from selling iPad-specific versions of apps that are identical to the iPhone/iPod version. It's one thing to sell a different version of the game (ala Flight Control), but it's clearly the identical software simply tagged as iPad/iPhone-only.

I was finally able to jailbreak my iPad 2 today, and I can tell you that running Angry Birds (iPhone version) using Full Force on my iPad 2 is identical to the iPad-only "HD" version of the app.

 

[Don Kosak]

If it's just iPad 2 HD, I will probably pass until iPad 3 comes out in 2012. Then I'd weight the pro's and con's of getting an iPad 3 or an iPad 3 HD. It depends on price premium they are charging to get the higher resolution.

As a developer, I've really felt obligated to buy each model as it comes out, to have a physical device for testing. Being a super-small shop, that cuts into my already slim margins.

If the market fragments to much, it will get expensive for developers, and you'll start to see some breakage as lazy companies and amateur developers won't bother testing on all models. You see some of this going on with Android now.

I hope Apple keeps to a handful of standard configurations.

 

[Gjwilly]

I do not know what world apple executives is living in.
If they think it is OK for people who line up in front of their store every morning to wait for ipad 2, then after weeks, they finally get their hand on the spanking new ipad 2 in spring. In Autumn, it is already obselete.

I cannot imagine it is fine by all means.

I cannot believe and accept this, I will have to see it with my own eyes to believe how apple betray their fans.

Hello.....
Apple II
Apple IIe
Apple IIc
Apple only got where they are by betraying their fans.
When the Mac was released there was no backwards compatibility and support for their existing lines basically came to a screeching halt.

 

[Gjwilly]

It doesn't make any BUSINESS sense to release a new iPAD in the same year they release iPAD2.

Apple is still a company in for profit and they have please and answer to their stock holders and investors too.

With iPAD2 sales being really strong right now, and getting very little competition from other players, what business sense does it make for them to release new technology that early?

In that light, Apple should always be investing in R&D and having the 2 or 3 generations of software/hardware and multiple prototypes always in the works so they always have competitive edge or an 'ace' up their sleeves incase their competition pulls something off.

Even if they have multiple working prototypes for the next iPAD/iPhone/iPOD ready they wouldn't release it until it makes business sense to.

Release new products for the sake of release it; will only drive a company out of business.

That said, if Motorola, HP, HTC, Samsum, Asus, etc pulls out a miracle tablet tomorrow, Apple will probably have something already up their sleeves to respond if they have too; until then or Sales of iPAD2 takes a significant drop; you're not going to see a new iPAD until March 2012 at the earliest.

It makes perfect business sense.
The average buyer will continue to buy the iPad 2 and the select user will pay the premium for the HD/Pro.
Competitors are already matching or exceeding the iPad in specs but they're lacking the polish and the ecosystem and they know it.
They're actually rushing out non-finished products that look great on a spec sheet but are lacking in basic features and usability.
Consumers for the most part aren't being fooled but in their rush for marketshare, these companies are burning through a lot of capital.
If Apple keeps upping the specs the competition will be forced to burn though more capital in order to appear to keep up or else quit.
In other industries this strategy has actually put the competition out of business.

 

[slrandall]

I do not know what world apple executives is living in.
If they think it is OK for people who line up in front of their store every morning to wait for ipad 2, then after weeks, they finally get their hand on the spanking new ipad 2 in spring. In Autumn, it is already obselete.

I cannot imagine it is fine by all means.

I cannot believe and accept this, I will have to see it with my own eyes to believe how apple betray their fans.

How the hell is releasing a new & better product betraying their customers? Should there be a mandatory "no-release" time-frame between releases so that customers can feel superior to those that didn't buy? What a silly thing to say.

 

[AppleScruff1]

I'm hoping for 2 new iPads before the end of the year. I think it would be great if Apple breaks their predictable cycles on their hot products. It would drive the competition insane if they keep upgrading the iPad 2 or 3 times a year! Ditto for the iPhone. These are their two main products which generate a ton of revenue. Think about it. It would be absolutely mind blowing.