iPad 3 Media Event Planned for Early February?

rumz said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the report is still suggesting March availability of the iPad 3-- just an earlier announcement than most would expect. I somehow doubt a January / February announcement has ever hurt Apple's sales ;) (What too early an announcement could do is slow iPad 2 sales down-- that's the only downside I can see.)
Click to expand...

announce early February. iPad 3 same pricing as current iPad2. Announce $100 cut in price of iPad - starting immediately.

Those that want the ipad 3 will wait, everyone else will snatch up a cheaper ipad 2, which will also help to clear any excess inventory before the ipad 3 introduction
 
mattburley7 said:
it does make sense to have the event a month early to give developers time to develop apps for the retina display. what would you rather have? announced in late february and released in early march with no apps that are retina display quality?
Click to expand...
They may have already given some developers early access to an iPad with a retina display and a beta iOS that can support it. A couple games, a photo editor, Apple's iBooks, a few magazines, and maybe a sketching and a productivity app would be enough to serve as launch partners.
 
Slurpy2k8 said:
You honestly think iPad2 sales will simply come to a halt once the iPad3 is announced? Come on. You forget the vast majority of people either won't know or won't care about the new one. Will iPad2 sales decrease a bit? Probably. Will they stop? No. I'd rather the iPad3 be announced early to give devs a chance to start working on some optimized apps and update the ones they have so we're not stuck with all 1/2 resolution apps at release.
Click to expand...

You honestly think all apps would be at x768 on release? The browser will be there, all Apple's apps will be there, all apps that use the standard rendering engine will be there, all apps that have prepared resources within a week or two will be there. And the rest will follow. Exactly like the original retina launch. Besides, "at release" is such a small portion of my ownership that I can't say I do really care.

Meanwhile I can't remember the last time Apple's announced a product update so far in advance. It just doesn't seem like a good idea. And if they do intend to drop the price of the iPad 2 when 3 comes out, when do you announce that?
 
honestly the retina display alone is not enough for me to upgrade. I wouldn't mind it at all, but I'm not in a rush.

I'm sure there will be some spec bumps aside from that, but they would have to be pretty sizable for me to upgrade form my iPad 2. Hell, the original iPad is still blowing away most of the competition.

I use my iPad mostly for books, facebook, general web browsing, netflix, and garageband and iMovie. All of those things work really well right now and I doubt they would get much better in the 3.

Don't get me wrong, if there is some serious upgrades going on I'll be tempted. But aside from bumping the existing specs I can't imagine them really "adding" anything new to it. Either way I'm looking forward to the event. It should at the very least give us a sneak peak of some future iPhone enhancements.
 
It will be introduced and available in March. None of this Feb nonsense. Just like last year. I'm with most of you. I will look forward to it!! They need to fix iOS 5 first. My iPad runs like crap ever since going to 5.0.1.
 
dashiel said:
I don’t think it’s going to happen. I know people who really like the form factor, especially for use an e-reader, but the issues it introduces for apps are significant. I certainly wouldn’t relish having a third form factor to account for in development.
Click to expand...

You've already got 3 form factors iPhone/Touch hires and lores, iPad. Assuming a new iPad size that makes 4. (Unless you're only developing for the iPad and not the handhelds.)

A 7" iPad could be the same number of pixels as the current iPad. Games would play fine. But the text would need to be configured to be a larger size so it wasn't too small to read.

For non-games as long as calls are being made to the iOS for text and buttons most of that would look retina. Plus, UIkit already supports loading hires versions of your images (at least on the iPhone), it's likely they'll extend that to the iPad.

It probably wouldn't be much harder than adapting to the hires screen. Plus, you be in there modifying most of the same code segments to support the new screen anyways.

Gary
 
b166er said:
honestly the retina display alone is not enough for me to upgrade. I wouldn't mind it at all, but I'm not in a rush.
Click to expand...

I don't know, whenever I pick up my old iPod touch vs. my retina iPhone, it's night and day. I almost can't believe I was ever enjoying that old display. I don't have an iPad, but not having the nicer display is what kept me from getting the iPad 2.

Gary
 
mattburley7 said:
it does make sense to have the event a month early to give developers time to develop apps for the retina display. what would you rather have? announced in late february and released in early march with no apps that are retina display quality?
Click to expand...

I'm sure Apple has worked with a handful of development firms to be sure there are a few retina apps available upon launch. And I'm also sure Apple will seed the development community with some "best practices" to get their apps retina-ready within 60 days of iPad 3.0 announcement.

Besides, it doesn't take developers that long to double the resolution of their apps. Maybe a 1-3 weeks of solid, devoted time depending on the app. Not months or years.

I am looking forward to retina display...I can wait for Angry Birds, ATT Wireless, and Amex (to name a few of my 10 apps) to be retina quality, thank you very much. I'm more more interested in using retina quality for:

1)pictures/slideshows
2)video playback and Youtube
3)reading websites at a better quality and/or better zoom
4)overall better reading and viewing
 
dashiel said:
I don’t think it’s going to happen. I know people who really like the form factor, especially for use an e-reader, but the issues it introduces for apps are significant. I certainly wouldn’t relish having a third form factor to account for in development.
Click to expand...

Why not? Vector-based graphics allow for easy re-sizing [assuming they've got hi-res graphics already made, which most probably do not]. OpenGL automatically takes care of the screen-size scaling when drawing. The only ones that would have a problem are ones that use really custom graphics, but those probably already have libraries that work with a general screen size.

No good developer creates something resolution-dependent.
 
Last edited:
ericinboston said:
I'm sure Apple has worked with a handful of development firms to be sure there are a few retina apps available upon launch. And I'm also sure Apple will seed the development community with some "best practices" to get their apps retina-ready within 60 days of iPad 3.0 announcement.

Besides, it doesn't take developers that long to double the resolution of their apps. Maybe a 1-3 weeks of solid, devoted time depending on the app. Not months or years.
Click to expand...

Also keep in mind that developers have "known" about this eventuality for a long time. I'll bet many of them (the big ones, certainly) have new hi-res graphic assets ready to go already.
 
Release it on Steve Job's Birthday. I think it's end of Feb...?

That would be best date for apple to remember their CEO.
 
macjoshua said:
What else would it be called?
Click to expand...

pgiguere1 said:
Why not?

(…)

I'm pretty sure the number will only designate the physical design generation.
Click to expand...

I'll believe it when I see it, but I don't see a reason for calling it iPhone 5.

If they're going for physical design iteration, then it would have to be called iPhone 4, which we've obviously already had.

What's the reasoning for calling it iPhone 5? because 5 comes after 4? But then surely the 4s should have been called 5.

No, I really don't think they'll go there. iPhone 4 was called 4, because it was the 4th generation, and the next one will be iPhone 6 because it's the 6th generation.

Of course they could do something completely different...
 
milo said:
But I don't think that applies if they plan on continuing to sell the iPad 2.

Normally if you'd announce the 3 long before it ships, people would stop buying the 2.

But if they announce the 3 along with a price drop on the 2 (effective immediately), many people will be more interested in the discounted 2 anyway and will buy it right away at the new price, not even caring when the 3 ships. Heck, if the plan is for the 2 to continue at a lower price, sales of it may go UP at the time of the announcement due to the price drop.
Click to expand...

So why didn't do that with the iPhone 4S release? Why didn't they announce the 4S in September and drop the price of the 4 immediately?
 
*LTD* said:
Will be a bad day for the competition. The day the hammer falls. Again.
Click to expand...

You really come out with some silly statements sometimes. I get the impression that you genuinely believe Apple is an all powerful godlike entity :rolleyes:

I highly doubt it'll be a bad day for the competition. The average user wont give a damn about a high res screen, even if it is tagged with a false marketing term invented by Apple (aka 'Retina Display'). The world will go on, and the competitors will continue as they were.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Here's hoping that the entry level iPad 3 will be no more than the $499 current entry level iPad 2 price point.
 
rmwebs said:
You really come out with some silly statements sometimes. I get the impression that you genuinely believe Apple is an all powerful godlike entity :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

No, obviously.

They're just incredibly good at what they do, consistently. And the (also consistent) inability of the competition to get the User Experience right emphasizes the stark contrast to an even greater degree.
 
I had a look at the iPad 2 in the Apple Store yesterday... It struck me again how huge the difference between a list of features is online and actually holding the device. The iPad 2 still amazes me, where as no other tablet has. It's not laggy, or slow, like Android tablets are - so the iPad 3 will absolutely kill any competition.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Back
Top