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Retina Display-Equipped iPad 3 to Launch in February?

Having seen this same basic rumor (about retina) for what- about 12 years now;)- do we really think that at least some of the iPad developers haven't already done a lot of the work to be ready? I'm somewhat surprised that one of them hasn't already rolled out an "ipad3 ready" bit of marketing just for the publicity.

Wasn't the iPhone screen rez doubling a bit of a surprise which contributed to why it took a while for developers to adapt? However, now that the "simple model" of just doubling the horiz and vert pixels is established, can't we imagine that developers have already prepared for that? I would think the day an iPad comes out with "retina" is the same day a bunch of "retina ready" apps are made available in the store.

Secondly, if this cheap device is going to get that level of screen resolution in a smallish screen, are the next gen of Apple laptops going to do even better? Would it really make sense for an (maybe $499 or so) iPad 3 to sport 2048x1536 while a $2499 Macbook Pro 17" is capped out at 1920x1200? Does this advance in screen resolution on the iPad imply that maybe new laptops are going to get up into 27" iMac screen resolutions... or more?
 
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Who'd want to buy someone an iPad for christmas when a month or so later there's going to be an improved version out for the same $?

...oh. People not paying attention.

...which helps clear out the old stock. Makes sense I guess. ...kinda sucks though.
 
with the resell value of apple products im hoping i call sell my 64 GB iPad 2 for the price of a 32 or 16 GB iPad 2 model and use the money to buy a lower space iPad 3 ^^
 
ThunderSkunk said:
Who'd want to buy someone an iPad for christmas when a month or so later there's going to be an improved version out for the same $?

...oh. People not paying attention.

...which helps clear out the old stock. Makes sense I guess. ...kinda sucks though.
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Yup. It makes PERFECT sense for Apple. They have always updated the iPad in March. I think the iPad 3 may be announced in Febraury, but most likeyly it'll be available in March or later. But who the heck knows!

A few more months is not THAT long of a wait. :)
 
I believe the iPad 3 will not release to May/June. It just makes sense to move it closer to the middle of the year to lessen the impact of competitors (like Amazon's Kindle Fire) releasing closer to the holiday shopping season.

If they wait for June then they have a chance of getting 4G into the iPad 3 and they will assuredly have the A6 ready by then. Although, I believe Qualcomm's road map shows the LTE/GSM/CDMA-all-in-one chip won't be ready until mid next year so even that is cutting it close for LTE support.

Releasing in February just after the holiday shopping season is a bit nuts. Even Late-March/Early-April of last year was a bit too close to the previous holiday season.

Now that iPhone has shifted to the fall release, it only makes sense to do iPad in the summer (assuming Apple wants to resume the once-per-year release cycle).

Anyway, if it releases in February and still has the A6 and 4G LTE then I will be amazed.
 
I don't think a Feb/March release is so shocking....um...especially since BOTH the original iPad & the iPad 2 were released in March. Durp! :p

Seriously. Apple doesn't need to listen to armchair QBs like us telling THEM when they SHOULD release their products. They didn't become the richest company in the world not knowing when to release products. :)
 
If this is real, I'd love to know how they've pulled it off. That's a very high resolution that modern computers have a hard time with, performance-wise. Will demanding apps/games be locked to a smaller resolution I wonder?

If anyone can do this it's Apple. I just want to know how!
 
The holes in this rumor..

Maybe someone can fill in the missing parts. It's one thing to run a high resolution of 960x640 on a 3.5 inch screen using a low powered GPU, but it is entirely another story to be able to run a resolution of 2048x1536 on a 10 inch display. To give it some perspective, Apple's 27 inch displays run at 2560x1440 and requires a fairly powerful discrete graphics chip to do so.

I'm curious to see what this miracle GPU would be that would somehow be capable of supporting a 2048x1536 resolution. The other part of this problem is battery life. Considering the relatively small size of the iPad, I'm also curious what battery would be used to run this configuration.
 
Really?

rmwebs said:
Sounds good.

Although it should be noted that it WILL be slower than the iPad 2. It'll also take a fair while (1+ year) for most apps to get retina resolutions too for obvious reasons.
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How and/or why do you figure that? I'm a developer and I can tell you that it will take me about a day to prepare my pretty large app for a retina iPad. This is because all of my artwork is already in Retina thanks to iPhone 4.

Also, Apple is NOT going to release something that is slower. For games, it is very likely that the device will just scale a lower res OpenGL layer which will probably still look amazing on that screen.
 
If it's real then it will change the portable devices standards once again. The iPad 3 will keep Apple ahead of the competition for some time.
 
smulji said:
How did you jump to the conclusion that iPad 3 will be slower than iPad 2? I'm curious.

Wouldn't this only be the case if the A6 is generally the same architecture as the A5? If it's using a new more modern architecture like that used in Samsung's recently announced Exynos 520 SOC (dual-core Cortex A15 architecture), then iPad 3 should be just as fast if not faster than iPad 2.
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Dual core Cortex A15 chips won't come out until late 2012, too late to be used in the iPad 3. I also think quad core isn't that great in a tablet, since there aren't a lot of background tasks and most apps aren't that well multi-threaded (if they even are at all).

I'd argue for a faster dual core Cortex A9 running at 1.5Ghz (a 50% CPU bump), which makes for a better transition to a dual core Cortex A15 for a hypothetical iPad 4. Faster dual core outperforms quad core most of the time because most apps are not and do not need to be multi-threaded (it's a lot of work for minimal benefit for your typical app).

Do expect the GPU to be bumped again, as we're talking about above 1080p HD resolutions here. I expect to see the MP4 variant of the PowerVR SGX 543 chip (iPad 2 currently uses MP2 variant), much like what's in the Playstation Vita, though with even higher clocks as well.
 
jkichline said:
How and/or why do you figure that? I'm a developer and I can tell you that it will take me about a day to prepare my pretty large app for a retina iPad. This is because all of my artwork is already in Retina thanks to iPhone 4.

Also, Apple is NOT going to release something that is slower. For games, it is very likely that the device will just scale a lower res OpenGL layer which will probably still look amazing on that screen.
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For people that think ahead, they should have made all of their iPad artwork Retina ready as soon as the iPhone 4 was announced. It was a logical no-brainer at that point, especially for apps that started development after it was released!

However, for some reason, companies want to drag their feet as long as possible. It's odd that indie developers adapt to these changes faster than big companies do (my app was Retina ready on the iPhone 4 the day it was released). It literally did take a year for almost all apps I cared about to support the Retina display, which is sad because using a non-Retina app on a Retina display is an awful experience!
 
teng029 said:
Maybe someone can fill in the missing parts. It's one thing to run a high resolution of 960x640 on a 3.5 inch screen using a low powered GPU, but it is entirely another story to be able to run a resolution of 2048x1536 on a 10 inch display. To give it some perspective, Apple's 27 inch displays run at 2560x1440 and requires a fairly powerful discrete graphics chip to do so.

I'm curious to see what this miracle GPU would be that would somehow be capable of supporting a 2048x1536 resolution. The other part of this problem is battery life. Considering the relatively small size of the iPad, I'm also curious what battery would be used to run this configuration.
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For the most part, 99% of what is done on the iPad is 2D drawing, which requires a linear increase in performance. 3D on the other hand is geometric as each pixel is rendered over several times before getting the final picture. I predict we'll see 3D games like Infinity Blade 2 continue to run at 1024x768 and use anti-aliasing to cover up any imperfections.
 
Sacrificing a couple mms of thickness for a better screen is worthy decision as long as it doesn't also increase weight. Increasing weight is unacceptable.
 
Anyone else getting flashbacks to the G3/G4/G5 Mac days when people talk about and compare the A4/A5/A6 iDevice chips? Oooh some things never change.
 
unclejuicyjoe said:
This was my main reason not to buy ipad 1 or 2. The screen just isn't there yet. Hopefully iPad3 will get it right...
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I bought an iPad 1 when they first came out with the unlimited 3G from AT&T and have enjoyed it for nearly 2 years now. Love Love LOVE it. But i held off getting the iPad 2 to wait for the iPad 3. I can wait another few months. :)
 
dagamer34 said:
Dual core Cortex A15 chips won't come out until late 2012, too late to be used in the iPad 3. I also think quad core isn't that great in a tablet, since there aren't a lot of background tasks and most apps aren't that well multi-threaded (if they even are at all).
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Not true. Samsung's Exynos 5250 will launch in Q2 of next year on 32nm node. If Apple stays with Samsung, they could do the same. Historically, they've launched equally or before comparable Samsung SoCs built on the same node. (A4 beat Hummingbird, A5 beat Exynos 42xx in US launch).

Do expect the GPU to be bumped again, as we're talking about above 1080p HD resolutions here. I expect to see the MP4 variant of the PowerVR SGX 543 chip (iPad 2 currently uses MP2 variant), much like what's in the Playstation Vita, though with even higher clocks as well.
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I disagree. That's pushing the power envelope without claiming anything back to save battery. I think the next move is to either shrink the 543 and clock it up or make the jump to Rogue cores.

I don't think a Q1 launch is likely given the availability of 32nm/28nm. Apple is pretty much running the tablet game right now, so I could see a February launch if they prioritized getting a retina iPad over everything else, but the benefits of waiting only a few months for a 28nm/32nm node to ramp up are hard to ignore from a battery standpoint, especially since you're talking about a display that is likely more power hungry.
 
MacDarcy said:
I bought an iPad 1 when they first came out with the unlimited 3G from AT&T and have enjoyed it for nearly 2 years now. Love Love LOVE it. But i held off getting the iPad 2 to wait for the iPad 3. I can wait another few months. :)
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I've waited this long, I can wait for the 3 to hit. I can now maybe see a place in my world for the use of an ipad, that's the biggest factor in all of this. Plus the longer I wait, like with everything, the cheaper, faster, lighter, the ipad gets....
 
rmwebs said:
Sounds good.

Although it should be noted that it WILL be slower than the iPad 2. It'll also take a fair while (1+ year) for most apps to get retina resolutions too for obvious reasons.
Click to expand...

Why would it be slower? With the A6 processor inside it will likely meet or exceed the performance of the iPad 2 at the new resolutions.

Also, any developer worth his salt is already building apps with the new resolutions in mind, so chances are you'd see lots of developers ready with "Retina" updates to iPad apps on launch day.

Though I think it's fair to say that if anything is going to stay static, it will be battery life- though not knowing the energy efficiency of the display, or the A6- even that's not a guarantee.
 
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