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While the report doesn't seem to add much new information...

As an Apple shareholder, I very much resent Wall Street Journal's relentless rumor mongering about iPad 3. Why such an obsession with iPad 3 from a leading newspaper like WSJ? At the narrowcast level that we here are, we read about and talk about all sorts of rumors but people in the wider world pay attention to what WSJ says without knowing the context. I do not like it because it can have an adverse affect on iPad 2 sales during the holiday quarter which will not be good for its financials and the stock price. There is a good reason why Apple is tight-lipped about its product plans.
 
Then you don't follow Apple very much. They normally keep prices the same, and introduce new features. Technology gets cheaper as time passes. How were they able to make the iPad 2 at the same price as the iPad, when they included 2 cameras, a much faster A5 processor, and made it 33% thinner? Same price as the older one. Magic, or simply the price of everything getting cheaper?

You seriously expect the base 16GB iPad 3 to be MORE THAN $829? Not being rude, but are you new to computers?

i fully agree, the iPad 2 is even 30 € cheaper here
 
If anyone thinks the same pricing will apply they will be in for a rude awakening.

The iPad 2 will still be available.

This will be dubbed the iPad Pro and cost a couple hundred more.

Don't believe me ? Just think about it: As it is right now the iPad 2(Love it or Hate it) has NO REAL COMPETITION !

Why would they stop selling that model for the price they have been ?

A lot of you are going to have a Whole new thread of Bitching when you see the price.......But I'll bet you all will still buy it and we will see yet another record first quarter.

You heard it here first :)

I don't know, it doesn't seem feasible or likely, considering. Or what Apple could do is keep just the 16GB iPad2 with wifi for a little while but reduce it to $399 and start the new iPad 3 at $499 with 32GB and ramp up in $100 increments from there. There is a price point that the market shows it can bear for tablets. And let's not forget that the competition currently sells tablets starting @ 1280 x 800 with likely plans to boost that to 1920 x 1080 for 1080P resolution.
 
As an Apple shareholder, I very much resent Wall Street Journal's relentless rumor mongering about iPad 3. Why such an obsession with iPad 3 from a leading newspaper like WSJ? At the narrowcast level that we here are, we read about and talk about all sorts of rumors but people in the wider world pay attention to what WSJ says without knowing the context. I do not like it because it can have an adverse affect on iPad 2 sales during the holiday quarter which will not be good for its financials and the stock price. There is a good reason why Apple is tight-lipped about its product plans.

That's the most intelligent thing I have ever heard


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I don't know, it doesn't seem feasible or likely, considering. Or what Apple could do is keep just the 16GB iPad2 with wifi for a little while but reduce it to $399 and start the new iPad 3 at $499 with 32GB and ramp up in $100 increments from there. There is a price point that the market shows it can bear for tablets. And let's not forget that the competition currently sells tablets starting @ 1280 x 800 with likely plans to boost that to 1920 x 1080 for 1080P resolution.

I don't see any reason they would have to do that. The tech is only a year old and still very good.

It's not like people are going to stop buying these devices.

And why should they cut the prices and make it a magical $499 ???
These new LCDs will not be cheap, and apparently are not easy to make.

They just won't be able to pump out enough for everyone just because they want one.

"I want a Ferrari but that evil company doesn't make a budget model....Waaaaaahhh "


Cry me a F'kn river. The iPad 2 will still be available for $499.

News Flash : You can't get an iPad Pro for $499 either.


I know I'm right.
 
Given the staggered release of iDevices across the world, if Apple does intro a iPad3 with Retina Display in the US, UK, and some EU states, it will continue to sell iPad2 to most of the rest of the world.

Some countries have only just been introduced to iPhone4, 14 months after its US release.
 
Yes close your eyes and pretend Jobs never said "year of iPad 2 - 2011".
You know, sometimes, in the fullness of time, some of the things Jobs says don't always pan out exactly the way he said them.

Sometimes, maybe he was lying or deliberately withholding information he wants to keep confidential. Sometimes, maybe he just doesn't have a magic crystal ball to accurately predict the future with pinpoint precision. Sometimes, maybe he initially wants something to work out one way, but later he changes his strategic vision in response to dynamic market (and other) forces.

For example, consider his statement that Apple would be submitting Facetime to standards bodies to make it an open specification. He said Apple would be starting on that plan within a few days of unveiling Facetime. So far, we have seen no evidence that anything has actually been done to achieve that goal.
 
I don't see any reason they would have to do that. The tech is only a year old and still very good.

It's not like people are going to stop buying these devices.

And why should they cut the prices and make it a magical $499 ???
These new LCDs will not be cheap, and apparently are not easy to make.

They just won't be able to pump out enough for everyone just because they want one.

"I want a Ferrari but that evil company doesn't make a budget model....Waaaaaahhh "


Cry me a F'kn river. The iPad 2 will still be available for $499.

News Flash : You can't get an iPad Pro for $499 either.


I know I'm right.

You can tone down the attitude a bit if you please. It's not necessary. Especially since we're just speculating.

Only going by Apple's track record.

The track record you seem to be going by is just the MacBook versus Macbook Pro. And you also seem to be basing it on the rumor that said that an iPad pro would be release in the fall.

But look at the Macbook Air. That should give an indication of where Apple is heading price-wise. And correct me if I'm wrong, but when the iPhone and iPod touch switched to retina displays, didn't their price points stay relatively the same? I don't recall exactly.

Edit: Ok, so I looked it up. Turns out the price of the iPhone 3GS 16/32GB is the same as the iPhone 4 16/32GB with retina display at $199/$299 respectively. Not to mention the other increased specs of the iPhone 4 over the iPhone 3GS.

This then, would be the most likely scenarios with the iPad 3.
 
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Why make it that high resolution? The battery life would be sapped and it would be slower, why not make it 50% higher - it still would be better by far than any other monitor, screen etc 'cept the iPhone's

Although if they can manage to get that res + battery life + speed + same/lower price, then I would be very very happy!
 
^ There's room in the case for a larger battery. We'll see the same battery life or more. Apple's BIG on the battery kick lately. It's a selling point for them.

I'm ready to camp out right now. :)
Okay, maybe I have no plan to camp out but I will be in line on launch day.
 
Apple MUST put a retina display in the next generation iPad. Not because it's necessary, but because otherwise people will be disappointed if the iPad 3 does NOT have a retina display.

Most customers are just expecting an iPad 3 with retina display, thanks to all these rumours. If Apple doesn't put a retina display in the iPad 3, a lot of people will be disappointed.

Most customers have no idea what a retina display is.
 
The fact of the matter is that most iPad owners are also iPhone owners.

They probably do know what a Retina Display is. It's a better looking display. That's all Joe Consumer really needs to know.
 
This is the one that's going to make the big splash. I had iPad 1, sold it for a MBA 11", and passed on 2. While it's cool, it didn't have THE upgrade feature that mattered...more pixel density. I'll probably pick up a 16GB wifi one if it turns out to be everything I'm hoping for.
 
Why make it that high resolution? The battery life would be sapped and it would be slower, why not make it 50% higher - it still would be better by far than any other monitor, screen etc 'cept the iPhone's

Although if they can manage to get that res + battery life + speed + same/lower price, then I would be very very happy!

This same argument was made prior to the iPhone 4 announcement of it's resolution (even yours truly was convinced they wouldn't quadruple the resolution, but mainly from a cost perspective). As the screen remains the same physical size the power needed for backlight (the most power hungry component in the display) doesn't actually really need to change much - it might have to be increased slightly to compensate for the increased pixel count (less light making it through smaller pixels) but not substantially. From the graphics point of view, driving the interface is not really more expensive with regards to power, considering the resolution is an exact quadrupling. The reason they went with 4x (2x on each axis) the resolution in the iPhone is that scaling the interface to exact squares is a simple computational matter, both in hardware and software. Additionally, remember that in order to qualify for the "Retina" moniker the display must out perform the human eye at a set distance. For the iPhone 4 at 12 inches Apple quoted 300ppi as the limit of 20/20 vision (it's actually a bit lower), and the screen was some ≈330ppi, thus out performing. With the iPad even with this resolution (side note: the original iPad/2 has a higher resolution than even the iPhone 4, but less ppi because of the physical size) because the screen size is physically bigger it requires a significantly higher resolution to achieve ≈300ppi. Even at this resolution it's only 264ppi. Of course, you're likely to hold the iPad at a further distance than the iPhone, so it may still out perform the human eye in regular usage.

Rendering content at that native resolution would be very difficult though, games and such would almost certainly render at a lower resolution and upscale, so there wouldn't be any real improvement in those applications. (I wonder if any current iPad games are rendering below native res? Seems likely.) Remember current consoles can barely render modern games at resolutions barely above that of the iPad, 720p or even 1080p. Even modern computers would have a hard time rendering a modern game at 2048x1536.
 
Does anyone know where 9.7" came from?

7" or 8" or 9" or 10"

Why did they sit down and think, yeah, 9.7" is ideal.
9.8" a bit too big, 9.6" a bit too small.

There must be some reason they did not just go with 10" it sounds so much better then 9.7"

Because inches are not the metric system in which science and most parts of the world use. Screen size and rim size for some reason, mostly historic, use inches. The other thing to consider is that you have to do some Pythagoras to get the diagonal length and there is the trick: If you have a wide screen, the inches for the diagonal are more that for a same area 3:4 display.

My dream is that one day the screen size will be measured in either square cm or square inches and given ratio because it would actually give you the information how much space you have to see something.

And another thought: THANK YOU :apple: for staying 3:4 ratio! It is ridiculous, yes RIDICULOUS that computer monitors in 3:4 ratio get rare or non-existent. Especially with word processors and operating systems using bars and menus on the upper or lower part of the monitor makes web books (these little ones) look like you are writing 3-liners instead of letters... As long as we don't go landscape on US legal format (216 x 356 mm or 8.5 x 14.0 in), that is absolutely pointless. Please, don't come with the excuse "but I want to watch my movies in landscape on it" (digital copy because they don't have a DVD drive) - it's a web book for Christ's sake! Use a portable DVD player - they are cheaper anyways - web books target was at one time to make INTERNET and OFFICE mobile. Oh - and who designs web pages sideways? I didn't find that, yet either. So, for an overview, 16:9 ratio monitors are just the worst move ever. :(
 
The fact of the matter is that most iPad owners are also iPhone owners.

They probably do know what a Retina Display is. It's a better looking display. That's all Joe Consumer really needs to know.

Agreed. In this day and age with "HD" tv's and consumers constantly coming across things like 720p or 1080p it's easy to imaging they'd understand the benefits of a higher res display - even if it's just saying "It's a sharper image".

Apple actually have made things fairly easy on themselves here with their traditional knack for coining up marketing terms that are easily identified and understood, I'm willing to bet that a good deal of people out there understand that the goal of a Retina display is to produce an image that outperforms your eye, although in different terms I'm sure. Besides all that, the difference between an iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 display is noticeable by the majority of these consumers, it's a significant selling point of the 4 after all. They managed to get consumers to care about differences between NTSC and PAL resolution, VCR and DVD and Blu-ray, so I'm sure they'll manage to do the same here when IMO the difference is larger.
 
Won't be a proper iPad3 sans the A6 chip... I think the A6 news is more important than retina displays, which we know are working out manufacturing probs. When the A6 appears, the iPad3 is going to be released within a few months.
 
16:9 ratio monitors are just the worst move ever. :(

I don't know if I agree with you here. I did dislike widescreen monitors at first, but as I've become used to them I'm convinced that 16:10 is pretty much the best ratio for a laptop screen. While your points are valid with regards to certain web pages and word processing, etc. I find that the extra horizontal resolution really improves multitasking, and general user interface. Common actions like browsing multiple folders side by side, having multiple applications on screen (two documents perhaps, or a web browser and IM client, or any variation) are much easier to perform with more horizontal play I reckon.

Additionally, since I mainly use a Laptop the fact that the screen ratio dictates the form factor of the notebook is extremely important. 16:10 is much better than 4:3 for me as it allows horizontal space needed for elements like a proper keyboard as well as speakers on the side, etc. while not making the laptop ridiculously deep. It also makes it more comfortable to use IMO, and more importantly easier to store in backpack (the MBP I'm typing on has a 15" screen yet is barely deeper (hinge to trackpad) than a typical folder I'd put in my bag), case, etc.

EDIT: I would definitely agree that 4:3 seems like a good ratio for a tablet on the other hand for numerous reasons. I wasn't convinced when I first saw the iPad but upon using it it really makes both portrait and landscape modes very usable, instead of either lacking pixels in width or height. And It's pretty comfortable to hold.16:9 tablets just look a bit wrong to me...
 
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I'd expect the low-end Retina iPad 3 (16GB without 3G) to cost at least as much as the high-end iPad 2 (64GB with 3G). I mean, I'd love to see the Retina version to replace the current product line at the same price level, but let's be realistic here: That's just not possible.

My thoughts exactly. I have no issue with a 2x resolution display (who would?) but considering monitors that break the 2k barrier start around $800-$1k I can't imagine the price would be able to stay the same.
 
iPad and tablets in general never attracted me enough for buying them. If Apple would give this massive resolution in iPad3 it would get the "wow" factor to attract new customers. This also would be a major improvement justifying an upgrade from iPad2 to 3.

In countries where electronics aren't so inexpensive like US, an upgrade from iPad1 to iPad2 really doesn't justify itself. iPad3 would be the ultimate photo viewer/portable movie player. One ore two versions later we'll see an iPad 3d.
 
Surprise Surprise...

"Wall Street Journal Confirms Early 2012 iPad 3 with Retina Display"
What... just like they (and everyone else) confirmed a 2011 iPad 3?

They're just going to keep pushing the date back until the iPad 3 finally comes out.
 
At this point I don't know why anyone would expect there to not be a retina display.

I could not agree more.

The really exciting news is it's a good time to skip over the iPhone 5, the iPad 2, and save big.

Waiting until the iPhone 6, and iPad 3, are released is a great strategy.

At that point we will also enjoy the benefit of a much improved iOS, Lion will have the bugs sorted out, and the great likelihood of an A6 powered iPhone along with the iOS upgrades that promises to bring.

In addition the bugs and questions about iCloud will all be sorted out and we will enjoy clear sailing.

So I for one, am going to sit back, relax, and take a nice break from the upgrade madness. Let everyone else have at it.

I'm going to enjoy reading all the rumors and dialog from others that are spending money between now and then, and take great delight that I'm not one of them :)
 
Third revision and I still don't have a use for it.

We're… diehard Apple people… and I still don't know what to do with an iPad. I can't really use it as a portable workstation because the input is too clumsy for documents, it doesn't read well compared to eInk and it's too big to be really portable without having to carry it (i.e. can't slide into my pocket like my iPod touch).

I guess that I'll have to file it under the same category of the iPhone. Somewhat overpriced and under-technologied without a distinct use.

Believe, me I'd love to buy one, but I just can't justify it if it's only for entertainment, as I'd rather spend money on something that would be more entertaining.
You're in the minority. The iPad is not really a substitute for a laptop or a cell phone. It's somewhere in the middle… it does (according to Steve Jobs when the original iPad was introduced) 7 core things better than a laptop and better than a cell phone:

• Photos • Music • Video • Games • Book Reading • Email • Internet •​

Of course, with the App Store firmly entrenched, the iPad will do thousands of things. "Under-technologied"? Never heard that phrase before, but I know what you're suggesting. Don't what you're talking about though. I have an iPad 2 and it sings. No matter the app, it works flawlessly. It holds the other open apps in memory and switching is extremely fluid, leaving me exactly where I was before. The seven core apps are most certainly better on the iPad than on a laptop or cell phone… and everything else I throw at it.

If you need more of a combo experience of an iPad/Laptop, get a ZaggFiolio. It comes with a bluetooth keyboard and with it synced to your iPad, typing was just as easy as a laptop. Plus you have the option of removing the iPad and simply using as a tablet.
 
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