Apple kills it with new iPad lineup

[Timman_24]

Just read the keynote of the new iPad lineup. Looks fantastic. Retina display. Quad core. 10 hour battery life. LTE option. 1gb of ram. Full iPhoto functionality. 1080p processing. iPhone 4s camera. Shoots 1080p stabilized video. On and on.

The most exciting news is they will retain the iPad 2 16gb model as the base model at a retail price of 399. Looks like they have shored up the mid range of the market.

[ImaNihilist]

Yeah, they did. I'm probably going to get one now. That display is insane. I wish it had an input. I'm also interested to find out what resolution it exports. It might seem silly, but the thing I'm MOST excited about is running a terminal app called Prompt because I'm interested to see how many lines it can display at a single time. 1024x768 didn't cut it, but with the new resolution…I might not even need my MacBook anymore for most things.

A 3MP display really changes the gaming landscape in a fundamental way IMO. 1024x728 couldn't really do an RTS. The experience was poor. Everything was just a little too big to give it the feel that we are used to these days. Now that's all different. As the GPU gets more powerful textures, lighting and shaders are going to get better. It's going to be really hard for even consoles to compete with that. I'm pretty interested to see how the Unreal engine progresses on iOS now. I tried playing a game on my 4S over AirPlay on a 1080p display but it was just too laggy. But with the new iPad it might be possible.

Biggest problem I see now is actually the developer tools. Great for apps, not really there yet for games. There's a lot of porting work that needs to be done engine wise, and I think most big companies are hesitant because things seem to be changing to fast. Perhaps now things might settle down, since we aren't going to see a resolution higher than 2048x1536, at least they have some hard parameters to work with. Didn't really make sense yesterday to work on a graphics engine for the iPad and optimize it around a 1024x768 resolution only to realize you now have to cut all your shaders if you want to increase texture resolution and keep the same frame rate.

Kind of funny how Apple resurrected 1024x768 and then killed it again for good.

[Nabby]

Just read the keynote of the new iPad lineup. Looks fantastic. Retina display. Quad core. 10 hour battery life. LTE option. 1gb of ram. Full iPhoto functionality. 1080p processing. iPhone 4s camera. Shoots 1080p stabilized video. On and on.

The most exciting news is they will retain the iPad 2 16gb model as the base model at a retail price of 399. Looks like they have shored up the mid range of the market.

Yes and no, I think the big draw with iOS is the app lineup.

- 9 Hour Battery on 4G LTE, still great but not 10 Hours.

- I think the camera is more like the iPhone 4. 5 megapixels and not 8. Personally have never wanted to nor to I need to take video/pictures with my iPad.

- Quad core is in the graphics processor. The regular processor is still dual core.

I have the iPad 2 and will likely not be upgrading. The only compelling features for me are the Retina Display and the 4G LTE option.

[Timman_24]

"Only compelling" feature is the retina. Haha that's like the biggest draw. Also I've heard the battery life is very conservative. The battery is 42whr which is a lot larger than previous battery. Some have reported 17 hrs on wifi.

[Nabby]

"Only compelling" feature is the retina. Haha that's like the biggest draw. Also I've heard the battery life is very conservative. The battery is 42whr which is a lot larger than previous battery. Some have reported 17 hrs on wifi.

Not disagreeing but I would literally have to buy it for myself. My girlfriend has all but taken over my iPad 2. Seeing as I just bought a Springfield Armory XD9 , dropping another $500+ on a device may not be in my best interest.

[Timman_24]

I agree. I'd rather have an SLR right now

[ImaNihilist]

"Only compelling" feature is the retina. Haha that's like the biggest draw.

1080p porn on a 264PPI display.

[kpxgq]

how ridiculous is it that i want that i want the display from a consumer tablet to replace my main "professional" desktop monitor lol

[ImaNihilist]

how ridiculous is it that i want that i want the display from a consumer tablet to replace my main "professional" desktop monitor lol

It will be interesting to see if they start to get high resolution displays into notebooks as well. If they can get a 1680x1050 or higher display into a 13" it's going to be damn sweet.

[Nabby]

It will be interesting to see if they start to get high resolution displays into notebooks as well. If they can get a 1680x1050 or higher display into a 13" it's going to be damn sweet.

Give me that in a 13" Macbook Air and I'm all over it...

[proxops-pete]

So I heard that the new model's name is not iPad 3 but "New iPad"?! Is this for real?! o.O

[vertices]

I love it. I'm getting one in the near future to replace my Xoom. I'm sticking with Android for my phone due to having a Google Voice number and iPhone sucks with that, but I think I'm going iPad on my tablet. I'm also gonna grab a new Air whenever the Ivy Bridge versions come out.

I just started messing around with Macs. I have an older Core2Duo 20" iMac on my desk that I use sharemouse between it and my main PC. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm starting to really like Macs. I really like how similar the shell is to nix systems.

My office system now is a 4 LCD display including the iMac. Windows 7 system as host for 3 displays, running VMware Workstation with several Linux Mint systems, and then the iMac. All 3 major OSs spanned across 4 monitors and all controlled with a single keyboard and mouse. Pretty cool actually.

[vertices]

So I heard that the new model's name is not iPad 3 but "New iPad"?! Is this for real?! o.O

It's not a model name. It's just iPad, and the new one.

http://gigaom.com/apple/the-new-ipad-name/

Part of this post-PC reality is a new normalcy. Consumers don’t have to be sold on getting a new iOS device anymore; they’re on everyone’s short list when contemplating a new purchase. And that’s especially true in the tablet market, where Apple sells more devices than all of its competitors combined. So it’s time for the company to treat its post-PC products the same way it’s been treating its PC product segments for some time: as devices you’re going to buy and frequently replace over several product generations, no matter the specs.

Apple has long been doing this in the PC space, where its products are simply called MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac mini. Sure, the most dedicated Apple followers will always know which generation of the MacBook Pro has which CPU, and which ports are present on which laptop iteration. But for the rest of us, these differences don’t matter all that much. We buy the latest generation, trusting Apple that the hardware will live up to our expectations. We expect the MacBook Air to be the best in portable computing and the MacBook Pro to be powerful – and we don’t need complicated revision numbers to keep track of all the changes over the years.

In a way, not going for names like iPad 3 or iPad HD shows that the iPad has grown up: it’s a device that’s here to stay and shape the post-PC world for years to come. It’s the new iPad, made for a new world.

[proxops-pete]

I have to disagree... normalcy? really? That's bogus as you need model names to refer to distinguish from older models... or simply to just differentiate them. That has to be the biggest weak sauce from Apple thus far...

[ImaNihilist]

They've done that on and off again with other products. The iPod Touch has remained "iPod Touch" despite several revisions.