back to article 'The new iPad' revealed: Full specs, rumor scorecard

As expected, Apple announced its latest iPad at an invitation-only event* in San Francisco to a crowd of happy journos and live-bloggers. There's a good bit new about the latest iPad – but not its name. The updated Cupertinian fondleslab was merely referred to as the "the new iPad" or the "third-generation iPad". For weeks …

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  1. Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Mortgages available

      For any prospective purchasers.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Mortgages available

        How is any Android Tablet maker gonna compete with an iPad2 at that price?

        They couldn't compete when it was the top of the range model. You're in denial

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. Adam-the-Kiwi
          WTF?

          Re: How is any Android Tablet maker gonna compete...

          Why assume that Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face's 'Meh' was driven by a love of Android? Are fanbois getting so paranoid that they see Android tablets lurking in every comment that's not a sycophantic love-in of Apple?

          Perhaps 'Meh' refers to the amount of press coverage devoted to what is only an evolution of a device that is the preserve of rich people (relatively-speaking, of course) who mostly want to browse the interwebs on their sofa or in a coffee shop. It is not, really, in the grand scheme of things, going to change the trajectory of human civilisation...

    2. Neil Greatorex
      FAIL

      Meh2

      or meh^2

      So much hype, so much tosh.

    3. g e

      Dare I venture...

      The iPad Meh-s

      If they'd called it the iPad2s the meme would be complete...

    4. dave 93

      Classic Apple

      Another 'Goldilocks' upgrade - not too little, not too much. Gets your attention without pissing off existing customers.

  2. ThomH

    The pixel count is the best feature

    Screen resolution seems disappointingly to have plateaued in the industry as a whole. Any hope of someone bringing out a laptop with pixels I'm no longer aware of any time soon?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      new ipads will be relased in the

      UK on November 1st, but there will be limited numbers available.

      Queues are already beginning to form outside apples flagship store in London. Tent city forming.

      Police raid camp thinking it was the Occupy London lot.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Police raid camp thinking it was the Occupy London lot". - Oh come-on, the Apple fanbois weren't *that* middle class.

    2. aThingOrTwo

      Any hope of someone bringing out a laptop any time soon

      Yes. Apple MacBooks will have retina displays this year.

    3. RegisterThis

      Re: The pixel count is the best feature

      Agree: Pixel count is nice, but there is a point where you actually need size to view it on and personally I think 1280x800 for something up to 10 inches gives a great picture and actually allows text to be large enough to read. This pixel race just allows more birds-eye view and arguably more zooming required to do anything that requires reading text. Spot the generation who will all be wearing glasses/contaxts by age 30 if this nonsense continues!

      1. a_been

        Re: The pixel count is the best feature

        Text stays the same size, resolution improves so if anything there should be less zooming.

      2. King Jack

        Re: The pixel count is the best feature

        You cannot damage your eyes by viewing small text. At most you will tire the eye muscles, but like any human muscle it will get stronger with use. Getting old diminishes eye sight, use doesn't.

  3. W.O.Frobozz
    Stop

    Quite yawntastic

    Given the orgy of free advertising the local papers around me have been giving Apple all morning (including a "last minute..game changer in ipad3! new screen that feels like textures!"), this new fondleslab is pretty..well, evolutionary, rather than the big earth shattering revolution the mundane media was expecting.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Quite yawntastic

      Textures coming to Android any time soon

      1. Uncle Siggy

        Re: Quite yawntastic

        Look for 16 bit polygons soon.

    2. Giles Jones Gold badge

      Re: Quite yawntastic

      So tell me what ground-breaking features you would add to it?

      Top Gear (for instance) are always raving about new cars when they get released, yet last time I looked they still (mostly) have 4 wheels, seats and drive along the ground.

      Don't you think a resolution doubling is impressive enough? better than most HD TVs now yet a fraction of the size.

      If this was a new Samsung tablet the fandroids would be saying how rubbish it makes the iPad look.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Quite yawntastic

        I agree that the screen is nice. Not as nice as 1200dpi like the printed books I read, but okay. Slightly lower resolution than my ancient laser printer. Not sure who Apple shows these things to that can't see the pixels, though. Stevie Wonder, perhaps.

        But for the money they're asking there's no way I'd buy one. When you compare that to a laptop for half the price the discussion's over as far as I'm concerned.

  4. Mondo the Magnificent
    Go

    In essence...

    ..just another iPad that's been over hyped by the media and speculative fanbois..

    A few improvements, but in the Apple tradition not a "rip it up and start again" approach which seems to work exceptionally well for them..

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Holmes

      Re: In essence...

      Rip it up and start again? You must be young

      OS7 - OS8

      OS9 (Roseta/Classic) - OS X

      680X0 - Power PC - Intel

      floppy - USB

      Firewire - Thunderbolt

      Optical Drive - Network

      Apple start again all the time

      1. g e

        Re: In essence...

        Woo.

        Abacus - Calculator

    2. Neil Greatorex
      FAIL

      Re: In essence...

      "..just another iPad that's been over hyped by the media and speculative fanbois.."

      and El Reg..

      Shame.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: In essence...

        It's big tech news; whether we like it or not. It'd be an omission for El Reg *not* to cover it.

  5. a33a

    2011/2012

    2011/2012 (ie the iPhone 4S , iPad 3 etc.) a quiet generation for Apple (and the industry). Perhaps all that can be done technologically and viably at this moment has been done? The best we are getting now are pointless quadcore devices.Nothing in this past generation has been particularly Game changing.

    Oh well perhaps that locally based haptic feedback tech will make a splash soon.

    1. Adam T

      Re: 2011/2012

      Yep well, a quiet period will be a nice opportunity for devs to catch up. iPad 2 & iPhone 4S are still way ahead of the curve compared to what people are creating for them... I think it's fair to say having to create double size assets is enough for this cycle (and now we have to upgrade everybody's damned monitors so they can work with them!).

      No haptics was a definitely a shame, unlike Apple to miss out on something good, so maybe it's just bad timing or not quite ready yet. Or maybe we'll be reading "Apple buys Senseg" stories on Friday. :-p

    2. Voland's right hand Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: 2011/2012

      Quoting "Babylon 5, In the Beginning" - beware of the quiet ones. The iPad is a fine example - it just officially relegated LTE to a dumb pipe.

      Here we have the first "must have, will have" LTE device and it does not do IMS. It is the first Apple iOS based mobile device to be usable for _PROPER_ video conferencing and video calls and it does it bypassing the cellular standards on the subject. It does not encode as the 3GPP says it is supposed to, it does not interop as 3GPP says it is supposed to and it does not request resources as the 3GPP says it is supposed to. As a result of this it does not pay operator bridge troll fees as they thought it is supposed to.

      As I have said many times - Apple has to be bonkers to buy into the delusional business model behind IMS+LTE and will use 4G only when it is confident that it can use it as a dumb pipe. And voila - it just did it.

      By the way all ANALitical muppets (honorable el reg not withstanding) missed this one amidst the frenzy on why this device is supposedly "revolutionary".

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Scott Mckenzie

      gLol

      Can you catch me cuckoo in that cloud based land of yours please!

      1. ThomH

        Re: gLol

        You probably don't want to live there; the residents are always jumping out and hassling you whenever you attempt to cross a bridge.

    2. R 11

      Apps

      Does your tablet beat the iPad for Apps?

      Let's face it, you can't win on technology alone. If Apple can make a lower specced device that still offers a better experience, Android will still fail to capture market share.

      1. morphoyle

        Re: Apps

        Unlike the ipad, small screen android apps scale up in a fashion that still allows them to be useful.

        1. Giles Jones Gold badge

          Re: Apps

          They damn well need to, since there's so few decent tablet apps for Android.

          Scaled up apps are pointless, you might as well just get a bigger phone.

      2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Super Joint Apps in SurReal World Orders ..... Courtesy of the Learned Establishment

        R 11, Hi,

        The Magic Trick Apple and Android must learn and energise is Automatic Systems Support for Parallel Private and EMPiratical Communicating Platforms ..... Networking AI Plan Phormations

        Or Be Prepared to Accept IT is HyperRadioProActively Provided, and in Real Beta Great Game ARG Plays Deliver ... well, Current Catastrophic Present RePlacement of Old Master Plans with Virtual Pilot Flight Control .... a Heavenly Deep Underground Upgrade for Astutely Aware Zeroday Traders/Grand Masters of Future Zens' Paths.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Apps @ R 11

        >> Does your tablet beat the iPad for Apps?

        Please can you name some apps that you USE? Also /most/ users don't really care about apps for actual productivity etc, all they care about is browsing and to some extent games.

        1. a_been
          WTF?

          Re: Apps @ R 11

          25 billion apps have been downloaded but "most/ users don't really care about apps for actual productivity etc". Yeah OK.

          1. Gio Ciampa

            Re: Apps @ R 11

            5 first billion of those are fart apps..

            The next 5 billion, they were fart apps too...

            The 5 billion after that... Angry Birds...

            After that they go into a bit of a decline...

            (with apologies to DNA and Marvin)

    3. TangD
      Boffin

      I guess we're pretty gullible

      Or it might be that we are locked in to an extent, we bought when Apple came up with a tablet people could actually use rather than waiting for everyone else to scramble to make me too products. I probably have over $300 worth of software (at original purchase price, I'm sure a lot has been discounted now) on my device, plus maybe another $200 of TV shows, music etc. I could probably fight to transfer the media to another tablet but seriously, why would I bother? Right now this shares between my iPad and my wife's iPhone seamlessly, after I buy a new device it'll continue to share between those 2 as long as the new device plays nicely. Yes I know that means I'm caught in Apples net but it's not so bad as it all works. Anyway, let's look at your points as they are.

      The cost difference of the device depreciated over the amount of time I've had the 1st generation one it is negligible, I mean what are we talking here, less than $10 a month, less than $5 (I don't know what an equivalent transformer costs)? If that's an issue for you then you probably should save money for food not tablets. What about resale value, are people lining up for second hand transformers (again I don't know the answer, just asking)?

      Performance? Really? You've done a side by side comparison of real world application performance, with the new iPad? That's awesome. Or is this about on paper specifications that no one in the general population (you know the big group where products make most money) cares about. I very much doubt there is a significant performance difference in actual use cases that I'm likely to come across. If I'm wrong then I'm sure that will come out in the next month which will be before I 'upgrade'.

      Weight and thickness, again I'm in awe that you think you'll detect this in use, but then I'm still using an iPad 1 so I suspect this isn't going to be an issue for me. I'll give you that the noise Apple made about thin and light last time sets them up for this but that's something for you to direct to Apple (I'm sure they'll take your feedback into account) not the owners of the devices. Honestly, we don't care, that's not why we buy them.

      Capacity... erm? I've not filled the 64Gb I've got but then I tend not to keep every bit of media I've ever owned on my tablet. How much extra do you have or is this a usual complaint about not being able to plug in extra storage? Do you not have access to the could where you are? What part of history are you living in? I can already plug in the SD card from my camera or the camera directly by USB (yes I had to buy a cable but I already own it so money already sunk again) which is about the only use case I can think of where I'd need external storage that doesn't come via the network.

      OS... Well that's a bit subjective. I'll give you that recent iOS releases seem to have been buggy and rushed out the door but the interface is what I'm used to using. I've used Android, it's fine but I find it harder to use due to lack of familiarity. Applications seem to run slower on it as well but that might be confirmation bias on my part, bad application coding or just the device I was using (no standardization y'see). Again I'm not going to swap to something that is as good or just a little bit better, it would need to do something really interesting to make the leap worthwhile.

      I'm afraid you're going to have to significantly expand your etc, etc to show me the use case that would make me think that I should move away from Apple. I would move with a compelling reason that was enough to overcome the inertia of existing software and familiarity but nothing you've presented here gives me that. I suspect that you're not in Apples target market (normal non techie consumers with money to spend regularly driving their 30% store cut) hence this won't appeal to you. If I'm wrong appologies for the mischaracterization.

      Oh and tethering, so I'd need to get another device to carry around with me? Right now I only need my employer supplied blackberry and my personal iPad. Why on earth would I want to unintegrate something as seamless as a tablet or start paying monthly phone charges to carry another phone?

      I'd love to see Android manufactures step up their game, competition drives innovation. I'd be very excited about the device that overcame the ownership inertia as that would be the kind of step change that made me not upgrade my existing laptop and get a tablet 2 years ago, but honestly right now the only differentiating factors I see are a mines bigger than yours in areas where I don't need more :-(

      Anyway, let me know if I've missed something important it's not too late to stop me making what you clearly consider to be a serious purchasing mistake, it's advice I'd actualy greatfuly take

      1. DaveyDaveDave

        Re: I guess we're pretty gullible

        tl;dr, but for me your first sentence sums up exactly why I wouldn't buy an iDevice. You make the point that it all works, so you're happy to be locked in, but do you really believe that things won't change? That Apple won't go the way of Microsoft / RIM eventually? That something that *just works* better won't come along sooner or later? How will you feel about the hundreds of pounds (it really never occurred to me that you could spend that much on apps) then?

        1. JDX Gold badge

          Re: I guess we're pretty gullible

          >>That Apple won't go the way of Microsoft / RIM eventually?

          By the time that happens, you probably won't want to watch House Series 5 anymore... you may lose content but generally that's not such a big deal... if you had textbooks and so on it would be different, but most just buy films or novels and consume a handful of times.

          1. DaveyDaveDave
            WTF?

            Re: I guess we're pretty gullible

            "By the time that happens, you probably won't want to watch House Series 5 anymore"

            Good point, I forgot that content has a sell-by date. That's why there are no films more than 5 years old, and photos are entirely useless after the memories have faded.

      2. sloblock

        Re: I guess we're pretty gullible

        well said

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I guess we're pretty gullible

        So... you're celebrating being you spent a fortune on software and media and locked yourself into a platform?

        Yay.

        Good for you.

        I've got a great get-fit regime for you, if you're interested: Just wear these manacles and break those rocks over there. I'll only charge you $10 a day...

        1. TangD
          Happy

          Re: I guess we're pretty gullible

          ;-)

          Not celebrating, just saying. I would move but I'd need a good reason. If you buy a lot of software that'll be an issue on what ever platform you start on. If you don't buy stuff then you're not really the target audience for apple. If you think that's a fortune on media and software over 2 years you've clearly never owned a games console (another lock in!). I have a lot of Windows software too, it locks me into that platform. I have a mac but very little software on it so no lock in (I mostly buy games, so shoot me).

          What I said was that for my situation iPad 3 makes sense and none of the reasons thrown by the OP would be a reason for an existing Apple customer to move. For an Andriod user or non aligned customer or someone who doesn't spend much at Apple's stores the same points MAY give a completely different decision. I don't know, I'm not in that situation. I pay my Apple tax as I no longer have the time to roll my own (I did that for years) and now earn enough that the time Apple's model gives me back is worth the money to me.

          All that said my original comment stands. I'm still a techie at heart and if there are features I'm not aware of that would make it worth the switch I'd love to hear because it would influence my decision on the platform I select for the next coulpe of years

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      OS?

      Seriously!? Seriously? The UX? Really? Really? Seriously?

  7. Bush_rat
    Meh

    Meh

    My 1st gen isnt a speed demon, and I have noticed that pretty much every app just crashes. So if a restore doesn't work, I'll consider a new iPad.

    1. R 11

      Re: Meh

      Turn off bookmark sync under iCloud in settings. That was sufficient to stop most app crashes for me.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Meh

        BBBBBUT, IT JUST WORKS!

  8. Andrew_b65
    Meh

    Why bother...

    ... ripping it up and starting again. Apple now have enough followers who's wealth exceeds their common sense. All they need do is squeeze out a 'new' model each year and it'll be sucked up with last year's shiny tossed into the toy box for the little'uns.

    Retina PPI? I don't see any current need to supply more than 1920 horizontal pixels in a device like this. Even a 4:3 device would be capable of displaying full HD video.

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