Planned
obsolescence bugs me.
Evidence continues to dribble in that Apple is planning to launch not only the iPhone 5 but also a new iPad this year. The iPad was last upgraded as recently as March, but we're hearing from a well-placed source within the UK's biggest satellite broadcaster that a further - presumably pre-Christmas - iPad update is on the …
If apple were to release another iPad it will only be a re-hashed version of the current model.
They don't have a new processor at their disposal to put in the tablet, although a new higher res screen might be a good move.
But if they do that what will they put in next years iPad??
What benefit would a 16:9 screen bring? It's already 16:12. They're not going to make the iPad any longer so all you'd be doing is reducing the vertical resolution of the display to get rid of the black borders, removing the option to zoom if you're not bothered about widescreen and shrinking the playback area of 4:3 media.
There is nothing magical about the 16:9 aspect ratio - it is a throw-back from old (and largely unseen outside tech-expos) analog HD video which was designed to fit on a 4x3 video wall of 4:3 CRTs (full-HD analog screens being somewhere between exhorbitantly priced and completely unobtainable) and made it into the digital age because broadcasters aren't keen on changing formats any more than they absolutely have to (which is fair enough). Converting to 16:9 from most film stock is either going to need black bands or the edges cropped anyway as film uses different aspects (multiple) again.
Personally, I like screens with pixel-resolutions that can be expressed as 2^x or 2^x+2^(x-1). ;-) So 2048x1536 sounds good for me - particularly for a tablet format device. (Just give it to me attached to something open, rather than a control-freak's wet dream).
Wish they'd hurry up and introduce daylight readable colour screens* to tablets, then they'd have a real USP over laptops/netbooks. The sooner Apple take the lead, the sooner the rest of the tablet market will follow and the sooner the prices of 'outdoor' tablets will become affordable.
* Preferably the ones that don't need backlights and can be viewed in natural lighting.