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What Apple hopes you didn't notice about iPad2

cnn.com

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Re: What Apple hopes you didn't notice about iPad2

#11

Post by masklinn »

> How much memory will the new iPad have? We don't know, because Jobs didn't tell us. Given that he ticked off all the other major specs of the device

Not really. He said the CPU was dual-core (not even sure he said it was 1GHz) and he said the GPU was much faster. That's about all he did.

> But given the standard pace of technological improvement, one would expect a 128-gigabyte hard drive by now. Could tablet design have reached some kind of inherent size limit?

God, can't these people learn to look up information?

It's at the limit of wide-availability NAND. That's why all flash pmps on the market also top out at 64GB. Toshiba demonstrated a 128GB chip in 2009, which at the time was supposed to reach production by the end of 2010, clearly that has not come to pass.

> Contrary to what the rumor mill had been expecting, there was no improvement in screen resolution -- meaning the iPad 2 is already lagging behind the iPhone 4, with its much-touted retina display. (An iPhone 5 is expected later this year.)

Except, of course, last time I checked the iPad's resolution (1024x768) is bigger than the iPhone 4's (960x640). And if you want to go "but... he's talking about density!"... the iPad already lags behind the iPhone (not 3G or 3GS, just iPhone) as well as the 2010 macbook air (11") or the nanos (since the first generation).

And why the iPhone 5 reference? Is he expecting an other bump in iPhone resolution? ('cause it's not going to happen)

> And while Jobs told us how many frames per second of video the new iPad's cameras would shoot, he didn't mention megapixels. This is not a spec he has been shy about announcing when it came to iPhone models.

I'm pretty sure he said "VGA" and "HD". You can argue that "HD" can be 720p or 1080p (it's the former), but that's hardly "didn't mentioning megapixels" and the iPad specs page was put up on Apple's website during the announcement. It has the camera specs.

Finally,

> Cloud sync?

Is not a hardware feature, it was not in the iOS 4.3 betas, and Jobs was definitely not expected to demo iOS5, why mention it in relation to iPad?

Re: What Apple hopes you didn't notice about iPad2

#14

Post by mechanical_fish »

Apple really does need some serious competition soon, if only so that people will stop writing irritating articles comparing Apple's product line with figments of their imagination.

It would be one thing to read an article saying "the iPad has X amount of RAM, but Tablet Q has Y amount of RAM, and that's probably why Tablet Q is so much better at tasks A and B." But instead we get "the thing that you can buy right now at a store offers X, but it really doesn't hold a candle to the thing I saw on Star Trek last night".

Real engineers ship, people. There are a lot of constraints. You can't wish them away, so you can't compare a real thing with an imaginary one. You can only compare two real things. And you can't part them out, imagining an animal with the vision of an eagle and the reach of a giraffe and the speed of a cheetah and the fecundity of E. coli. That can't happen. Maybe you can design it on paper, and maybe you can build a very scary-looking prototype, but that animal can't be shipped.

The only actual comparison I see here is one sentence about a RAM spec: The Xoom has 1GB, and that's bigger. What this means in real life, however, I do not see here. Yeah, I know the number is bigger, but tell me why I care. Tell me why it's worth every other compromise that I'll have to make, just to get that RAM.

Re: What Apple hopes you didn't notice about iPad2

#15

Post by masklinn »

thenduks wrote: post #5

Does anyone care about any of these points? Wires? Yea, we still need wires for some things. Apple doesn't do stuff that's not going to be a good experience. Memory? ...don't know, don't care how much memory is in my original iPad - I only care that it performs well - and it does. Screen resolution? Don't know what rumors they were following, but it's completely impractical today to put a retina display on an iPad-si…

> Wires? Yea, we still need wires for some things. Apple doesn't do stuff that's not going to be a good experience.

Having to plug crap in and out is not a very good experience though. In fact, Apple seems to agree. See AirDrop in Lion.

> Memory? ...don't know, don't care how much memory is in my original iPad - I only care that it performs well - and it does.

Disagreement, Safari is a pain to use on more than two different page (outside the issue of not having tabs or anything simple) because it keeps reloading the fuck out of them due to lack of RAM (iPhone 4 has far less issues there, with a similar resolution)

> Megapixels? ...pointless fluff marketing numbers.

Yeppers.

> Storage space? I bought a 32gb and wish I had saved the 100 bucks. All my content is on my Mac which has many hundreds of GB of storage.

Well yeah but not everybody's is, and iPad would be even better if there never was a need to tether it to anything (but a wall outlet for charging).

This is not the case currently.

On the other hand, storage space — as screen resolution — is a technical problem: you can't find 128GB NAND chips on the market, not in the amount Apple needs anyway. That's also why the iPod Touch still has only 64GB NAND and the iPhone finds itself lagging at 32.

Re: What Apple hopes you didn't notice about iPad2

#16

Post by olivercameron »

The author has completely missed the whole point of the iPad, which is to make personal computing simple. Consumers do not need to know how many GHz or how much RAM their iPad has, they just need to know that it'll run apps, play games, videos and edit documents. If you feel so inclined, Apple lists most of the specifications on their website.

I know a lot of people who are literally scared of the old-fashioned PC, because of all the jargon associated with buying one. The iPad is revolutionising by simplifying.

Re: What Apple hopes you didn't notice about iPad2

#17

Post by tomjen3 »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #14

Apple really does need some serious competition soon, if only so that people will stop writing irritating articles comparing Apple's product line with figments of their imagination . It would be one thing to read an article saying "the iPad has X amount of RAM, but Tablet Q has Y amount of RAM, and that's probably why Tablet Q is so much better at tasks A and B." But instead we get "the thing that you can buy right n…

Okay, it has less ram than the Galaxy tab.

And honestly, the iPad 2 hasn't shipped yet.

Re: What Apple hopes you didn't notice about iPad2

#18

Post by briancooley »

thenduks wrote: post #5

Does anyone care about any of these points? Wires? Yea, we still need wires for some things. Apple doesn't do stuff that's not going to be a good experience. Memory? ...don't know, don't care how much memory is in my original iPad - I only care that it performs well - and it does. Screen resolution? Don't know what rumors they were following, but it's completely impractical today to put a retina display on an iPad-si…

I love my iPad, but I think memory is a pretty big deal, especially if you want to do real multitasking. The numbers might not matter to the average consumer, but the experience will.

Open up several tabs in your browser and look at the memory that's being consumed, then tell me you won't care about 256MB vs 1GB of memory on a tablet that most people are going to use to surf the internet.

Not having to constantly reload pages was probably the most eye-opening thing for me using the XOOM (tabbed) browser versus the Browser in my original iPad.

Memory is conspicuously absent from the specs page (http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/)

Re: What Apple hopes you didn't notice about iPad2

#19

Post by albedoa »

thenduks wrote: post #5

Does anyone care about any of these points? Wires? Yea, we still need wires for some things. Apple doesn't do stuff that's not going to be a good experience. Memory? ...don't know, don't care how much memory is in my original iPad - I only care that it performs well - and it does. Screen resolution? Don't know what rumors they were following, but it's completely impractical today to put a retina display on an iPad-si…

Agree with the above points, especially the memory. You might think the memory is adequate until you have more of it, but once you do, you will wonder how you lived with less.

That is what happened when I upgraded from my iPhone 3G to my iPhone 4. Months later, I'm still getting over the difference.

Re: What Apple hopes you didn't notice about iPad2

#20

Post by albedoa »

tomjen3 wrote: post #17
mechanical_fish wrote: post #14

Apple really does need some serious competition soon, if only so that people will stop writing irritating articles comparing Apple's product line with figments of their imagination . It would be one thing to read an article saying "the iPad has X amount of RAM, but Tablet Q has Y amount of RAM, and that's probably why Tablet Q is so much better at tasks A and B." But instead we get "the thing that you can buy right n…

Okay, it has less ram than the Galaxy tab. And honestly, the iPad 2 hasn't shipped yet.

Good catch! They should have shipped the iPad 2 first and announced it later.

The article didn't once mention the Galaxy Tab. You missed the parent's point.

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