Digg co-founder Kevin Rose posted on his blog over the weekend that the iPad 2 is coming as soon as February 1st, and will have a Retina Display. It’s almost enough to make a Mac blogger drown in the same sodium chloride he’s advising his readers to swallow.
According to Rose:
I have it on good authority that Apple will be announcing the iPad 2 in the next “3-4 weeks”, possibly Tuesday February 1st. The iPad 2 will feature a retina display and front/back cameras.
There’s some immediate problems with Rose’s assertion. The most obvious is that compared to the more flexible Mac refresh schedule, the timescale in which Apple announces new iOS devices is pretty rigidly defined: iPhones and iPod Touches have been refreshed at exactly the same time every year. By that logic, we shouldn’t expect a new iPad before the end of April, and while that doesn’t preclude Apple from announcing the next-gen tablet a few months early, to what purpose would Cupertino tread all over what is looking likely to be the release week of the Verizon iPhone with an even bigger announcement? It’s bad form.
Then there’s the claim that the iPad 2 will have a Retina Display. No way. It is simply not economically viable to have a Retina Display on a 10-inch tablet yet. The tech’s just too expensive on anything but iPhone-sized displays. It’s worth noting that Rose recanted this assertion a bit by later claiming that he spoke to another source who said the display has a higher pixel density, but is not technically a retina display, but Rose seems skeptical of this later report… which suggests he’s rather out-of-touch with the current state of the component industry.
I mean, who knows? We’ve heard rumors that Apple would unveil the iPad 2 in early February before, but those rumors were largely based upon Apple locking out vacations during the first week of February… a move we now strongly suspect is due to the launch of the Verizon iPhone instead of a new project. We’re sure Rose is broadly right that a new FaceTime-capable iPad 2 with a higher pixel density will debut sometime soon, and it would be wise to hold off on buying an iPad for now, but we’d be pretty shocked if Steve Jobs took to the stage to announce one in the next few weeks.
