Thousands of Apple fans let their jaws hit the floor earlier today when Apple announced “the new iPad.” There was no “iPad 3,” no “iPad HD,” no “iPad Epic Pro Super X 4G LTE Touch.” Just iPad. Apple broke the numbering scheme and went back to the basics.
Why? Apple VP of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller revealed the answer after today’s keynote.
The announcement of today’s new iPad with its retina display has undoubtedly propelled technology a few years into the future. The amount of features packed into the new iPad and its accompanying software is pretty mind blowing when you slow down and take a minute to think of our progress over the last 40 years. Mankind has been dreaming of such a device for over 75 years. In the April, 1935 issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics, this crazy contraption above was their dream version of the iPad.
Apple has officially released its new TV ad simply entitled “the new iPad.” The 30-second commercial only features the tablet’s gorgeous Retina display. It’s simple and elegant.
“When a screen becomes this good, it’s simply you and the things you care about.”
Today’s keynote is available for streaming online and there are other videos for the new iPad on Apple’s website.
The new iPad comes equipped with LTE 4G networking on AT&T and Verizon in the United States, and data plan prices for the nation’s largest carriers can now be compared. As you can see, AT&T offers the cheapest option with a $15/month for 250MB option.
Like always, these iPad data plans can be purchased month-to-month on either AT&T or Verizon with no long-term commitment. The new iPad offers Personal Hotspot for creating a WiFi network out of your 4G connection. LTE 4G will get you up to 72Mbps when available, but the iPad also supports HSPDA 3G for speeds up to 42MBps. Regular 3G will be used when nothing else is available.
Let’s call a spade a spade: the iPad 2 camera seemed like an afterthought with image quality that barely rivaled the iPhone 3GS — it was hardly usable. But the new iPad camera isn’t a small upgrade. It’s going to start a revolution.
As we thought, Apple has launched iPhoto for the iPad, meaning that — at last — we won’t have to deal with the awful built-in Photos app so much any more. As you’d expect if you have used GarageBand or iMovie on the iPad, iPhoto keeps the spirit of its desktop cousin, but has been completely remade for the touch-screen tablet. And while it is sure to shine on the new iPad’s Retina display, it will also run on the iPad you have today.
Following the Apple iPad keynote that just ended, Apple.com/iPad has been updated with new information about the third-gen tablet. Apple has chosen to go with neither “iPad 3” or “iPad HD” and just call it “the new iPad.”
The new website marquee features the device’s gorgeous Retina display, features, pricing details, and tech specs. There are also two new ads that can be streamed.
Apple will no longer diffeentiate between the various iPad models, not by name at least. Starting today and going forward, iPads will be plain iPads, with no “1”, or “2”, or even “HD” suffix. When Tim Cook introduced the new iPad at today’s press event, he just called it “The new iPad.”
Apple has officially confirmed that an iPad event is set to take place today, Wednesday, March 7th, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California. “We have something you really want to see. And touch,” teases the press invitation.
Months and months of rampant speculation and conspiracy stories have built up to next week’s event, and no one really knows what Apple has planned, other than a new iPad. The Retina display is widely expected to make its way to Apple’s tablet. Will it even be called the iPad 3? Will it be offered at a new price point? Let’s take a look at the rumors and examine what we think we know.
Apple is set to introduce a new AppleCare+ warranty for its new iPad today that will cover owners for up to two incidents of accidental damage. The new plan is much the same as that introduced for the iPhone 4S back in October, and is set to cost $99 for two years of coverage.
We’re now just hours away from Apple’s iPad 3 — or iPad HD — unveiling, which looks set to become the Cupertino company’s first iOS device to boast 1GB of RAM. Chronic, the iOS hacker behind the Chronic Dev Team, has confirmed that Apple’s third-generation tablet will get double the RAM of its predecessor.
Today’s pre-event rumors say that there may be a version of iPhoto announced for the iPad 3, and it certainly makes sense. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber and Panic’s Neven Mrgan both argue that iPhoto is an obvious candidate for an iPad with a beautiful Retina display, and Gabe Glick, writing at MacStories, makes the case for Aperture. I think at least some of them may be right.
Get your catapults ready: Angry Birds Seasons is back, and this time the 15 new levels are set in Japan. But not the Japan that you or I might visit. This is a Japan populated with pigs wearing rope headbands, nestled amongst giant maki rolls and set in the shadow of the giant Mount Fuji.
The rumor mill has been saying that Apple’s third-gen iPad will come equipped with LTE 4G networking. The feature is speculated to be U.S.-only on AT&T and Verizon, with international and other carrier details remaining scare.
We’ve gotten word that the nation’s largest wireless provider, Verizon, has been installing LTE equipment in U.S. Apple retail stores ahead of the iPad 3 launch.
Apple has silently added a new section to the App Store called “Catalogs.” On the eve of the iPad 3 announcement, the section seems to have launched prematurely, as it’s not yet visible with the rest of the App Store’s categories. You can only find it by visiting this direct link, and there are no apps available to download in the iTunes directory.
I have been using Photoshop Touch almost obsessively for the past week, despite being holed up in the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for much of that time. At first look, I thought it was yet another photo-editing app, and in many ways it is. But as I dig in more and more, its clear that — while this is no substitute for desktop Photoshop — its an amazing app in itself. And all the more so as it runs in just 512KB RAM.
First, what Photoshop Touch for? That’s not as dumb a question as it might seem.
Hype for Apple’s third-generation iPad has reached a fever pitch leading up to tomorrow’s announcement. A whole lot of people are eager to see how Apple will leapfrog the rest of the tablet market yet again.
When we asked Cult of Mac readers if they plan to buy the iPad 3, over 50% of you answered with a resounding yes. A new survey indicates that over 40% of online shoppers in the U.S. also plan to spend their hard earned cash on the next iPad, but they want something from Apple in return: cheaper prices.
It looks like Apple has made some subtle improvements to the App Store on the iPad. You won’t notice the changes at first or second (maybe even third) glance, but they are there all the same.
The “Top Charts” section of the iPad’s App Store has been updated with vertical scrolling and faster loading times, mirroring a similar update Apple made several months ago.
If there’s a buzzword for here at the first CITE Conference, it would have to be trust. Virtually every discussion I’ve had over the past two days has boiled down to the level of trust between IT and users.
Trust may be the foundation of all healthy human relationships, but it isn’t something that comes easily to IT professionals in the workplace. That’s the underlying tension that IT staffers have when it comes to the consumerization of IT. It isn’t about devices or public cloud services. It’s about trusting the users that you support.
What do IT staffers and execs want to see in the iPad 3? Pretty much the same things as everyone else.
Apple is the pink elephant in the room at the CITE Conference in San Francisco. The company isn’t participating but the company’s products, particularly the iPad, are constantly being discussed. In talking to attendees about tomorrow’s iPad 3 launch event, there isn’t a specific IT-oriented feature that they want to see.
Fans of Monty Python, gather your dead parrots and your stuffed John Cleese plushies: today is your day to celebrate the official launch of Monty Python: The Holy Book of Days for iPad, an app that gives faithful Python followers everything they could ever wish for on a plate, with strawberries on top. The rest of us might be left wondering what the fuss is about, though.
Did you know that the Calculator app built into iOS has a hidden swipe gesture that allows you to delete those digits that you tap accidentally? No, neither did I until this morning, when I discovered this nifty little backspace trick by accident.
IOS runs HTML5 games a crazy three times faster than Android, according to a study by Spaceport.io. The tests were run on various hardware and software combinations, both for Android and iOS, and the results are pretty startling. And there’s an even more amusing data point: The Blackberry Playbook beat every Android device.
Nerds who use Omni Group’s kick-ass task manager Omnifocus have a little bit of good news today. No, you still can’t export due tasks to a Google calendar shared with coworkers. You can, however, rely on the new non-beta status of the Omni Sync Server, which gets its official launch today. That’s not all: Sync is coming to all Omni’s apps.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Futulele. It’s a crazy electric ukelele made of iPads and stuff.