Everybody’s excited about the new Apple iPad‘s high-resolution screen. But ultimately, the Retina display is just a pretty face. It can’t do anything that the screens on previous models couldn’t do.
In fact, just about all of the features that are considered “new” in the newiPad are really just bigger helpings of the old capabilities: More pixels on the screen. More graphics performance. More megapixels in the camera. More megabits per second with the mobile broadband connection. There’s more of everything. But what’s fundamentally different?
One of the least appreciated new features is one that truly brings entirely new capabilities to the iPad. That feature is Bluetooth 4.0 support.
9 responses to “Finally: A truly magical iPad”
There doesn’t have to be something “fundamentally different” for it to be considered “new.” It’s an iPad. Therefore, the features are going to remain either the same or similar to the older versions of the device albeit with upgrades.
It’s exactly the same as a new computer coming out. Nothing changes much between laptop to laptop or desktop to desktop except for performance upgrades across the board. Every now and then, the product gets a form factor change.
And item doesn’t need to be “revolutionized” to be considered new.
If you’re going to be reductionist, one could equally counter with:
“More Bluetooth checkboxes ticked. Yawn.”
The dictation seems to work pretty good and I like not having to type on the glass. Also the LTE is much faster than the 3g version. I posted two screen shots one of my 3g device and the other on my new verizon “new ipad”. att 3g got me 2.5mbs down and the LTE got me 17.98!
By your logic then Bluetooth 4.0 is not a ‘new feature’ it is just an upgraded bluetooth 2.0 i.e. more efficient. It is then the same as 3G to 4G LTE.
Can I use a mouse with the new iPad yet?
What I think he means is that the tablet space has plenty of areas to innovate in because of the post-PC approach. Siri could’ve been added, thus further pushing that post-PC model. Sure, iPad now has voice dictation, but that clearly has less impact than, say, Siri on the iPhone 4S. The iPhone has two clear wins over the iPad now: Siri and notification center widgets. Now, if iOS 6 brings these two features to iPad, iPad will be what it should have been at launch.
The same can be said about toasters. All they do is “toast”….but the new ones seem to do it better than the previous ones…
This is my second iPad and it is fantastic, I love it. The retina display is superb. Still a lot be discovered.
That’s neat and all if Apple actually allows those things to happen. Historically and currently the use of bluetooth on iDevices is crippled by Apple’s restrictions.