They aren’t much good at protecting your iPad from a fall, but if all you want is something to protect the screen and prop your iPad 2 up for typing or movie watching, the new Smart Covers are the bee’s knees. Made of ribbed, folding polyurethane, they attach to the iPad using magnets, and not only is merely peeling a corner of one up enough to unlock your iPad…. the inside of the smart cover will even clean and polish your screen when it’s attached.

Very neat, but it looks like Apple had some design inspiration for their iPad 2 smart covers: as TUAW notes, the new Smart Covers have an eerie resemblance to a common style of Japanese bath tub lids. It just goes to show: one of the hallmarks of good design is in being endlessly adaptable to a wide-range of problems.

When Steve Jobs ticked through the major hardware changes in the iPad 2 at yesterday’s event, one conspicuous bullet point missing from his slide was RAM. The original iPad famously only had 256MB of RAM when it launched, which was a decision that was criticized even at the time. When the iPhone 4 got a bump to 512MB, it was assumed the iPad 2 would fall in line… but Apple’s failure to document such a clear spec bump got a lot of people nervous. Surely Apple would only not mention a doubling of RAM if the RAM hadn’t been doubled?

Apparently not. A Korean semi-conductor analyst has just claimed that he knows for a fact that the new A5 SoC in the iPad 2 comes with 512MB of RAM. It’s not just double the meg, either: the new RAM is LPDDR2 RAM with a speed of 1,066MHz, which is greater memory bandwidth than the 800MHz memory in the iPhone 4.

Without hearing word straight from Apple, this only qualifies as a rumor, but we simply can’t believe Apple wouldn’t at least double the iPad’s RAM this go-around. They’d just have to, right?

When the iPad first launched, it did so at Apple Retail Stores and online, leaving the big boxes in the lurch for months. Over time, though, the iPad did eventually creep onto store shelves at the likes of Sam’s Club, Target, Wal-Mart and Best Buy.

For the iPad 2, it doesn’t look like we’ll have to wait nearly as long: the iPad 2 will be available at Best Buy at launch, and maybe even Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club.

This is refreshing news. Apple is not taking iPad 2 pre-orders yet, which meant that anyone who wanted an iPad 2 on Friday was going to have sit in line for hours with the usual screaming idiots. Rolling out the iPad 2 at big box retailers simultaneously — even in limited numbers — should make March 11th a little more manageable.

Apple announced the new iPad will come equipped with front and rear-facing cameras as well as FaceTime video chat capability.

That got us thinking about live porn chat service iP4Play, which has been serving up porn via FaceTime since August 2010.

While interactive video sex chats are nothing new, FaceTime brings portability and convenience — or, as the Apple site touts it: “Now your smile goes even further” — and the porn company claims it has tens of thousands users, with a 30% growth surge each month. The service costs $4 a minute for a live chat with a video vixen.

Details of the next-generation iPad “are in line with expectation,” however an early shipping date caught some analyst off-guard, one prominent Apple analyst told investors Wednesday afternoon.

The additional news that Apple had sold the 100 millionth iPhone also mirrored Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster’s outlook for 16.2 million sales of the iconic handset during the March fiscal quarter.

The lack of any price change or “evolutionary additions” to the initial iPad likely means the first tablet will be phased out quickly, ABI Research analyst Jeff Orr noted. Although the addition of video cameras, a dual-core processor and HDMI video output keeps the iPad 2 in the running with other tablets, it is really Apple’s ecosystem and integration with other Apple products that differentiates the company, Orr said.

The absence of a lower price is because Apple “feels they have a lack of competition,” Orr told us.

Reactions are mixed on Apple’s iPad 2 announcement. Although the new iPad held some surprises, what most caught the eye of analysts we talked with was that CEO Steve Jobs, out on medical leave, showed up to unveil the next-generation tablet. The announcement “started as an A+ for Steve Jobs presenting and the testosterone contained within the presentation,” Giles Nugent, instructor at the SAE Institute, said by e-mail.

The announcement of front and back cameras, dual processors, faster graphics and more movement sensitivity, also matched Motorola’s recently-released Xoom tablet feature-for-feature, Nugent adds. “In terms of the iPad, I would say it met expectations, but didn’t necessarily surprise anyone.”

I feel pretty bad about yesterday’s post about the iPad 3 being the one to make a song and dance about. I’m sure the iPad 3 will be great when it comes out, but for right now, the iPad 2 is a great upgrade. This is not a ho-hum update, as our anonymous Apple staffer suggested.

It’s a rockstar from Mars update. It runs on tigerblood.

The slimmed-down weight and bulk make a big difference. It’s much easier to hold and handle. It’s pretty astonishing that Apple managed to cram in so more, yet made the case so incredibly thin. That is rockstar engineering.

The cameras should have been in there all along, of course, but the addition now makes the iPad much closer to feature-complete.

But the real magic of the device is the integration of hardware and software. Look at the piano in Garageband. You tickle the virtual keys softly and it plays softly. But hammer on them and you sound like Little Richard. The iPad 2’s screen is touch-sensitive, thanks to the built-in accelerometer, which tells the iPad how hard you are touching the screen. Watch the video of it in action here. It really is pretty astonishing!

Without that integration of hardware and software, other tablets are just fancy digital picture frames, as Wired’s Brian Chen noted on Twitter.

The iPad 2 is pure Apple: it proves that Apple is its own most ruthless competitor. Overnight, 15 million first-generation iPads were rendered obsolete.

Apple’s competitors are dead in the water. Steve Jobs is a master of hyperbole, but this time he’s right. There’s no doubt about it: 2011 is the year of the iPad 2.

Did you guys hear that the iPad 2 was announced today? Steve Jobs, in living legended status, even did the unveiling. Here’s everything that you need to know about what went down today at the Apple Keynote.

True to the rumors, Apple found quite a bit of things to update and tweak on the iPad:

They boosted up the processor considerably, switching from a 1GHz A4 processor to a 1GHz dual-core A5 processor. Along with the faster processor, Apple claims they’ve cranked up the graphics and are pumping out 9x the graphics performance, although there was no specification given on what they did to improve on the PowerVR SGX 535 graphics processor of the first unit.

Don’t be fooled by the photo above — it was drizzling and bleary Wednesday as the Apple universe converged on San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where Steve Jobs announced the imminent arrival of iPad2.

Based on the design enhancements and new specs of the latest magical device out of Cupertino, Apple, Inc. ought to enjoy sunny days and clear skies as far as the eye can see.

iMovie’s not the only iLife staple coming to iOS this month, though. Apple’s now announcing Garage Band for iOS.

Featuring touch instruments including grand piano, organs, and guitars, guitar amps and effects, 8-track recording and mixing, 250+ loops and compatibility with the Mac version, Garage Band for iOS turns your iPad into a musical instrument.

When you load up the app, the first thing you see is an instrument browser. Tap one and it brings up the instrument to fill the display. Apple showed off the grand piano as an example: keys were tappable like a real piano, with a button for pedaling, and the accelerometer is used to measure the force with which your fingers are striking the display to determine dynamics and volume.

Each instrument is different, but uses a similar loyal approach. The drums and organs are simularly amazing. It’s breathtaking. On the organ, you can not only slide your note up along the keys, but also tweak the vibrato as you go. On the drums, you can get rim sounds if you hit the rim of the snare, or change the sound of the cymbal.

The music that is going to come out of the iPad thanks to Garage Band is going to defy belief. You don’t even need to know how to play: just load up the Smart Guitar and start strumming.

Recording is simple, toggled by a bright red button at the top of every display. To toggle tracks, you just hit the tracks button, allowing you to overlay multiple instruments, with support for up to 8 tracks. You can trim your recordings, shift them around, etc.

Once you’re done, you can email your song from right within GarageBand, or just send to your iTunes library.

GarageBand for iPad will be available on March 11th for $4.99 in the App Store.