No doubt the star of yesterday’s Apple Media Event, the newest iPad makes its debut. Find out all the big details about it right here.
Just the iPad, ma’am. Just the iPad.
Despite what speculation had told us for so long, today, in front of an audience full of tech enthusiasts and worldwide press in San Fransico, Apple introduced their newest edition of their tablet as “the new iPad.” No numbers, no “HD”, or heck, a “X” from 90’s nostalgia sake. A little odd, yes, but in the grander scope of things, doesn’t mean a hill of beans considering the leaps and bounds this latest iPad provides in significant upgrades.
Before I get down and dirty with the specs, the iPad (2012 edition) will be out on March 16, pre-orders available now. There’s no difference in price either I should also mention – yup, still $499 for the base 16GB WiFi model, with prices ranging up to $599 for the 32GB model, and $699 for the 64GB one (I’ll go into 4G pricing later.) Here’s hoping that income tax rebate serves you well!
Newest iPad Features
Retina Display – A 9.7-inch Retina display that holds 3.1 million pixels – providing a noticeable boost in picture clarity and color saturation – in a 2048 x 1536 resolution that I would wager beats most tablet offerings on the market. Heck, it beats the resolution on my laptop.
A5X Processor – With a screen that makes you shed tears by its immense beauty, logically, the iPad has to have a faster processor to power it. That’s where the A5X processor comes in to lend a much needed helping hand – a chip that definitely ups computing speed and that Apple themselves says can deliver four times the performance of a Tegra 3 chip. The iPad also has a quad-core graphics chip, which should lead to some prettier graphics for apps and what not. Oh man, I can’t wait to see how Angry Bird runs on this… (Joking!)
iSight Camera – The camera inside the iPad also gets a slight upgrade this go around too. It’s a meager 5 megapixels (including a backside illuminated sensor with five element lens), but now has many of the features of the camera built into iPhone 4S. You can now shoot video in 1080p too.
Siri on iPad (sort of) – It might not be much, but Apple has managed to work in a bit of Siri magic into the iPad. The voice-recognition software can be used as voice dictation for the OS, which supports these languages: US English, British, Australian, French, German and Japanese. The Siri dictation feature can also be used by third-party apps too – meaning that you’ll be able to speak your tweets instead of typing them. Pretty nifty, I say.
4G LTE Support & Pricing – Blazing fast data and download speeds. That’s the promise the 4G LTE version of the latest iPad, installed with a 21Mbps HSPA+ and a LTE radio which can pull down 73Mbps. In the States, data plans will be available through wireless providers Verizon and AT&T, while telecoms Rogers, Bell and Telus will handle services everywhere else. Of course, by opting the 46 version, this also means paying a higher cost upfront: $629 – 16GB, $729 – 32GB, and $829 – 64GB.
10 Hour Battery Life – Even with all the new bells and whistles that would ordinary knock down battery life like weed whacker on a blade of grass, Apple claims the iPad will manage 10 hours of battery life. Impressive? You betcha it is. That number might be helped by slightest gain in weight – approximately 1.4lbs to be exact – but in no way does that sacrifice thinness. Unbelievably, the tablet comes in at thickness of 9.4mm.
Again, that’s March 13 – next week obviously – for the release of the iPad. Yeah, I’m going to have to get used to just calling it that sans numbers or whatever. It certainly seems Apple has out done themselves again, and it will be highly interesting to see how well it does, and how the rest of the tech landscape reacts to it.
For more Apple related news, a guide to this year’s South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and the arrest of the hacker-group LulzSec, stay tuned to Walyou.
