Today at 1pm, Apple held a press conference to unveil the “3rd generation iPad.” Not the iPad 3 or iPad HD as rumors speculated. Simply “The New iPad.” Wha-hunh?? OK confusing name…even more so given that the iPad 2 will remain in the Apple catalog, with a $100.00 price drop.
In terms of new features, The New iPad had pretty much everything that has been widely speculated would be included in the device:
-Retina Display – 2048×1536
-“A5X” quad-core chip
-iSight camera (appears to have the same specifications as the iPhone 4s camera…which is a good thing).
-Voice dictation (no Siri?).
-4G LTE The iPad 2 has 3.1Mbps on EV-DO, 7.2 on HSPA. The new iPad now has 21Mbps HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA at 42Mbps, with LTE taking the cake at 73Mbps. Verizon, Rogers, Bell, Telus and AT&T will be the LTE parnters “and other high-speed networks around the world.”
-Maintains 10 hours of battery life
-9.4mm thin, weighing 1.4lbs. (slightly heavier).
-Pricing is the same from the iPad 2: 32GB is $599 and 64GB for $699 4G: $629, $729 and $829
-Available March 16th.
Additionally Apple announced updates to several of their best iPad apps including iWorks, iMovie, Garage Band, and the addition of a version of iPhone for the new iPad (all of iLife is now available on the iPad). Here’s a link to the Apple.com product page for The New iPad.
Also unveiled at the press conference was the next iteration of the Apple TV streaming video box with several new features were announced, including:
- 1080p movies and TV shows from iTunes Store
- Redesigned 1080p user interface
- “Genius” recommendations for movies
- Photo Stream resolution bumped up to 1080p
- 1080p output
Along with the new functionality, expect the new Apple TV to support the same features as the old model, including AirPlay, iTunes Match support, iTunes movie rentals and purchases, MLB.TV, and YouTube.
The new Apple TV will be released on March 16 with the same $99 price as the existing Apple TV
I’m definitely ordering The New iPad (really hope that name changes) and possible the Apple TV unit too! 🙂
John B. Holbrook, II is a freelance writer, photographer, and author of ThruMyLens.org, as well as LuxuryTyme.com and TheSeamasterReferencePage.com.
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