The New iPad
Today Tim Cook introduced the new iPad.
First things first, the latest revision of Apple’s tablet isn’t the iPad 3, nor the iPad HD. It’s the new iPad. Apple may finally be done with incremental numbers for its hardware, and this year’s iPhone will probably be the new iPhone. I think it’s great, and I’m not the only one.1
Unsurprisingly, the new iPad doesn’t sport many new features:
- a 9.7-inch, 2048×1536 pixels Retina display
- a dual-core Apple A5X
- a 5-megapixel iSight camera
- 4G LTE
That’s a minor update, looking at the size of the new features list. But, really, these features are so great that each one of them is worth to update alone. And the four altogether is really the cherry on top of the cake.
However, I don’t care much for the 4G LTE. You see, the mobile phone companies in the country I live in are controlling the market; as a consequence, data plans for tablets are insanely expensive (around €30 per gigabyte per month).
I do not care either for the dual-core Apple A5X. I mean, it’s great that the new iPad is faster; but I own the old iPhone 4, and the speed difference between it and the iPad 2 is already mind-blowing… So, really, it’ll make me hate my iPhone 4 even more.
I don’t picture myself taking photographs2 with my iPad, and I will never settle for a lesser quality than my Canon 5D Mark II’s. So, again, I don’t care for the new iSight.3
The Retina display is a whole different story though. I feel entitled to tell more about myself before continuing.
Last Spring, I did notice that my sight had really worsened. It had me worried since my sight had always been really great. Yeah, sure, I’ve spent most of my life looking at a computer display…
Although it feels like it happened suddenly, I remember having to increase the font size on most websites because I couldn’t read. Much of the work I did before was now simply illegible for my squinting eyes. I have astigmatism; that is what I see. I wear glasses now, and next month I’ll get newer and sharper ones.
While the glasses improved readability, I cannot read things with font sizes smaller than 14. Except on my iPhone. Surprisingly, the Retina display is so sharp and the definition’s so great that, somehow, I can read just fine on the iPhone.
That’s why I was so eager to have an iPad with a Retina display. And now Apple has just introduced it. Obviously I have pre-ordered mine, a white, 16 Gb, Wi-Fi only iPad.