Analysis of the new Apple iPad
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 9, 2012 1:37 AM ESTFinal Words
In many ways the new iPad was a known quantity. We knew to expect a faster SoC, a significantly higher resolution display and LTE support - Apple delivered on all fronts. The new iPad, much like another iPhone, is simply a tangibly improved version of its predecessor.
The iPad 2's display quickly became unacceptable from a resolution standpoint. The 3rd generation iPad's Retina Display completely addresses the issue and creates a new benchmark for other players in the tablet and ultraportable notebook space to live up to. It really is great to see Apple pushing display technology so aggressively and at reasonable price points. I do hope it's only a matter of time before we see a similar trend on the Mac side.
The finer details of yesterday's announcement were interesting - a much larger battery and 4x-nm LTE baseband. Arguably the most important information however is what Apple didn't talk about.
Today we have a first-world-problem with tablets, including the iPad - they are spectacular for certain usage models, but frustrating for others. Tablets aren't notebook replacements yet, but they can be more useful than a notebook depending on what you're doing. At the same time, tablets can be considerably worse than a notebook - again, depending on what you're doing. The solution to having the best of both worlds is to switch between or travel with two devices: a tablet and a Mac/PC. Ideally we'd like to see consolidation where you'd only need one.
Windows 8 proposes a solution to this problem: a single OS that, when paired with a convertible tablet (or dockable tablet like the Transformer Pad), can give you a tablet experience or a full blown desktop OS on a single device. Apple hasn't tipped its hand as to what the iOS UI strategy is going forward. I suspect we'll get some update at WWDC this year, but Apple is playing it very quiet at this point. Microsoft's strategy does bode very well for Windows users who also want a tablet, however it does alienate Windows users who want a more robust desktop experience. It's clear to me that Apple is trying to move the iPad closer to the MacBook Air in its product line, but it's unclear to me whether (or when) we'll see convergence there.
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c4v3man - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Why not spend another $5-10 on components and make a $600 32GB transformer the base model? That way you still maintain most of the profit margin you want to have, while also being competitive cost-wise. I can appreciate that you are using some components that may be considered better than the newiPad, but you are also using some that can be considered worse. Past experience shows that tablets priced higher than Apple fail in the marketplace since people can't accept a reality where Apple isn't the "premium offering".Lucian Armasu - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
By the way Anand. Is there any way to test the graphics performance on their native resolutions anymore? I think you should bring that back and show the fixed resolution vs native resolution tests side by side. Because I actually think the iPad 3 suffered a very significant performance drop due to the new resolution, just like the iPhone 4 was always the device at the bottom of the graphics test because of its retina display.So I'm aware that the chip itself should be faster when comparing everything at the same 720p resolution. But that doesn't really mean much for the regular user does it? What matters is real world performance, and that means it matters how fast the iPad is at its *own* resolution, not a theoretical lower resolution that has nothing to do with it.
WaltFrench - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Let's think this through a bit. Users don't run GLBench or that sort of stuff; they run games that a developer has tweaked for a platform. Subject to budget — I haven't had the pleasure myself, but hear tell that it requires good, solid engineering and lots of it — the developer puts out the best mix of resolution & speed that will please the customers the most. (Who would do otherwise?)Obviously, if you don't have the resolution, you go for fps. So it's conceivable that a 720p device could show better speed. But that'd only be true if the dev was pushing so hard on the iPad's 4X of pixels that he sacrificed play speed. If it came to that, he'd pull back on AA or other detail/texture quality efforts. Right? Wouldn't you?
So what I think it comes to is how hard a given game dev will work on a particular platform's capabilities. Here, fragmentation and total sales come to play, big time. Anand might be able to give you a theoretical tradeoff that a dev faces, but it might be quite the challenge to translate that into how well gamers would like a given device for stuff they can actually play.
medi01 - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
In other words, did Apple's marketing department forbid you doing native resolution benchmarks?doobydoo - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link
Native resolution test is a flawed test.As I've explained to your other comments, performance has to take into account the resolution. IE, 100 fps at 10 x 10 is clearly worse than 60 fps at 2000 x 1000.
It's very telling that you make this suggestion now Apple has come out with the highest resolution device. Not something you requested previously when Android tablets had higher resolution.
The iPhone 4 was never bottom of any sensible benchmarks because of its retina display. The tests, as always, were done at the same resolution as they always should be. The iPhone 4 was low down in the benchmarks because it had a slow GPU.
rashomon_too - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
If displaysearchblog.com is correct (http://www.displaysearchblog.com/2012/03/ipad-3-cl... most of the extra power consumption is for the display. Because of the lower aperture ratio at the higher pixel density, more backlighting is needed, requiring perhaps twice as many LEDs.jacobdrj - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
I am no coder, but even with my gaming rig, I have a 27" 1900x1200 display (that I admittedly paid too much for), but I flanked it with 2 inexpensive 1080p displays, rotated vertically in portrait mode for eyefinity and web browsing.IHateMyJob2004 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Save your money.Buy a Playbook
tipoo - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Save your money. Buy a toaster.Wait no, I forgot the part where they do different things :P
KoolAidMan1 - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link
Not to mention that toasters are actually useful