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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joelypolly - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
Regarding the filesystem, I believe that Apple already showed us a bit with ML's Save To iCloud functionality. In reality people don't really care how it is stored as long as it is easy to access.ltcommanderdata - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Any idea about what the memory clocks are? Memory bandwidth seems to be an important limiting factor in driving the Retina Display.Does iOS 5.1 include new GPU drivers? If there were performance improvements, Apple might not be stretching so much in claiming 2x performance difference between the A5 and Tegra 3.
Hopefully, lack of mention about CPU clocks just means the difference is small rather than nonexistent. Every new Apple SoC has always improved CPU performance, but when the improvements were small, namely the 33% clock increase in the 2nd gen iPod Touch, it wasn't mentioned until discovered by developers. A small CPU clock speed bump to 1.2GHz for the A5X would be nice.
ZeDestructor - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
I suspect its similar to how the Samsing Exynos 3110 (Hummingbird/S5PC110) is configured with the baseclock driving everything else. In this case, 250MHz. Admittedly in a dual-channel configuration here.ltcommanderdata - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Well Anand reported 400MHz LPDDR for the iPhone 4 and 800MHz LPDDR2 for the iPhone 4S. A bump to 1066MHz LPDDR2 seems reasonable.solipsism - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
I assume it's the same as detailed in their iPhone 4S article. If I recall correctly that is 3.8Gb/s.AMDJunkie - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Under "A Much Larger Battery," the comparison chart has says that the 11-inch MacBook Pro has a 63.5 MWh battery. That is the 13-inch MacBook Pro that has that capacity; I think the author may have mixed it up with the 11-inch MacBook Air.JarredWalton - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Fixed (also goes for the comment below -- same error). Thanks!gorash - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
It says 11" MacBook Pro on the chart, I think that's a mistake.gorash - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Yes, Apple is pushing high-res, but then again, the Galaxy Nexus already has 720p, and Transformer Infinity has 1200p. It's hard to say that it'll be a while before we start seeing high-res Android tablets. It seems that Samsung will easily make a 1200p tablet, hopefully on an OLED screen.ZeDestructor - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
There's a rumour at gsmarena (http://blog.gsmarena.com/samsung-galaxy-tab-11-6-w... that Samsung is planning to give us a 2560x1600 11.6" tablet. If they do that around the 500$ mark, it will be quite the succes. I for one just want 12 of those panels to build myself a 3x5120x3200 desktop monitor. I'll also need 4 GPUs......