
The iPad 2 - solipsist
http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/the_ipad_2
======
jakewalker
If Gruber is right, what Apple did with the Smart Covers is really remarkable.
First, they'll get an extremely high attach rate, probably north of 75% or
80%, much of which is probably pure profit. Second, it may be enough of a
feature to convince some iPad 1 owners to buy an iPad 2 (and a Smart Cover).
What an absolutely shrewd design that is likely to lead to hundreds of
millions of dollars in revenue and profit for Apple.

~~~
staunch
Why can't someone just make a smart cover (sans the auto-on/off?) for the iPad
1?

~~~
xuki
You need the built-in magnet _inside_ the ipad 2.

~~~
fluidcruft
Why can't you use adhesive magnetic strips/tape on the outside of the iPad 1?
Sure, it may be slightly unsightly, but it should be completely workable.
Heck, the strip doesn't even have to be magnetic, it can be paramagnetic or
such and just channel field between magnets on the cover hinge.

~~~
danilocampos
The downvotes you've gotten aren't fair but it's worth pointing out:

It's this kind of thinking (on the part of their competition) that lets Apple
keep their head start for way, way longer than necessary.

The short answer: Because what you're proposing would be terrible.

Apple's money magnet is creating a sense of delight and surprise. You'd be
mimicking the result, a snap on cover, without grasping the intent, which is
to make you feel like a kid seeing magic. People don't want a cover. They want
to be _delighted_ by a cover.

At least, they do now, since Apple has shown them it is possible to feel this
way.

~~~
fluidcruft
Yay! Throw the iPad 1 in the trash for the iPad 2! Because the cover is
blinged out with a magnet! On. the. inside! MAGNETS ARE MAGIC! Watch the
magician make your money disappear into his pocket! Waste! Waste! Waste! This
country is doomed.

~~~
lwat
No you just sell your iPad1 on eBay like everyone else. You'll get a decent
fraction of your purchase price back.

------
bryanh
I guess I'm in the minority, but I still have a hard time taking an iPad and
getting the function I want out of a tablet. At this time and for me, it is
still more or less an extra toy that I can overlook.

However, I understand how well it fits the bill for casual consumption, and
considering how Apple is effectively building a robust platform for content
delivery. It seems that an iPad in every house would pay dividends for years
to come.

~~~
barrkel
My iPad is totally a toy; it is almost entirely unused unless I have a long
flight to take, or I want to watch a movie in bed - in which case I'll
probably still use a laptop owing to the PITA getting content on the iPad over
the air is, and its limited repertoire of format support.

~~~
cstuder
Don't use iTunes for that.

StreamToMe and AirVideo both convert and stream basically anything. (As far as
I know, StreamToMe uses ffmpeg internally to make the conversion on the fly.)

I don't even bother with syncing video content anymore.

~~~
raganwald
+1 for AirVideo.

Unless I am watching a movie with the kids, I now prefer my iPad 1 to my TV
for watching video at home. Curling up with an episode of "The Prisoner" or
even "The Empire Strikes Back feels like curling up with a book, and I can
watch anything on my network serve without all that synchronization nonsense.

Synchronizing movies is SneakerNet by another name. It may make sense for an
airplane flight or a long subway ride, but why on Earth would anyone ever want
to do it at home?

------
stiff
I have long found the rave about smart covers a bit ridiculous considering
what a very minor addition they are, but this description is just funny to me:

"Just get the hinge vaguely in the vicinity of the left edge of the iPad and
it acts like a robot that knows how to (and wants to) connect itself."

Has the guy that wrote this never seen a magnet before or what?

~~~
akent
If you're someone seriously considering upgrading a device you paid upwards of
$500 for less than a year ago ... because of a new CASE... sit down, get a
large mirror and take a good long hard look at yourself.

~~~
jrockway
$500 is the new $20.

~~~
cycojesus
$500 was my monthly salary when I had a job. Today I wish I had $20, I'd eat
for a week with that.

I think I fucked up something somewhere...

------
smackfu
I'm surprised it took this long for Apple to start giving Gruber review
hardware and event invitations.

------
Garbage
>>... considering that it arrives just 11 months after the original. _But it
is in no way a radical or significant departure from last year’s model._

I like the way he used the sentence. I think he meant, "But it is in no way a
radical or significant _improvement_ from last year's model"

~~~
po
I think you're trying to make a joke about how the iPad 2 isn't any better
than the first but it doesn't make sense. Any village idiot could tell you the
iPad 2 is better than the original. There's not a single feature that got
worse.

So then the operative part is was it radical or significant? Well, Gruber's
whole point is that Apple _launches_ radical products and then slowly improves
them. He even concedes that it's probably not worth upgrading for many people:

 _Most of the 15 million original iPads sold to date do not need to be
replaced by iPad 2s. That’s not a problem for Apple, nor a failure for the
iPad 2. A $500-800 device should have a useful life that is longer than a
year._

So what exactly are you trying to say?

I think this kind of analysis of Apple's process is far more interesting than
the resultant products.

~~~
Garbage
You got me wrong. I wasn't trying to make joke out of it. I was just admiring
his writing style. On a side note, I have never used an iPad and probably
never will.

~~~
po
I see; I'm glad I gave you the benefit of the doubt then. It's so hard to get
tone with online comments.

FWIW, I think the idea of it not being a _departure_ is significant. He's
saying that they are sticking to the core themes that motivated the iPad.
Sure, it's getting improved, but he's saying they got the kernel right.

Look at the Apple TV by comparison. There was a significant departure from the
approach of the first version to the current version. You can very easily make
the argument that the main theme/motivation of the Apple TV still hasn't quite
gelled. The fact that Apple doesn't put their full weight behind pushing it
means they probably know they haven't gotten it nailed down quite yet. … and
getting it nailed down is a business problem more than a technical one.

------
jwarzech
The first thing when I thought when seeing the Smart Covers was "this looks
familiar." And then I remembered an article I read a few days prior on Apple's
tablet computer history ([http://liquidpubs.com/blog/2010/11/08/apple-their-
tablet-com...](http://liquidpubs.com/blog/2010/11/08/apple-their-tablet-
computer-history/)) If you look starting at the 'Second Figaro Competition
1990' you will see various prototypes that have a very similar looking cover.
I always find it interesting when you can see decades old influences for
products.

------
aashpak1
May be a bit off topic but I think,

With new superior models coming every year, time for Apple to do some
innovation in the business-model (well, in addition to the app-ecosystem they
created) and move to a subscription-based model :)

One pays few grands (say $2k) every year to upgrade i/pod/phone/pad to the
latest version.

(well, they have recycling program with 90% depreciation!!)

~~~
WillyF
Best Buy is kind of doing this with their "buy back" program. If Apple
continues becoming more and more predictable in terms of product release dates
and pricing, I could almost see a startup doing this on their own. You buy
Apple upgrade insurance, and they guarantee that you can trade in your current
product for a new one as soon as the new product is released.

The only problem is that there's way to much risk to do this unless you are
Apple or have a direct relationship with Apple. Then again, maybe the float
would cover the risk.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
You mean like Gazelle.com?

------
ek
Hold on. Gruber says that videos from the iTunes Store require less CPU to
decode. It strikes me that that must be patently untrue. If anything, the DRM
should require the decoder to work harder.

Can someone explain by what metric this might be true, and why?

~~~
kylec
It's possible that the iPad GPU doesn't support all the operations Handbrake
encodes and has to have the CPU decode them (resulting in higher CPU and
increased power usage), whereas the media in the iTunes Store might have been
encoded with only the operations supported by the GPU. This is just a theory,
however it's certainly plausible.

------
solipsist
Sometimes Apple will release a new version of a product and disappointment
will follow. People will always point out some improvements, as there always
will be, but sometimes there are just less changes than what people were
expecting.

I think it's safe to say that the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 (the last big two
releases for Apple) have been significant upgrades. Gruber agrees and so do
many other analysts. Instead of feeling disappointed, I felt pleasantly
surprised after the announcement - a feeling that I'm sure many other people
shared.

Let's just say: Apple is definitely on a roll.

~~~
aik
Apple's money generating machine is on a roll for sure. There's absolutely no
reason why Apple couldn't have included most of those features in the initial
iPad. I agree that the smart cover is completely genius (especially as a
marketing scheme - and why doesn't anyone talk about protecting the rest of
the iPad now? Somehow the screen is all of a sudden the only important thing?)

None of the new stuff is new technology. They're amazing at selling something
that's good enough for a lot of uses and leaving a lot of space for
improvement in the very near future. If they would've included cameras and the
accelerometer in version 1, and perhaps made it a bit thinner, version 2
would've been significantly less interesting.

~~~
ryannielsen
> None of the new stuff is new technology. They're amazing at selling
> something that's good enough for a lot of uses and leaving a lot of space
> for improvement in the very near future. If they would've included cameras
> and the accelerometer in version 1, and perhaps made it a bit thinner,
> version 2 would've been significantly less interesting.

Really?

I assume that you look back on every product's new version and say, "none of
this is new tech, they could have shipped it in the last version!"

In almost every case, subsequent versions are driven directly by previous
versions; nothing revolutionary happens. Was the dual core A5 ready for the
first iPad? Was unibody aluminum manufacturing ready for the form factor and
volume of iPad? Were the cameras sourced cheaply enough for the first iPad?
What about 512MB RAM? Could all of this have been done in time for the first
iPad? You have none of those answers, and I bet that most of them are "no."

Then you have something like the Smart Covers. Those are derived _directly_
from watching what happened with the first iPad. No great cases came out, and
people wanted to protect the screen. You ask, "Somehow the screen is all of a
sudden the only important thing?" Well, yes, for many people. Myself included.
I refuse to use any case, because most prevent easy docking, add bulk and are
a pain. But every time I travel with my iPad, I am careful to stick it in a
bag such that the screen is protected.

------
rradu
The discussion of whether you should upgrade from iPad 1 to 2 just seems
absurd to me. It's the epitome of a first world problem. I like my gadgets
just as much as the next guy, but buying things you already have simply
because they're _slightly_ faster and _slightly_ thinner is ridiculous.

~~~
moblivu
What's more ridiculous is that they changed everything that doesn't matter.
Nobody complained about the thickness, the speed or the covers. What we really
wanted is an optimized-for-tablet OS experience. You know not having to quit
our app, find settings, go to general to finally activate Bluetooth, or having
to struggle without tabs on the web browser. The worst part is people wont
even see that, they're all brainwash to Big Brother apple.

‎"The cameras are severely lacking, the screen -- while extremely high quality
-- is touting last year's spec, and its operating system still has significant
annoyances, like the aggravating pop-up notifications" -iPad 2 Review
(Engadget)

------
dr_
At it's price point, the iPad 2 is almost impossible to beat. I'm not even
sure why other tablet makers try, at least in this size range.

Apple doesn't, as of yet, make a smaller tablet, and that's where the
competitors should focus. Like a B&N Android Nook 7" tablet for $199, wifi
only - and this is probably totally feasible on their part.

But if you are trying to compete with 10" devices against the iPad, forget it.

~~~
bruceboughton
If it's impossible to beat Apple on price at 10", what makes you think they
will be able to beat Apple at 7", which should be cheaper?

Apple is winning because they defined the genre, giving them a 2-3 year head
start.

------
loup-vaillant
> _Every once in a while, Apple releases something brand-new. […] These
> original releases tend to be minimal technically, but radical conceptually.
> Then, generally on an annual schedule, Apple improves them iteratively and
> steadily over time._

Meaning, any new Apple product is designed be obsolete within a year. That
doesn't feel right.

~~~
thenduks
Replaced != Obsolete

iPad's are still fully functional and can even still be purchased. I plan on
keeping mine for at least another year.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Still. If a friend of yours buy the new IPad, yours will _feel_ obsolete,
compelling you to update far sooner than necessary. You may resist the
temptation, but many won't. And you can't patch hardware (especially not
Apple's).

This is a Planned Obsolescence™ scheme. Not as bad as time-limited light
bulbs, but still.

~~~
CognitiveLens
The analogy isn't perfect, but you could say this about any product that gets
iteratively improved annually, like cars. Just because there is a new model
that is intentionally better than last year's model doesn't mean it is a
planned obsolescence scheme. Particularly in the technology world, almost all
companies are hoping to have an improved product every year... it doesn't mean
they are willfully manipulating you.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Your reasoning is sound. But a host of evidence strongly suggest they _do_
manipulate you.

There's doing better this year (lessons learned etc), and doing less than
optimal now so you can do better next year. If I recall correctly, Apple did
that once with the IPhone: the case had room for a camera that wasn't there in
this year's model.

On a different note, there is better and there is different. The design of
cars, for instance, changes much faster than the underlying mechanics (engine,
safety…) improve. As far as I can tell, Apple isn't too guilty of this. Their
design though exquisitely shiny, is relatively stable.

There's also the timing of product: most goods now are designed _not_ to last
(designers actually learn at school how important this is for their future
customers). The most famous example is light bulbs. They only last 1500 to
2000 hours because the biggest vendors at the time colluded to limit their
lifetimes. They got sued, but since, despite numerous patents for long-lasting
light bulbs, you don't find any for sale. Apple used this strategy once with
irreplaceable IPods' batteries. They eventually backed off because a consumer
union sued them.

Going back to the IPad, if Apple really cared about making the best product
possible, they would have made the processor replaceable, and the memory
extend-able, so that when they inevitably improve, customer can replace them
at lower cost (both in money and in resources).

Now, I'm not willing to blame Evil Corp™ right away: they just maximize
profit. So, I'd rather ask what in our society generates such profit
maximizers.

~~~
thenduks
I was mostly with you until the part about the 'best [iPad] possible'. Making
every part in a device like the iPad replaceable would not make a very nice
product at all. Ever used an off-the-shelf Dell? You can upgrade it forever,
but it's rickety junk.

Besides, even if they do purposefully hold off on stuff that would make it
better _only_ to manipulate us and profit (which I doubt[a]), it still doesn't
make your first-gen iPad useless. It works great still!

[a]: To take the example of the camera, they probably weren't able to make it
a good experience. The software was still buggy, or they were waiting for more
readily available parts (supply chain is a big deal!), etc.

In short, they aren't bricking original iPad's, so there's no reason to get
upset about a new one. You can simply hold onto yours. If you can't because of
peer-pressure or you require the newest status symbol, that's not Apple's
problem -- Indeed they would be stupid not to capitalize on that.

~~~
loup-vaillant
> _Making every part in a device like the iPad replaceable would not make a
> very nice product at all._

Why not? What is wrong with sockets? Or plugs? Or screws? How would they make
the IPad significantly thicker, heavier, more fragile, less powerful, or
clunkier? It would at worst make it 10% more expensive. But that would waste
so much less resources when it's time to upgrade, or when one piece is broken.
Oh wait, it wouldn't be as profitable, so let's pretend it just sucks and
forget about it.

[a]: Good example, actually. They could either have put the camera anyway,
knowing the software could be patched later, or just wait until it's ready, or
make it possible to add the camera later (maybe requiring an approved
specialist to solder it on). They just preferred the more lucrative path. Like
nearly everyone else in this planet. I can hardly blame them personally for
that, because:

> _Indeed they would be stupid not to capitalize on that._

From a selfish point of view, I agree: companies would be silly not to do
everything in their power to maximize profit. Even taking advantage of human
weaknesses, or waste resources, or dumping trash in the wild, or <insert lots
of horrible things here>.

I just say that something is wrong with such a system.

------
Slimy
I want Gruber to, just once, say something bad about Apple without immediately
giving 10 reasons why the poor move was actually brilliant. He's a good
writer, but I mean, come on.

~~~
smackfu
He doesn't even mention the camera quality, which are getting panned in other
reviews.

~~~
Anechoic
He does in an earlier post:
<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/03/08/ipad-2-camera>

------
ugh
HN hates Gruber with a passion but votes his review all the way to the top.
Beats me.

Here are other reviews but they all sound pretty much like Gruber’s:

<http://www.macworld.com/article/158439/2011/03/ipad2.html>

<http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/09/ipad-2-review/>

<http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/09/ipad-2-review/>

~~~
po
Hacker News doesn't hate John Gruber. Gruber polarizes Hacker News, just like
Apple does.

~~~
podperson
I think right now Apple (and Google) can polarize individuals. I can love each
one minute and hate each the next -- they're both capable of delighting and
infuriating in equal measure, even within a single product. (Love Chrome, hate
the anti-h264 move. Love iOS, hate the App Store approval process and the
kludgy mess of certificates.)

And both are getting scary powerful.

~~~
redthrowaway
What's wrong with anti-h.264? Firefox was never going to support it, nor was
Opera, so as a web developer you would have had to implement something else
anyway, likely flash. Now you implement WebM _instead_ of h.264, and you still
have to implement flash because 20% of the people out there are still using
ie6 and 7/8 aren't a whole lot better on this front.

Basically, you're replacing a closed codec with an open one. MS and Apple will
put WebM in IE and Safari if there's sufficient adoption, as it doesn't cost
them anything to do so.

You may not care about open codecs that aren't laden with patents, but I can't
see how this makes things _worse_. All of the kvetching about this move
extending Flash's lifetime is pointless given the fact it wasn't going
anywhere anyway.

