
Apple releases Ipad 3 - craigbellot
http://www.apple.com/ipad/?r=3
======
Aloisius
It should be noted that the limited data plans for both AT&T and Verizon mean
that at the max 4G speed of 73 Mbps, you could use all your bandwidth for the
entire month in less than _three and a half minutes_ (2 GB plan).

The overages of $10/GB per month on both services mean once you go over your
plan, you'll be looking at a little over $5/minute in new charges.

It is possible (though highly unlikely) to rack up over $200K/month in
bandwidth charges if you managed to find an empty 4G cell for a month.

Sadly Sprint, which has unlimited 4G last i checked, was absent from the
release of the new iPad.

~~~
mark_l_watson
Don't most people, really, use iPads over wifi? Or am I just one of the
cheapskates who bought one without 3G or 4G support?

I bought an iPad 2 last year and I didn't even consider buying one with a data
plan. I am near wifi about 99% of the time, discounting driving, hiking, and
airplane time. In a pinch, I can check email on my Droid.

Eventually 4G will become inexpensive, but it isn't right now.

~~~
ctdonath
"Don't most people, really, use iPads over wifi?"

No. I don't use the work wifi because it is severely limited (paranoid IT guy)
and my iPad may access material I'd rather they not sniff (just NOYB stuff). I
use it on the road for mapping, impromptu parking-lot Grouponing, whatever far
from wifi. Open routers still often have some irritant signin or blacklists.
Even at home my iPad often gets 3G better than wifi.

Don't underestimate the value of "always connected". A legacy unlimited plan
multiplies it.

------
guelo
The world of LCD panels baffles me. For some reason Apple can sell an iPad
with a 2048x1536 IPS screen for $500 but your average $1,000 laptop comes with
a crappy 1366x768 TFT screen or maybe 1920x1080 if you're lucky.

~~~
philwelch
Apple can commit to shipping millions of iPads and makes procurement decisions
based on that fact. You're talking about the company that buys a significant
proportion of the world's NAND flash production preordered a year ahead of
time. iPad has enough economy of scale that as soon as Apple found a display
manufacturer able and willing to manufacture the screen they wanted, they
immediately promised a large enough preorder to make it cost-effective.
Remember, Apple ships more iPads than any PC manufacturer ships total units,
and _all those iPads use the same parts_.

So in case you were wondering why Apple keeps obscene piles of cash around,
that's why.

~~~
megablast
Not anymore, they seem to be selling the new iPads and the old iPads, which
will mean two display sizes. Still, your point holds.

The other issue is that Apple has enough money to invest in factories, not
that it owns them, but it can put money up front to encourage building them. I
would not be surprised if they had a 1 year hold on screens of this size, just
as they did for the iphone 4 (although even today noone is using the same
screens as the 4).

~~~
hef19898
Yet, Im really interessted how Apple actually deals with its suppliers. My
guess is that they are not really, well how should I put it, nice? to deal
with. Judging from their enourmous growth AND their steady growing profits,
Apple prouved an impressive upward flexibility. To manage that you have to be
a pain the ass for your suppliers, yet you have to fair. Pretty cool how they
walk that razors edge. Guess Apple dominace is a major for the competition in
more than one way.

------
tomkinstinch
The 264dpi screen is a big deal. I was at a workshop with Edward Tufte this
week. He extoled the virtures of using paper for information-rich data
transfer. Having paper-like screen resolution is an obvious advantage for
disseminating information.

I'd like to see a startup take on PowerPoint by releasing software to compose
iPad-friendly presentations. Think one-pagers full of text, graphs, and
figures. On an iPad they could be interactive, annotated, and linked together.
Every iPad-toting meeting goer could scan a QR code on the way in to get on
the same page, and then sit and _discuss_ the content. Gone will be the days
of presenters doling out bullet points at excruciatingly slow pace.

Having read Isaacson's biography of Jobs, it seems that Apple may be gunning
to disrupt the textbook market. Having paper-like resolution is a great step
in that direction.

~~~
nextparadigms
Won't this make it hard for developers to develop apps on Macs that still have
only 1920x1080 displays?

~~~
aaronblohowiak
the simulator already offers multiple levels of zoom

------
Xuzz
Although the HN title (currently) says "Ipad 3", Apple seems to actually be
calling it the new "iPad" (edit: "new iPad", not "New iPad"). It's a bit
confusing: next year, is it then the "old iPad"?

But, we don't really have that issue with many other Apple products (iPod
nano, all Macs, etc) that use the same naming scheme. So we'll see how bad it
actually ends up.

~~~
WiseWeasel
It looks like they're just calling it "iPad" now on their website. It's an
interesting idea; maybe they plan on always calling the current one "iPad",
and renaming the old model something like "iPad 2012" once the 2013 "iPad" is
released.

~~~
moe
The lack of a numbering scheme is a royal pain in the ass when googling bugs
or trying to find pretty much any information about a specific model.

Although admittedly we already have that with most of their other devices ("do
i have an early 2011 MB or was it the mid-2010?") and it's not like other
vendors are much better in this regard.

~~~
pault
There is a model identifier, it's just hidden in the system profiler (Mid 2011
air is MacBookAir4,2)

------
afterburner
It's 10% heavier:

<http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/07/new-ipad-vs-ipad-2/>

Yes, I know why, but I was hoping against hope it would get a little lighter.
But I didn't think it would. Maybe next year, when there's no reason to up the
resolution.

~~~
lukifer
It's still slightly lighter than the first iPad, so for those of us who didn't
upgrade, it'll be an improvement. :)

~~~
afterburner
Heh, yes, by 5%. :)

I think a nice weight would be about 400g. The Kindles are 200-300g, except
the DX-2 which is 540g.

~~~
lukifer
I prefer my Nook Toucho the iPad for pure text reading because it is so
ridiculously light. But it would be tough to make the iPad 3 lighter than it
is, without major breakthroughs in batteries or materials (lighter gorilla
glass).

------
tvon
I'm still somewhat amazed they haven't found a better way to handle updating
the store. I understand that there is a marketing aspect to taking it offline,
but it should be back online and updated immediately after the event is over.

~~~
dabeeeenster
I think it IS all just marketing...Im sure a company that size can update a
product on a website without going offline if they really wanted to

~~~
tvon
I think that's reading a bit too much into it. The product has been announced,
having the store down now does nothing to promote it (as having it down during
the announcement might), it only prevents people from buying it.

------
_djo_
It's 'the new iPad', not the iPad 3. Apple is evidently going to follow the
same pattern as it does with its computers and is doing away with a sequential
numbering system.

So the next iPad will also just be 'the new iPad' the same way that every year
we see 'the new MacBook Pro'. The iPhone will probably follow suit.

~~~
thought_alarm
Apple is following the pattern that begun with the failure of the Apple III
computer, which is to not name any more products "3". There was no Mac 3, iPod
3, or iPhone 3.

------
jevinskie
No mention of bumping the RAM from 512 MB to 1 GB. Even my TF101 Tegra 2
tablet has 1 GB of RAM. I wonder how much the 4x larger retina display assets
will increase RAM usage.

Edit: I guess it does have 1 GB of RAM. <http://chronicwire.com/the-
ipad-3-has-1gb-of-ram>

~~~
kenrikm
I did a test a 1024x768 PNG vs the Same PNG at 2048x1536. 299k vs 664k. So for
raster images it more than doubles the footprint, however if you use vector
assets there should be little impact.

~~~
jevinskie
But you don't store compressed PNGs in RAM for display by the GPU. Does the
GPU even support lossless texture compression? I would imagine it supports
lossy texture compression.

Edit: It is also interesting to see that the ~ 2x increase in the size of the
PNG can be explained by PNG's run length encoding. When you double the pixels
in each direction, RLE should readily compress the horizontal pixel
replication but not the vertical pixel replication.

~~~
kenrikm
It seems Apple uses a "modified" png standard for iOS (enabled by default)
that compresses the images even more when they are added to the App Bundle.
<http://iphonedevwiki.net/index.php/CgBI_file_format#Decoding>

~~~
timknauf
True, though as jevinskie says, we're not talking here about the way images
are stored on disk but about what needs to go in the GPU memory.

~~~
kenrikm
Totally understood, and I'm well aware of the increased memory footprint
required once they are uncompressed. Way back in 08 when I was working on my
first iPhone app you had to be very careful with memory a small animation with
120 images of 50k each could quickly max out the 50mb of usable memory the
iPhone 3G had unless you cashed properly and released assets as soon as they
were not in use. I should have been more specific in my original post.

------
icki
I'm excited that they're addressing user complaints about 'content creation'.
iPhoto looks particularly impressive; it looks like people will be using their
tablet devices for more than just content consumption now.

~~~
rbarooah
What user complaints? The only people saying that the iPad can't be used for
content creation are blogosphere commentators arguing that it can't replace a
laptop yet.

------
nextparadigms
Since the pixels are multiplied by 4, and the GPU only by 2, does this means
the real world performance (in games) of the iPad 3 GPU should be _half_ the
performance of iPad 2?

~~~
kenrikm
I doubt they are using the same GPU that's in the iPad 2,I suspect that they
went with a higher end GPU and made it Quad. We will have to wait for a
teardown to know with 100% certainty though.

~~~
bryanlarsen
A teardown won't tell you anything: it'll tell you that the GPU is in a chip
called the A5X. You might be able to get a little more by pulling out an
electron microscope, but iFixit doesn't go that far, yet. :)

It'll be the people doing software sleuthing that'll get you the answer.

However we are fairly confident that Apple didn't build their own GPU -- they
would have bragged about it if they did. There are a limited number of GPUs IP
blocks available for licensing, so that does mean that speculation can be
relatively accurate. Their use of the term "quad-core" makes it highly likely
they're using the SGX543MP4, twice what is in the iPad 2 (although perhaps
higher clocked or with better memory bandwidth). That's also the GPU in the
playstation vita.

------
julianb
Looks like the iPad2 is available for $399 now.

------
thematt
Nothing mentioned about Siri. That is surprising, because I thought that
inclusion would be a slam-dunk.

~~~
ary
Not exactly true. It supports dictation just like the iPhone 4s.

------
FaceKicker
Is it just me or do the comparison pics of the old iPad screen vs. new retina
display on this page look exactly the same?
<http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/>

Edit: never mind, there's a zoom widget I didn't notice.

~~~
brianwillis
Is the loupe showing up for you? It didn't for me the first time I loaded the
page, and I thought the same thing you did.

It should look like this: <http://i.imgur.com/WUQ7n.jpg>

------
Steko
Apparently it's just "iPad". Not 3, not HD. Maybe people will always call it
the iPad 3 or maybe we'll end up calling it the 2012 iPad or the 3rd gen or
something.

~~~
high5ths
In one of the videos they mentioned it as the "third generation." Seems like
they're just asking for confusion though.

~~~
Steko
Seems to have worked ok with the iPod ("generation") and their PC line
(generally referenced by year of refresh). A bit confusing now when they're
doing the transition from "2" to numberless which the first one was but in the
long run it will pay off. I suppose they'll just keep calling it "new" to
differentiate.

------
benwerd
I'm pretty psyched about the 1080p video. We just released our iPad app, which
compresses video and shares it with people / teams, and my hope is that this
will drive further adoption. Also, I want one, and I want to be able to share
the video I take with it.

I do resent how poorly my iPad 1 performs now though. I only bought it 18
months ago!

------
ericd
I'm always kind of surprised that the online store doesn't update instantly. I
have to imagine that their "We'll be back soon" splash page kills a lot of
potential impulse purchases.

It seems to be back now, but the iPhone is showing "From $0", and clicking on
the iPad gives an "Oops" error page. Couldn't this all be worked out in
staging?

~~~
allwein
> It seems to be back now, but the iPhone is showing "From $0"

This is actually the correct pricing for the iPhone, since the 3GS is
available free when signing up for a 2-year plan from AT&T.

~~~
ericd
Ah interesting, thanks for the correction, it's been too long since I've
bought one of those. I didn't realize that they were even supporting the 3GS
anymore, let alone selling it.

------
munchor
I hate it that I can't watch the videos on Apple's website, and to me, this is
just a reminder of that, oh why?

~~~
munchor
Also, I do know why, but Linux user over here :P

------
ot
Pre-ordering will be a lottery. I've been trying to get to the online Store
for more than half an hour and I get either server error, "we'll be back soon"
or incredibly slow connection (which then fails). I managed to get once to
iPad page but clicking on any link brought me back to server error.

~~~
jevinskie
The store went down just as the checkout page (page after the smart cover
upsell page) was loading. I auto refreshed on that URL and was able to place
my preorder a few minutes ago.

~~~
warmfuzzykitten
I stopped counting, but I must have started over a dozen times before I was
finally able to check out. What I didn't know was that each walk through the
iPad page was ordering another iPad, so my cart wound up with five of them (!)
but thankfully removing the extra three didn't make me start over.

[Aside: The new Apple TV is impossible to order from the website because the
page has no continue or buy button! Maybe they'll notice when first day sales
are zero. You can add one to your cart from the Apple Store iPhone app, but so
far I have been unable to check out. Apple seriously underestimated the order
volume for these products!]

------
shad0wfax
Wonder how many are willing to upgrade from Ipad 2? I have an Ipad 2, I don't
see a need to upgrade.

I am sure the tablet devices will follow a similar cycle as iPhone. Upgrade
once in 2 years. I am beginning to wonder, the only aspects that might make me
want to upgrade to IPad 4 next year, could be faster processor and more
memory, thus making the overall experience better. I am sure Apple will have
some exclusive software that will run only on their latest device (ex: Siri),
that might force me to upgrade. Given how I use the Ipad right now - Videos,
Netflix and eBooks (very limited browsing), I am ok with what I have now.

Will be good to know some statistics on how many upgraded to Ipad 2 from Ipad
1.

~~~
bstar77
Most of us moving up from the iPad2 already sold our iPads.

~~~
shad0wfax
Agree, that is an option to make it easier to decide to upgrade. The question
is are you (and the others who sold their iPad2) gadget freaks that lust for
new stuff, or do you really see a value in the upgrade.

What I am trying to figure out is, what keeps you(/me) wanting to upgrade to
new tablets frequently, where as we are perfectly ok, running our 3+ year old
Mac. Maybe the price point makes it more affordable to upgrade frequently.

~~~
bstar77
I purchased the iPad2 despite being disappointed with the screen, but I knew I
would use the device to death. I basically went into the purchase knowing I
would be selling it in less than a year since apple products hold their value
so well. So this upgrade does have a huge amount of value for me as the ipad2
display is very limiting.

I am sort of a 'gadget freak', but I force myself to be on a budget and that
usually requires me to sell my devices pretty frequently. With that said, I
will probably use the ipad3 for the 2 year cycle unless I'm not impressed with
the ipad5 (doubtful).

I still have a 27" 2009 iMac that I absolutely love and probably won't be
upgrading for a few more years (when desktop retina displays are common
place). Once you get into the apple product cycle, if you buy early in the
cycle and sell late, upgrades are not that painful. When I sold my netbook 2
years later I basically gave it away... that was painful.

------
abruzzi
I'm glad they didn't call it "iPad HD". Call me pedantic, but HD should be
limited to ITU 'HDTV' broadcast spec, and the iPad 3's resolution doesn't fit.
Instead it just confuses things with imprecise language.

------
mikemoka
Everyone is speaking about bandwidth speed, but what about the first major
product launch of the post-Steve era? What was your impression about it? A
little bit of something clearly wasn't there if you ask me

~~~
demallien
I don't know. It was better than the last announcement, the day before Steve
died. But then, I suspect that none of them were at their best that day. At
any rate Tim seemed much more relaxed this time round. There were moments
where he really did seem to be enjoying himself - the big thumbs up after the
Siri Japan demonstration springs to mind, but there were a couple of other
moments too.

------
kenrikm
The Apple Store was live for about two minutes but a DDOS from everyone trying
to pre-order brought it down and they went back to "We'll be back soon"

I would love to see how many hits they are getting.

------
wmf
"Quad-core graphics" seems like misleading marketing to trick people into
thinking A5X is equivalent to Tegra 3; this seems like a shame since Apple
could presumably win without it.

------
lelf
Is me the only one was secretly hoping for tactile feedback?

~~~
phn
You were not :) I was really hoping for it. All in all I think it was a very
"play it safe" upgrade.

------
joshAg
Welp, this does it for me. As soon as i can get a completely carrier unlocked
iPad in the bay area, I'm going to switch from my laptop (x61t) to this new
iPad plus a dock and a BT keyboard and mouse. All I really need is an
ssh/X-window server app, and I can run all my programs on my server or
desktop.

------
juiceandjuice
I think this link is titled wrong.

Nowhere is it referred to as iPad 3, iPad HD or anything like that. It's just
"The new iPad"

------
MatthewPhillips
Does this not include an update to iOS?

~~~
spicyj
It does; iOS 5.1 comes out today.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Link? Update to Safari (IndexedDB please)?

------
marze
In the presentation, Cook refers to the "new iPad" with no "3". Inside Apple,
they probably have viewed what we call the iPad 1 and iPad 2 as the prequel 1
and prequel 2 to the actual iPad, which is only now finished.

------
Fizzer
Does anyone know if OpenGL's 1024x1024 image size restriction is being raised
as well? Seems pretty limiting to not even be able to make an image that's as
big as the screen without tiling four of them together.

~~~
toadkick
The max texture size has been 2048x2048 since the 3GS

~~~
toadkick
Sounds like on the new iPad the max has further increased to 4096x4096

------
eternalmatt
It sincerely bothers me that no where no the apple.com site, has Apple
referred to his as the iPad 3. The closest thing to a new name that they've
given is "The new iPad".

Please everyone stop calling this the iPad 3.

------
cicloid
Isn't the LTE migration in part a cost saving measure for carriers and later
on the final user?

From what I remember, LTE does pump more data in a more cheap way; and the
infrastructure for it is more cheap also.

------
leeoniya
so Apple ditches Flash for HTML5, but requires Quicktime to play the Retina
tech video?

<http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/>

~~~
leeoniya
yo dawg! we used quicktime to showcase your iPad3 so you can use apple
proprietary tech while you watch apple proprietary tech.

------
MatthewB
I'm wondering if my grandfathered unlimited plan with AT&T can be applied to
the iPad?

------
jorisw
1) It's spelled iPad. 2) It's not officially called iPad 3, just 'the new
iPad'.

------
warmfuzzykitten
Apple can't keep the Apple store up. Why are they surprised by the load?

------
jiggy2011
I wonder what the implications of this will be for web design?

A website built with a fixed with 1000 pixel design is suddenly going to look
pretty silly on a new ipad.

Of course if you design around large resolutions you will marginalize those
with standard displays.

~~~
kyleslattery
It will work exactly like it does on the iPhone—if you specify 1000 pixels, it
will be 1000 pixels wide on the non-retina iPads, and 2000 pixels on the new
iPad.

------
kenrikm
Ouch, Just ordered 32gb 4g (AT&T) $780 with tax. If I were not using it for
development it would hurt a lot more however it still is about double what I
would be comfortable with for my own use.

------
tlb
_Resolutionary_. What a godawful marketing department word. The first thing
you see. I miss Steve.

~~~
macrael
It's not unprecedented. The Macbook Air was marketed with "Thinovation"

------
xpose2000
During iPhone 4S release, who cares about 4G. iPad HD, all hail 4G!

------
huggyface
I have four Android smartphones and two tablets, but this is the first Apple
product that has really opened my wallet. Literally, my wallet is sitting
open.

But their store keeps crashing and going back to the offline state. Called
their phone sales and they couldn't help me because they use the online system
to enter orders. :-)

Ah well, I'll get one soon enough.

~~~
nextparadigms
What is it about it that made you want it so much? There will be Android
tablets with just as high or higher resolution very soon, and with stronger
CPU's than the still dual core Cortex A9 chip in the iPad 3.

~~~
pilsetnieks
It's like the megahertz war from way back when - you might have a CPU with
100% more megahertz but you're still using windows.

~~~
jarek
So continuing the analogy... Apple mobile products will switch to Android in
about five years and their marketing won't miss a beat?

------
incanus77
It's spelled "iPad" and it's not the 3.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to my Desk 4 and have some
Breakfast 2.

~~~
demallien
I don't think he knows about second breakfast Pip

------
dlsym
Apple releases Ipad 3 - and no one cares.

------
cageface
It says a lot that the longest thread thread here is about data plans. I guess
this is a logical iteration of the iPad 2 but they really seem to have left
the door open for an Android manufacturer to leap ahead here. Both this and
the 4S feel like Apple on autopilot.

~~~
rbarooah
What would suggest they should have done to stay ahead?

~~~
cageface
If I could answer that question I'd be Steve Jobs.

~~~
rbarooah
And yet despite not being Steve Jobs, you're certain they haven't done enough
to stay ahead.

------
Osiris
I think Apple is doing a great thing by pushing up display resolutions. I
can't believe that PC manufacturers still REFUSE to produce laptops (at least
consumer grade) with any resolutions higher than 1366x768.

I've been watching consumer laptop sales for a year and the only one I've seen
with a higher resolutions is a 17" beast. Luckily I got a 15" Macbook Pro from
work with a 1680x1050.

Everyone's known since the iPhone 4 that Apple would do a hi-res Tablet
display, but PC manufacturers still refuse to innovate and put in hi-res
displays in their laptops.

I refuse to try to write code with only 768 vertical lines.

~~~
jonnycowboy
My year-old Dell XPS-15 has a 1920x1080 display (15") and is fairly "consumer
grade". Granted it was an option, but still. Actually I have a problem with
this screen - the font is too small (windows doesn't rescale automatically).

~~~
Osiris
That's interesting to know. Still, considering the hundreds of models of
laptops available, it's a very very small percentage that offer anything other
than 1366x768. The Macbook's minimum resolutions is 1440x900 and they offer
1680x1050 as an option.

------
scrame
Hooray! Another iteration of an expensive toy for tech managers trying to
justify their jobs and people who think that money buys taste!

------
jcfrei
I feel like apple is already slipping without steve jobs. calling the new ipad
"the new ipad" certainly doesnt seem like a smart move (same goes with the
iphone 4s - wouldnt you rather have an iphone 5?). and furthermore, there's
again very little innovation in the device, the outside hasnt changed at all,
albeit being a little thicker. just improving display resolution seems like a
change most ipad2 users won't appreciate enough. I just feel like that apple
is now just draining every penny from it's customers with small innovations
and a huge brand - while still being unable to decide what to do with it's
stockpiles of money.

~~~
lukev
I actually agree with you to a large extent (especially on the iPhone 4s), but
a vastly improved resolution + substantially better hardware do constitute a
legitimate incremental release.

You can't really expect them to do a full redesign with every product
iteration, especially when they've obviously already landed on a local maxima
of aesthetics and usability.

~~~
jcfrei
yes but it still feels like those are rather intangible improvements to the
average consumer. will he care so much about improved resolutions and
processor speed? speaking of aesthetics, I would love to see a screen without
bezel on the side (like the galaxy s3).

------
robomartin
Why I will not be buying an iPad 3:

\- Resolution: Who cares. \- Camera: Who cares. \- 4GLTE with a ridiculous
price and cap. No thanks

I don't think there's anything really compelling about the iPad 3 for the
masses. Sure, they'll sell a bunch of them, mainly because, well, that's what
they are selling now.

Being on WiFi most of the time I don't see any motivation to get an iPad 3
over my iPad 2. Most of the time the iPad 2 is used to casually browse the web
on the couch, play chess and mess around with other games. In none of these
use cases has the iPad 2 screen resolution proven to be an issue at all.

Once usage becomes more serious iPad 2 goes on the shelf and I/we switch to
computers. All of our home computers are equipped with a minimum of two 24inch
1920 x 1200 pixel screens. There is no way the iPad 2 or 3 experience can
compete with this at any level.

I think Apple needs to fix the issue of carriers gouging customers for
connectivity. We have four iPhones and two iPads. Why are we paying six fixed-
cost, limited usage data plans when the devices are on WiFi most of the time?
Why is it that we can't buy a "family" plan, if you will, and pay one fee for
connectivity. That's what you do with DSL: You pay one amount for a data rate
and it doesn't matter if you have one or fifteen computers attached to the
service.

The next revolution in mobile might not come until the recurring costs
involved in using these devices come under control.

