

What Apple hopes you didn't notice about iPad2 - Blankwood
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/03/03/missing.from.ipad2.taylor/?hpt=C2

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masklinn
> How much memory will the new iPad have? We don't know, because Jobs didn't
> tell us. Given that he ticked off all the other major specs of the device

Not really. He said the CPU was dual-core (not even sure he said it was 1GHz)
and he said the GPU was much faster. That's about all he did.

> But given the standard pace of technological improvement, one would expect a
> 128-gigabyte hard drive by now. Could tablet design have reached some kind
> of inherent size limit?

God, can't these people learn to look up information?

It's at the limit of wide-availability NAND. That's why _all flash pmps on the
market also top out at 64GB_. Toshiba demonstrated a 128GB chip in 2009, which
at the time was supposed to reach production by the end of 2010, clearly that
has not come to pass.

> Contrary to what the rumor mill had been expecting, there was no improvement
> in screen resolution -- meaning the iPad 2 is already lagging behind the
> iPhone 4, with its much-touted retina display. (An iPhone 5 is expected
> later this year.)

Except, of course, last time I checked the iPad's resolution (1024x768) is
bigger than the iPhone 4's (960x640). And if you want to go "but... he's
talking about density!"... the iPad already lags behind the iPhone (not 3G or
3GS, just iPhone) as well as the 2010 macbook air (11") or the nanos (since
the first generation).

And why the iPhone 5 reference? Is he expecting an other bump in iPhone
resolution? ('cause it's not going to happen)

> And while Jobs told us how many frames per second of video the new iPad's
> cameras would shoot, he didn't mention megapixels. This is not a spec he has
> been shy about announcing when it came to iPhone models.

I'm pretty sure he said "VGA" and "HD". You can argue that "HD" can be 720p or
1080p (it's the former), but that's hardly "didn't mentioning megapixels" and
the iPad specs page was put up on Apple's website during the announcement. It
has the camera specs.

Finally,

> Cloud sync?

Is not a hardware feature, it was not in the iOS 4.3 betas, and Jobs was
definitely _not_ expected to demo iOS5, why mention it in relation to iPad?

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thenduks
Does anyone care about any of these points?

Wires? Yea, we still need wires for some things. Apple doesn't do stuff that's
not going to be a good experience.

Memory? ...don't know, don't care how much memory is in my original iPad - I
only care that it performs well - and it does.

Screen resolution? Don't know what rumors they were following, but it's
completely impractical today to put a retina display on an iPad-sized screen.
Wait for it.

Megapixels? ...pointless fluff marketing numbers.

Storage space? I bought a 32gb and wish I had saved the 100 bucks. All my
content is on my Mac which has many hundreds of GB of storage.

These all seem _deep_ in nitpick territory. This is a consumer device - like
your TV or your microwave. Post-PC, remember?

~~~
Kylekramer
Are you saying that connecting a device to a computer to sync is a better
experience than automatically syncing OTA? And you like tabs reloading if you
leave the page?

Nitpicks are important. Good enough is the enemy of excellence.

~~~
thenduks
I'm saying that when they can make those things a good experience, they do.
They add memory when they can get it in sufficient supply and it doesn't
increase the price too much. They add OTA such-and-such as they have
appropriate methods of doing it that don't negatively affect the customer.

Copy/paste is a great example. They didn't have a decent implementation, so
they just sat on it and released it when it was ready. I think, when it comes
to consumer electronics, this is exactly the right approach.

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aforty
Actually, reports suggest it now has 512MB RAM just like the iPhone 4.

Apple doesn't like talking hardware specs, they feel it distracts from the
overall package that is both the hardware and software. They give vague
numbers like 2x better CPU performance due to dual core CPU but they didn't
mention how fast each core runs. They didn't mention the RAM for the iPad1 and
they didn't now either. I'm not sure why people are surprised by this.

[http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/03/03/apples_a5_cpu_...](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/03/03/apples_a5_cpu_in_ipad_2_has_512mb_of_ram_same_as_iphone_4_report.html)

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Toucan
Apple never mention how much RAM is in their iOS devices. If I had to guess
why I'd say it forces more consumers to compare based on things other than
specification. The tech savvy know what they're reading and where to get the
data, most other consumers don't care, but there is a group who know where to
get the data and don't know how to interpret it, who may be fooled by numbers
which don't actually affect their use of the device.

As for having features missing in the first version, that's also been the
Apple way. Release early, release often. See what the consumer actually wants
and complains about and include that in the next version.

I do think that the sync cable still isn't very Apple though. I've been hoping
that will vanish ever since iOS devices first had wifi capability across the
board.

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mechanical_fish
Apple really does need some serious competition soon, if only so that people
will stop writing irritating articles comparing Apple's product line with
_figments of their imagination_.

It would be one thing to read an article saying "the iPad has X amount of RAM,
but Tablet Q has Y amount of RAM, and that's probably why Tablet Q is so much
better at tasks A and B." But instead we get "the thing that you can _buy
right now at a store_ offers X, but it really doesn't hold a candle to the
thing I saw on _Star Trek_ last night".

Real engineers _ship_ , people. There are a lot of constraints. You can't wish
them away, so you can't compare a real thing with an imaginary one. You can
only compare two real things. And you can't part them out, imagining an animal
with the vision of an eagle and the reach of a giraffe and the speed of a
cheetah and the fecundity of _E. coli_. That can't happen. Maybe you can
design it on paper, and maybe you can build a very scary-looking prototype,
but that animal can't be shipped.

The only actual comparison I see here is one sentence about a RAM spec: The
Xoom has 1GB, and that's bigger. What this means in real life, however, I do
not see here. Yeah, I know the number is bigger, but _tell me why I care. Tell
me why it's worth every other compromise that I'll have to make, just to get
that RAM._

~~~
tomjen3
Okay, it has less ram than the Galaxy tab.

And honestly, the iPad 2 hasn't shipped yet.

~~~
albedoa
Good catch! They should have shipped the iPad 2 first and announced it later.

The article didn't once mention the Galaxy Tab. You missed the parent's point.

~~~
tomjen3
I pointed out that his facts was wrong. I don't care about his point.

~~~
albedoa
Then I think you responded to the wrong post because your reply talks to
neither his facts nor his point.

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olivercameron
The author has completely missed the whole point of the iPad, which is to make
personal computing simple. Consumers do not need to know how many GHz or how
much RAM their iPad has, they just need to know that it'll run apps, play
games, videos and edit documents. If you feel so inclined, Apple lists most of
the specifications on their website.

I know a lot of people who are literally scared of the old-fashioned PC,
because of all the jargon associated with buying one. The iPad is
revolutionising by simplifying.

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DjDarkman
The funniest thing is that Jobs said that the processor is dual core, and that
it's 2x faster. Now this seems to imply that 2x cores = 2x faster, which is
absurd, if they didn't increase the clock speed there is no way they could get
a definite 2x speed up.

The problem with multiply cores is that they have to access memory among other
shared resources which really hurts when one core blocks out the other one.
Modern operating systems try to be smart about multiply cores, but still twice
the core count does not mean twice the speed.

~~~
superstructor
While you are correct that simply adding a core would not result in a 2x
speedup you missed the fact that there are other significant differences
between the A5 SoC compared to the A4.

* DDR2 vs DDR1 memory (1066 vs 800Mhz)

* possibly dual-channel i.e. 2 64-bit buses instead of one but this is hard to get solid info on atm.

Even so the speed up probably wouldn't be exactly 2x, but it would be close in
some applications and make his claims a lot more reasonable simplification for
the target market.

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cnkt
"we are selling overpriced products for rich people". apple hopes you didnt
notice that.

~~~
rimantas
Apple showcased something in that context yesterday. Namely, that 5 out of six
models in iPad matrix were cheeper than Xoom.

------
joebananas
Future presidential candidates would also do well to note that the GarageBand
presentation was overlong and tedious, just like the iPhoto presentation was
when they unveiled the new MacBook Airs.

~~~
joebananas
3 downmodders didn't read the article...

