
Apple Increases iPad with Retina Display to 128GB - orrsella
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/01/29Apple-Increases-iPad-with-Retina-Display-to-128GB.html
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brudgers
This is a paradigm shift. Apple is embracing three numeral technology while
their competitors are stuck in the two numeral age. Apple's ability to
increase numerals a full fifty percent when pundits were expecting a mere
incremental refresh is perhaps the most amazing news of 2013.

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ohwp
What are you talking about!? There are loads of 128GB tablets available on the
market.

Edit: for more info check out Samsungs 128GB eMMC memory chip

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barredo
I only know of the Surface Pro with 128Gb built in.

Edit: Removed Surface RT as it only provides 32/64Gb options

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uptown
While the Surface Pro offers a 128GB model, the device itself only provides
83GB of that space to the user. The remainder is used by the operating system
and its files.

[http://gizmodo.com/5979796/the-128gb-microsoft-surface-
pro-o...](http://gizmodo.com/5979796/the-128gb-microsoft-surface-pro-only-
offers-83gb-of-usable-space)

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nivla
Let's add it up:

128GB (not GiB) = 119GiB of actual space.

System requirement to install Microsoft Office = 3.0 GiB of space

System requirement to install Windows 8 Pro = 20.0 GiB of space

(119GiB - 3.0GiB - 20GiB) = 96GiB of usable space.

Now what programs or files could explain that difference of 13GiB?

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uptown
I'm guessing, but perhaps a recovery partition?

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nikolakirev
I think this is just another step towards tablets replacing personal portable
computers(notebooks, netbooks). More storage on the tablet means less
dependency on other devices.

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nivla
I don't think storage is something that is standing in the way for tablets to
replace portable computers. If it was, all you need to do is to slap in cloud
storage and voila, theoretically unlimited space. Its more to do with
productivity and flexibility and these two things can never be fully achieved
under walled gardens. Once OS providers start porting their full OS suite to
tablets, we might see a good traction. Glad to see Windows and Ubuntu are
moving in that direction and hoping others to follow.

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rdl
I guess Apple has decided to no longer make it easy to own "the best" of any
given Apple device for more than a few months. I don't really see a problem
with this (although maybe it will hurt the generally-strong resale value,
although that will put less expensive but still great devices into the
secondary market faster).

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emp_
I am more on the theory that storage will be a selling point on the surface
pro since it has the 128GB option, and Apple's reaction to that.

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nwh
> it has the 128GB option

The 112GB option, 16 is tied up in the operating system on the RT. Presumably
even more would be consumed on the Surface Pro.

ED: Fixed math.

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aw3c2
how much does ios take? and how about a comparison in functionality?

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nwh
A little under a gigabyte for iOS 6.1. This has increased over the 150mb for
iOS 1.0, before it was even called iOS.

I'm not sure how you'd even do a feature comparison.

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itsmeduncan
It is interesting to see Apple release a bump up in specs outside of a staged
presentation. Does this mean their product release cycle will become leaner
and quicker to update instead of being on the January -> June -> October
release cycle?

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iuguy
What's the difference between the iPad 3 (retina) and this 4th generation
they're talking about? Are they referring to an iPad Mini as 4th gen or are
they saying the retina iPad (3rd gen) is 4th gen now?

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randall
Thunderbolt. When the iPad Mini was announced, they announced the new iPad
(regular) would have a Thunderbolt port, which put them at 4th gen.

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tiernano
Apple call it a "lightning" connector, and I don't think its mechanicalally or
electrically compatible with the Thunderbolt port... I think it even connects
to bog standard USB 2.0

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frogpelt
Apple obviously knows how to squeeze every ounce of profit margin they can out
of the consumer. But why does it cost the same amount to double the 16 GB
model as it does to double the 64 GB model?

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TillE
I'm pretty sure that first $100 upgrade from 16 to 32 is a huge profit maker.
It only costs Apple a few bucks, and anyone who wants to seriously use their
iPad has to do it because 16GB is just too small.

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sunkencity
I find 16GB satisfactory. If I would store tons of videos and audio I'd want
more but I stream all the audio and video. (I agree that it's a huge profit
maker for them though).

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edparry
$900 for a tablet. Damn.

That's a lot of space, considering my movies/TV shows are on Netflix, and
music on Spotify. Still, makes sense to offer it.

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mikecane
128GBs is still not enough. That should be the base storage for a Retina iPad.
How can they even sell a 16GB one with a straight face?

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dschep
What are you putting on a tablet that fills up 128GB of space?

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mikecane
Well, I stand corrected and am again pushed into the marginal category. That's
OK. But it seems to me that if you're going to push HD video, you need the
storage capacity to match it. And my overall point is that if the iPad is
intended to be the next computing revolution, it needs to offer the storage
capacity to get a lot of things done. Could any of you plop your entire photo,
music, video, and eBook collections into an iPad and still have space leftover
even with 128GBs? I couldn't. How many of you would want to pare down a 1TB
hard drive down to 128GBs because, for some odd reason, that was now the
maximum storage capacity any device offered? Maybe I'm still not making myself
clear, but I think we should be far beyond 128GBs of storage by now.

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dschep
I guess I'm also kinda marginal too. I don't expect my main device, be it a
desktop, laptop or tablet, to be where I store everything. It's way too
subject to data loss. I can steam (from personal sources or services) most of
the time, and if I need access while radio quiet, 8GB is more than enough to
cache a few interesting things locally.

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mikecane
I guess I'm too old school. I want my stuff with me, on my device. And I worry
about public WiFi and the threat of my stuff being hacked if I'm accessing it
that way -- and not having WiFi to access it too.

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dschep
What do you use to sync your 100GB+ of stuff across your devices?

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mikecane
Sync? What sync? Even though I have a lot of _stuff_ , I'm not dealing with
_all_ of it at one time. I can keep track of what's being done because it's
just a handful. But it's the _access_ to all of it that I need because who
knows when I'll need what?

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Revisor
What reason is there for the capacity not being 128, 256, 512GB?

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lemcoe9
Because that's incredibly expensive to produce and hard to sell.

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rogerchucker
It will be interesting to find out if most of the people buying the 128GB
models will either be affluent assholes or those who do a shit ton of
photo/video(/music?) editing on their iPads.

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neya
RIP Apple. Your products are no longer interesting...Sad to see such a great
company fall to pieces.

Apple's only strength was the desirability factor. And this desirability
factor arose from the fact that they had really few product lines that were
easy to remember - There was only ONE good iPhone and ONE iPad at any given
point in time, so, people would easily remember those.

Right now, what's the newest/best iPad out there? Is it the iPad 3? The iPad
Mini?? The iPad 4?? (I was aware of the 4th version only a few days back).

And what's the newest/best iPhone? The iPhone 4S? The iPhone 5?? The iPhone
5S??

When Steve was alive, the most recent product line from Apple would
automatically mean that it was the best. However, that isn't the case anymore.
Now, they just increment technical aspects (screen resolution, storage
size..etc) of their products to fake desirability.

This was the only difference between Apple's strategy and other companies like
Sony/Samsung/HTC's strategy. Heck, even HTC is getting better, they are having
fewer phones that make it easier to remember (The two latest and best phones
from HTC are the Butterfly J and the One X+)

If Apple is going to follow its competitors, destroying its only edge over the
others (ie, desirability), I fail to see how they can sustain this way. In
other words, they are digging their own grave.

Just FYI - If you are wondering if I'm a fanboy, no I'm not. I lost all
respect for them the day they sued Samsung.

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jcromartie
It's not like they are promoting this on their front page. It's just a spec
bump.

