Now that the event is over, let’s see how I did
I enjoy taking all the rumors leading up to an Apple event and making my stake in the ground prediction of what we should expect. Those that read my blog know that I didn’t quite do so well on my iPhone 4s predictions so take these with a hefty grain of salt.
Hardware:
iPad 3 is actually iPad HD. It will be called iPad HD to avoid referring to the screen as a retina display. Just two years back Steve Jobs touted the retina display as being over 300ppi and instead of Apple discussing the intricacies of pixel density and perception at viewing distances they will tag it as ultra high resolution.
Nope, “the new iPad”
It will have the following specs:
- 2048x1536 IPS Display Yes
- a5x Dual-Core CPU with beefed up GPU Yes
- 1gb of Ram Unknown until teardown
- 3.1 megapixel facetime camera (matching the screen resolution) No, VGA
- 8 megapixel rear camera (touted as 4S quality camera) No, 5mp
- 1080p video capture at 30fps Yes
- Just under 1mm thicker Yes
- There will be only two models Wifi and a 3g/LTE device Yes (AT&T/Verizon models)
Things that won’t change:
- Price points will remain the same Yes
- Storage sizes will remain the same Yes
- Quoted battery life will remain the same Yes
- The dock connector will remain the same Yes
- The smart cover will still be fully compatible Yes
- There will still be a black and a white model Yes
We will also see a new accessory for this iPad, my prediction is a new case for protecting the rear of the iPad so that it is full body protection. This case will be compatible and designed to combine with the smart covers. It will retail for $39.
Nope, nothing of the sort.
Finally, for hardware, a new Apple TV 2 will ship featuring the exact same industrial design but a spec bump to include the a5x chip as well as support for 1080p video.
Yes
Finally, I think the iPad 2 is going to hang around awhile for $399.99. Yes
Software:
iOS 5.1 GM will be made available today to developers as well as to customers within the next week. Yes
iOS 5.1 mostly contains minor tweaks to the camera, siri, and other stability fixes for iOS. Yes
Aperture for iPad will become available in the App store today. It will allow for photo professionals to edit, view and work with photos on the device. It will have iCloud integration to view photos as well as push updated photos to sync. No, but iCloud with a good chunk of the same features…
Crapshoot:
Now the following predictions are based onsome speculation, but frankly I am the least confident in:
- Siri on the iPad No
I think while Siri may not be a done deal it is very likely the voice to text transcription functionality makes its way to the device.Yes
- Microsoft Office in the App store No
While the gut reaction to this is Apple competes currently with this suite with their iWork apps I would honestly say that the customer bases for those two productivity suites are separate. By bringing Microsoft on stage to show off Excel, Powerpoint and Word support it quells a large faction of people who claim the iPad still lacks in its business and content creation offerings.
Well, that’s it. I personally will be watching the events live via the great liveblog team at The Verge and am excited to see just how close I got.
I get a real chuckle out of this. Not because of its pro-android user stand point, but because the user’s battery is nearly at zero - a common issue I have encountered with pre-Android 4.0 devices.
Part two of my series of things Apple won’t do comes to us from Appleinsider. They claim that Apple is set to release the new retina-sporting iPad 3 coming in March. So far so good. Unfortunately, the article did not stop here, but instead suggested that in October Apple would release an “iPad 4” with “killer apps”.
Last year there were similar rumors from sites like Digitimes that indicated Apple would release a second iPad in 2011 in the fall season as well. The only logical explanation is that what is really being talked about is iOS 6, which certainly could bring some new “killer apps” to the iPad 3 in the October time frame.
Long story short: Apple will not release two new iPads in a given year - especially “to counter a rumored Google-branded tablet as well as touchscreen devices running Windows 8”.
Update: Gruber agrees
