Like all anticipated Apple products, the iPad 3 has been the subject of rumour, gossip, speculation, wishful thinking and informed opinion.
Well, we can stop now. It’s here. And it’s not the iPad 3, or the iPad HD – it’s simply the iPad, foreshadowing a simpler, more elegant naming convention for the entire Apple line in the future. Good move.
Here is what the experts, the critics and the aficionados had to say:
[as always, these extracts & links provided for your convenience - please click through to the source website for the full story].
Mar 7th 2012 By Darren Murph ”…By and large, the new guy is the same as the old guy (Home button included), but with a few nice amenities that could very well convince OG iPad owners to upgrade. Upon touching the HD variant, it’s not the overall form factor that grabs us — it’s the screen. Given that we’re unashamed Pixel Density Enthusiasts ’round these parts, seeing a 2,048 x 1,536 resolution display in the same area as the prior ‘Pads is stunning.”
by Charlie White: “…How well will the iPad 3 sell when it’s introduced next month? Who’s going to upgrade, and who will sit on the sidelines, enjoying their current version of the iPad, or no iPad at all? We have answers to those questions and more in this exclusive infographic created by the experts at AYTM Research (Ask Your Target Market), with help from Mashable.”
“…Apple knows how to build something right, and since it did it so well once, well, why change? The new iPad 3 looks just like its predecessor, the iPad 2 – despite this updated version being 9.4mm thick compared to the iPad 2′s 8.8mm. But it’s the screen that really sets it apart.”
March 8 By Patrick Goss: ”…The new Apple iPad has finally arrived bringing with it a superlative Retina Display, quad-core graphics A5X processor, better connectivity and an improved camera. ..That higher resolution is 2048×1536, less than the Retina screen on an iPhone, but designed to be held slightly further away, so Apple has plumped to keep the Retina name because you cannot, in its words, see the pixels at that distance. ”
March 7, 2012 By Gerald Lynch “…Many analysts rightly predicted that the new iPad would sport a super-high resolution screen, and as with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, Apple have pushed in their Retina Display technology. Still in a 9.7 inch form factor, the Retina Display has a 2048 x 1536 pixel resolution. That adds up to 3.1 million pixels, approximately 1 million more than you’d see on an average 1080p HD TV…Pushing that many more pixels requires a hell of a lot of graphical grunt, so there’s a new A5X chip onboard the new iPad. Offering quad-core graphics capabilities, Apple stated that the A5X performs 4X better than the NVIDIA Tegra 3 mobile GPU. In some cases during our hands on session this really wowed us; the new Sky Gamblers Air Supremacy flight-sim game from Namco looked incredible, with graphics now truly rivalling the latest generation of console games, with plenty of action onscreen all at once”.
March 07 2012 by Jason Gilbert : “…After the iPhone 4S was announced in October, the buzzword that hung around it was “disappointing.” Part of this was due to the outsized hype leading up to the announcement. The newiPad has now arrived, and it, too, represents a mostly internal upgrade. It looks just like the iPad 2. Its major selling point appears to be that it has a pretty screen. And yet this update, unlike the similarly unsexy iPhone 4S update over the iPhone 4, is not a disappointment, nor should it be viewed as one…It’s not that the best got better so much as the only real option got better. Before Apple’s event, there was not a single tech reviewer or journalist worth taking seriously who would have answered anything besides “iPad 2″ when you asked what was the best tablet. After Apple’s event, there is not a single tech reviewer or journalist worth taking seriously who will not similarly answer anything besides — well, whatever the name of the new iPad is.”
Mar. 8, 2012 By: Will Shanklin: ”…After months of rumors and speculation, it’s here. The iPad 3 aka the iPad HD aka the iPad 2S is now simply known as… iPad. Yes, Apple appears to have dropped the numbering system from the iPad line and is simply calling this “the new iPad.” That doesn’t, however, take away from how significant of an upgrade this new iPad is.
Don’t let anyone convince you that this is a minor update because it doesn’t have a quad-core CPU, Siri, or a portal gun. Let’s take a look at how the 3rd generation iPad stacks up against its predecessor, the iPad 2…”
By Galen Gruman: “…When Apple unveiled the new iPad today, it did so in a market where there are tens of millions of people like me who already own an iPad. Last year’s iPad 2 was a remarkable advance on the groundbreaking original iPad released a year earlier; for many of us, it made sense to dig into our wallets to get the iPad 2. I’m not sure the same is true for the new iPad.”
- APPLE Website: iPad All the info you need straight from the source
