They Just Called It "The New iPad" and I Have Thoughts

So I did the thing. Tuesday morning, coffee not even finished, I preordered the new iPad. And I mean that literally, because thats its actual name now. Not the iPad 3. Not the iPad HD like everyone on every forum was guessing for weeks. Just "the new iPad," like Apple is daring you to search for tech support on this thing in about fourteen months when its not new anymore.

I get what theyre going for, I guess. Same move they pulled with "the new MacBook Pro" back when they wanted you to stop thinking of these as numbered generations and start thinking of them as just... the current version of a thing that exists. But typing "new ipad" into Google in 2013 is going to be a nightmare and somebody in Cupertino knows that and does not care, which is honestly kind of funny.

Anyway. The specs are the real story and theyre not nothing. Retina display, 2048x1536, which Apple says is more pixels than a 1080p TV. The chip is called the A5X now, quad-core graphics apparently, and theres a 5 megapixel camera on the back that can supposedly do 1080p video, up from the sad little camera on the iPad 2. You can also get one with 4G LTE this time, which is new for the line and the reason my wallet is $130 lighter than it wanted to be.

Pricing stayed put though, which I didnt expect. $499 for the base 16GB wifi model, same as always, scaling up to $699 for 64GB wifi. Add the LTE option and youre paying $629 to $829 depending on storage. Mine shipped out as a 32GB wifi-only, I dont need cellular data on a tablet, Ive got a phone for that and Im not paying two data bills so a device I use mostly on my couch can theoretically get online in a coffee shop. Ships March 16th according to the order confirmation, so Ill have actual thoughts on the screen instead of secondhand ones from event liveblogs sometime next week.

The other thing worth mentioning, and this got buried under the iPad news but shouldnt have, is that Google quietly renamed the Android Market to Google Play on Tuesday. Its not just a rename either, they folded Google Music and the Google eBookstore into it, so its one storefront now for apps, music, movies, books, all of it. Feels like theyre trying to build their own version of the whole iTunes-plus-App-Store combo, which, fine, thats the right move honestly. The old Market app icon always looked a little dated next to the App Store anyway.

And speaking of app stores, if you havent downloaded Angry Birds Space yet you are missing out on watching the internet lose its mind over a bird game for the third time. Rovio put it out last week and Ive seen numbers floating around saying it cleared ten million downloads in under three days across every platform they released it on. I played it for maybe twenty minutes on a friends phone at a party this weekend and I get it, the low-gravity slingshot mechanic is a neat twist, but Im not going back to being an Angry Birds person. I did that in 2010. Im good.

One more thing before I go back to refreshing my shipping tracker like an idiot. SXSW Interactive wraps up in Austin today, and the one piece of news out of it that actually matters to me is that Instagram is finally bringing an Android version. Ive got two friends who switched off iPhone last year specifically because they got tired of feeling locked out of stuff like this, and I cant say I blame them. No date on when it lands, just that its coming, which is the kind of announcement that means "trust us" more than it means anything concrete. Well see.

Going to go stare at my order status page now. Its not going to update any faster because I keep hitting refresh but you cant tell me anything right now.