So the new iPad came out yesterday. Not the iPad 3. Not the iPad HD, which is what basically everyone including me was calling it for the last month. Just "the new iPad." Apple actually named a product that. I know naming things is hard, Ive named exactly zero companies in my life and probably shouldnt be throwing stones, but somebody in Cupertino signed off on a press release that says "the new iPad" and in eighteen months when they release another one, what then? The newer iPad? The new new iPad? I genuinely think this is going to bite them and its a small thing but it bugs me way more than it should.
Anyway. I didnt go stand in line, if thats what youre expecting from this post. I went and did a lap past the Apple Store around 9:30 yesterday morning on my way to actually doing something with my day and the line was still wrapped around toward the parking garage, easily 200 people, a bunch of them clearly camped overnight given the blankets. Respect to them. Not for me. I have a job and also a general unwillingness to sleep on a sidewalk for consumer electronics, no judgment though, everyone's got their thing.
What actually shipped, for anyone who's been ignoring the coverage: Retina display, 2048x1536, which on a 9.7 inch panel is a genuinely absurd pixel density. The A5X chip, which is still a dual core CPU but now has quad core graphics bolted on to actually push that many pixels, because apparently a regular dual core GPU setup just chokes trying to render that resolution. 5 megapixel camera on the back now instead of the sad 0.7 megapixel thing the iPad 2 had, 1080p video recording, and they somehow kept the battery life claim at the same 10 hours despite all that extra hardware, which if true is kind of the most impressive part of the whole thing to me. Its 9.4mm thick now instead of 8.8, and about 50 grams heavier. Prices are the same as last years lineup, $499 for the base 16GB wifi model up to $699 for 64GB wifi, and $629 to $829 if you want the 4G versions, which now actually support LTE on Verizon and AT&T instead of the fake "4G" HSPA+ stuff.
I'm not buying one. I got the iPad 2 for my mom for Christmas and used it enough over the holidays to know its plenty good for what I actually do with a tablet, which is read stuff in bed and watch YouTube while I pretend to also be doing something productive on my laptop. The Retina screen does look incredible in the demo units, I'll give them that, text just looks printed rather than displayed, its a real difference and not a marketing difference. But I read most of my stuff through Instapaper on a device I already own, and I dont think my eyeballs are suffering enough right now to justify another few hundred bucks eighteen months after my last tablet purchase. Ask me again when this one starts feeling slow, which if history is any guide will be right around the time iOS 7 comes out and decides my current hardware isnt cool enough for the new features.
The thing that actually interests me more than the hardware is what this means for app design going forward. Every app in the store now has to either look noticeably worse on this thing or get updated with 2x assets, and given how many iPad apps out there are clearly one-person-project side hustles that havent been touched since launch, I bet were going to see a pretty visible split for a while between apps that look amazing on the new screen and apps that look like garbage in comparison, sitting right next to each other on the same home screen. That's going to be a weird transition period. Kind of already is, honestly, I was swapping between two apps on a demo unit yesterday and the difference was almost funny.
Also, small complaint that has nothing to do with any of this: whoever decided that Daylight Saving Time should start in the middle of March instead of April like it used to be, I hope you're having a rough week too, because I have been groggy since Sunday and my body has not caught up. Unrelated to tablets. Just needed to say it somewhere.
Anyway that's the new iPad. Great screen, dumb name, not buying one yet. We'll see how long "yet" lasts.