So I've had the new iPad for about a week now (yes, "the new iPad," not iPad 3, we'll get to that) and I think I'm finally ready to write something coherent about it instead of just yelling into Twitter every time I turn the screen on.
First, the obvious thing: the Retina display is genuinely stupid good. I know "genuinely stupid good" isn't a technical spec, but I don't know how else to describe reading a magazine article at 2 in the morning and forgetting for a second that I'm looking at a screen and not a printed page. 3.1 million pixels, apparently more than a 1080p TV has, packed into a 9.7 inch panel. Text just sits there looking calm and finished in a way it never did on the iPad 2. I went and compared mine next to my roommate's iPad 2 in the kitchen Tuesday night and it's honestly a little embarrassing how much worse the old one looks now that I know what I'm looking for.
I paid $499 for the base 16GB WiFi model, picked it up the Friday it came out (the 16th), and didn't even have to wait in a crazy line, showed up at the Apple Store around 10:40am and was in and out in twenty minutes. Maybe everyone with real patience went at 5am for opening. I'm not that guy.
Now the complaints, because a post with no complaints in it is just a press release. First: it runs warm. Not "oh no it's on fire" warm, but noticeably warmer than my old iPad 2 ever got, especially playing anything graphics-heavy or charging while you use it. I don't think it's a big deal day to day but it surprised me the first time I picked it up mid-charge and it had actual heat to it. Second, and this is petty, but it's heavier than the iPad 2 and thicker too, and after using the 2 for a year my hand just knows what an iPad is supposed to weigh, so this one feels slightly wrong every single time I pick it up. Not bad. Just different in a way I notice constantly, which might be worse than bad honestly.
And can we talk about the name for a second. Apple didn't call this thing the iPad 3. They called it "the new iPad," full stop, like it's a proper noun now, which means in about eight months when they inevitably release another one, are we all just supposed to call that one "the new new iPad"? Every tech writer I read this week has been quietly losing their mind over how to refer to this thing in a headline without it reading like nonsense in six months. I get the marketing logic, keep it simple, no version numbers to make old models feel obsolete, but as someone who has to actually type sentences about this device, it's annoying.
The A5X chip with the quad-core graphics is the other big deal here, mostly because it has to be, it's basically the only thing capable of pushing that many pixels without turning the whole experience into a slideshow. Games load fine, video is smooth, no complaints there. I don't have the 4G LTE model so I can't speak to that side of things, though I've seen some grumbling already about people not fully grasping how fast LTE data adds up against their plan caps. That seems like a problem waiting to happen for somebody.
Unrelated little sidebar: Apple stock crossed $600 a share for the first time this week, which is one of those numbers that doesn't mean anything to me personally since I don't own any, but it's wild to think back to when this was a company people thought might not survive the 2000s. My uncle used to bring this up at every single Thanksgiving like it was his personal grudge against the tech industry. He'll have something to say about $600.
Anyway. If you've got an iPad 2 that works fine, I don't think this is an emergency upgrade, the screen is the whole story and everything else is a nice-to-have wrapped around it. But if you're coming from an original iPad or nothing at all, it's an easy recommend. I'll probably do a longer post once I've actually tried the cameras for something other than accidentally taking pictures of my own face while fumbling with the case.