Quote:
Originally Posted by tyche
Apple's annual mac expo is the end of January
|
Yes, there is a Mac world expo in January, but Apple doesn’t participate in it anymore. Now they rather announce new products when they feel like it.
The new iPad is rumored to be released in April world-wide. Pictures of new iPad cases as well as rumors from suppliers suggest that the new iPad will have two cameras (just like the iPhone). A RAM upgrade to at least 512MiB is a given (the current iPad has only 256MiB), a speed upgrade is possible, but unknown at the moment. Qualcomm and others are working on Dual-Core ARM processors, but Apple’s roadmap regarding future CPUs is completely unknown. RIM’s Playbook which is expected to ship in Q1 2011 will already feature a dual-core CPU. I’m not sure if the iPad 2 will have a dual-core CPU, but the iPad 3 will definitely have one!
The display is rumored to be of the same new manufacturing type as the iPhone’s which means the touch foil will be more closer to the actual LCD panel. That results in less glare and a more print-like appearance of the pixels. In contrast the current iPad display just looks like a display under a glas panel. There have been no serious rumors about a higher display resolution and if you ask me, that is definitely not going to happen: The iPad just like the iPhone is based on bitmap graphics, hence a higher resolution would mean much more work for developers. The iPad platform is not even a year old and Apple is definitely not going to fragment it at this early stage. Plus, if they really felt the need for a higher resolution, they would have already incorporated that in the original iPad concept.
This would also be much more demanding for the hardware: The iPad currently has a resolution of 1024x768 on a 10" display, that makes for a pixel density of 125ppi. If you double the pixel density like they did on the iPhone 4, you get a total of 2048x1536. Then you would have 250ppi. If you wanted the iPhone’s 326ppi, the iPad would need a resolution higher than 30" monitors. Processing power on a mobile system is limited and I think there are areas where it is much more needed.
So basically it comes down to this: Do you need a camera on your iPad? Do you rely on multitasking (needs lots of RAM)? And can you wait until April? Personally I’d recommend you wait. But the current iPad is still a great device, so you don’t make a mistake by buying it now.