[Anaxilus]

Quote:

What are you talking about?  They make an SD card reader for the docking port.  So don't say it could never happen.  Apple is just stupid for not building one in.
 
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC531ZM/A?fnode=MTc0MjU4NjE&mco=MTcyMTgxODc

Can I play movies or music from it?
 
Apple source said iPad3 is the one to get and its being released this year.  No brainer I would think.
 

 

[Eric_C]

That's a good question. In the meantime though, how large are movies when you load them onto an iDevice using the VLC app?

 

[K.C.]

Quote:

Apple source said iPad3 is the one to get and its being released this year.  No brainer I would think.
 

Apple is calling 2011 " The year of iPad 2."
 
They clearly want to dispel any rumors of an iPad 3 coming out this year.

 

[Anaxilus]

Quote:

Apple is calling 2011 " The year of iPad 2."
 
They clearly want to dispel any rumors of an iPad 3 coming out this year.

No, they clearly want you to buy both.
 

 

[LeonardS]

Will I be getting one?
 
If it had a built in USB port, I would be a lot closer to getting one.  Yeah, I know there is a Camera Connection Kit that works for audio, but I'd still like it to have a full fledged USB port. 

 

[DefQon]

Not worth the extra $$$ over the 1st gen Ipad. Doesn't come out as much as upgrade except $40 extra for HDMI, No SD card slot and just a HD camera on the back. But the white does look nice

 

[Achmedisdead]

Quote:

Not worth the extra $$$ over the 1st gen Ipad. Doesn't come out as much as upgrade except $40 extra for HDMI, No SD card slot and just a HD camera on the back. But the white does look nice

Extra money? It's the same price the old one was.....lol.  Add the dual-core processor, front and back cameras compared to none, and extra RAM, it's actually a better value than the original was. And I think the white will be worse for watching videos than the black.
 
I would actually like to get one, but I'll be buying a netbook of some sort instead.

 

[Szadzik]

No iPad for me. With my laptop's 6-8hr battery life and Walkman's 25hr battery life I do not see any point in a tablet like this. 

 

[elfary]

The worst thing that happened yesterday was to check that 64Gb is going to be as much storage as we could get from a i-handheld device in 2011. Last year iPad set the limit and this year will be the same. No 128Gb Touch and i doubt we will see a 64 Gb iPhone 5. Obviously the SSD market is kind of stagnant. In 2009 i thought by 2011 128 Gb will be the standard for handhelds but it seems that 64Gb is still it.
 
So no iPad 2. Something that is aimed to replace a laptop is a joke to me if it can not even reach the 100Gb storage mark. Where am i supposed to keep all the music and hd video that an iPad can play/transport ?

 

[Anaxilus]

Quote:

Where am i supposed to keep all the music and hd video that an iPad can play/transport ?

Which ironically is the point of the new A5 dual core and supposed 9x greater graphics performance.  It's just Apple milking their lifeline.  It seems an increasingly popular business model similar to the Intel 'tick-tock' strategy they implemented a few years back.  Give them just enough but not so much they don't want the next thing.  Keep them dangling on the line. 
 

 

[TekeRugburn]

Quote:

The worst thing that happened yesterday was to check that 64Gb is going to be as much storage as we could get from a i-handheld device in 2011. Last year iPad set the limit and this year will be the same. No 128Gb Touch and i doubt we will see a 64 Gb iPhone 5. Obviously the SSD market is kind of stagnant. In 2009 i thought by 2011 128 Gb will be the standard for handhelds but it seems that 64Gb is still it.
 
So no iPad 2. Something that is aimed to replace a laptop is a joke to me if it can not even reach the 100Gb storage mark. Where am i supposed to keep all the music and hd video that an iPad can play/transport ?

 i dont think 64gb is "standard"...its more like highest available storage....I think standard is either 32gb or even 16gb.
 
 

 

[MoSXS]

First gen iPad owner since launch day.
 
I'm disappointed in a few ways. First, I do think the CPU + GPU upgrade is nice, if it actually performs that well in real world situations.
 
Disappointed because FaceTime should have been a part of the original iPad. That shouldn't have been held back for the iPhone 4. The FaceTime cameras are also disappointed. The front facing camera isn't too bad, but using the same rear camera as the iPod touch ("720p" stills) on a $499 (and higher!) product is a rip off. If iSuppli's numbers are right, using the same rear module as the iPhone 4 would have cost Apple a whole $13 combined for the 5MP sensor with flash and front facing sensor. How much could that have really affected their extreme margins?
 
There should have been a capacity bump too. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was hoping to see a $499 32GB iPad 2. But this is what happens when you're the overwhelming leader in your market and nearly all of your competition is either priced higher than your product or still months away from launch if it ever does happen.
 
As a first generation owner, I think other first generation owners need to not rush out and buy the new one and think about a few things. First, they need to think about how the first generation iPad was treated by Apple. Apple called it their "most important product launch ever" at one point. Yet just a couple of months after launch, we find out that the iPhone 4 got all of the real new features. We had to wait 5 extra months for iOS 4.2 to finally be released. Let's be honest here, iOS 4.x should have launched with the iPad. And as I just said, a lot of important features were left out. Like FaceTime and 512MB of RAM.
 
So how do we know that it won't be the same with iPhone 5? iPad finally gets FaceTime nearly a year after it was introduced with the iPhone 4. Macs just got "FaceTime HD". How do we know that iPhone 5 won't have FaceTime HD and, again, double the RAM? If that happens, the iPad will be a generation behind again.
 
And what about app support? Let's be honest here for a second. The vast majority of iPad apps are just blown up version of the iPhone app. More often than not, sold as a separate app using the exact same resolution assets with the UI tweaked a little bit to match the different aspect ratio of the iPad versus the iPhone. Just about every single Gameloft game comes to mind here. Thanks to the 960x640 screen on the iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4G, they use the exact same assets (character models, textures, etc.) on the iPad version, just slightly tweaking the UI and aspect ratio and then charging you twice as much for it. And Apple won't allow those 960x640 apps to run at native resolution on the iPad either. So, unless you jailbreak, you're stuck either buying two versions of the same app or with an app artificially stuck at 480x320 blown up.
 
Theres a few gems as far as iPad apps go. But they're few and far between. I remember the day my iPad showed up, installing apps, using it, I couldn't help but think about how much potential the iPad had and how great it was going to be in a few months when app developers took full advantage of it. A year later, there still really isn't anything other than what I said above. Mostly blown up iPhone apps. Very few that take full advantage of the iPad's "capabilities".
 
How does that concern the iPad 2? Well, It has significantly upgraded hardware, if the real world performance lives up to Apple's claims. Yet there are already 15 million original iPad owners and plenty more will still be buying up whats left of the original stock. So how are app developers going to take full advantage of the new hardware without ignoring 15 million potential customers when they haven't even fully begun to take advantage of the original device?
 
In short, I think original iPad owners should hold off and see how Apple is going to treat it with software updates, and see how the iPhone 5 will compare to the iPad.

 

[davesmith]

They should have just had a front facing camera and made it a good one for facetiming. Also, more storage would have been very useful, otherwise is it really a media friendly device?

 

[Somnambulist]

 
Quote:

First gen iPad owner since launch day.
 
I'm disappointed in a few ways. First, I do think the CPU + GPU upgrade is nice, if it actually performs that well in real world situations.
Videos/reviews say it's blazingly fast
 
Disappointed because FaceTime should have been a part of the original iPad. That shouldn't have been held back for the iPhone 4. The FaceTime cameras are also disappointed. The front facing camera isn't too bad, but using the same rear camera as the iPod touch ("720p" stills) on a $499 (and higher!) product is a rip off. If iSuppli's numbers are right, using the same rear module as the iPhone 4 would have cost Apple a whole $13 combined for the 5MP sensor with flash and front facing sensor. How much could that have really affected their extreme margins?
iPad is at the end of the annual iOS cycle, the smartphone market is the most competitive still, so their summer events are still their biggest when you see all the major changes and thus the iPhone is the start of the iOS calendar. Whether this will change - like pushing the iPad 3's launch to February, then January so it's only 6 months between them - is anyones guess. The cameras aren't great but Apple obviously think the vast majority of people aren't going to use them for anything other than FaceTime/Skype/Photobooth, for which they're sufficient and $13 per unit still works out to be a fair bit over several million units.
 
There should have been a capacity bump too. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was hoping to see a $499 32GB iPad 2. But this is what happens when you're the overwhelming leader in your market and nearly all of your competition is either priced higher than your product or still months away from launch if it ever does happen.
Yep. They don't need to add more currently as nobody else is. May possibly do it with this years iPod, purely to give it something over the iPhone.
 
As a first generation owner, I think other first generation owners need to not rush out and buy the new one and think about a few things. First, they need to think about how the first generation iPad was treated by Apple. Apple called it their "most important product launch ever" at one point. Yet just a couple of months after launch, we find out that the iPhone 4 got all of the real new features. We had to wait 5 extra months for iOS 4.2 to finally be released. Let's be honest here, iOS 4.x should have launched with the iPad. And as I just said, a lot of important features were left out. Like FaceTime and 512MB of RAM.
 
So how do we know that it won't be the same with iPhone 5? iPad finally gets FaceTime nearly a year after it was introduced with the iPhone 4. Macs just got "FaceTime HD". How do we know that iPhone 5 won't have FaceTime HD and, again, double the RAM? If that happens, the iPad will be a generation behind again.
Of course it will be the same. People will just go out and buy it though; the iPhone 4 came out in June and that hasn't stopped people hoovering up iPads. I think you overestimate how much the average person cares about them matching specs. As said, iPad is the last thing to get updated at the moment because it's the newest iOS product and comes in at the end of their calendar. It'll be the same next year, the iPad 3 will take a load of features form the iPhone 5. I think by updating after 11 months though, they're showing that they want to put a little more time in between devices. As for iOS, they are synched now (i.e. 4.3 is out on all platforms next Friday) and I doubt you'll see staggered OS releases like it was on release.
 
And what about app support? Let's be honest here for a second. The vast majority of iPad apps are just blown up version of the iPhone app. More often than not, sold as a separate app using the exact same resolution assets with the UI tweaked a little bit to match the different aspect ratio of the iPad versus the iPhone. Just about every single Gameloft game comes to mind here. Thanks to the 960x640 screen on the iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4G, they use the exact same assets (character models, textures, etc.) on the iPad version, just slightly tweaking the UI and aspect ratio and then charging you twice as much for it. And Apple won't allow those 960x640 apps to run at native resolution on the iPad either. So, unless you jailbreak, you're stuck either buying two versions of the same app or with an app artificially stuck at 480x320 blown up.
There are a lot of apps that are universal and optimise themselves depending on the device they're on, there are also lots of iPad only apps and quite a few iPad versions of iPhone apps that work much better on the larger screen. This is besides the point though, people have shown they are happy paying for apps, which is why Apple's App Store is so far ahead of all the others, because amazingly people who program and design these things like making money from them, rather than giving them away for free. This is also ignoring the fact that there's nearly always 'lite' version of apps that are free so people can try before they buy, and dozens of variations of the same app, some free, some not, so people aren't forced to pay for everything.
 
Theres a few gems as far as iPad apps go. But they're few and far between. I remember the day my iPad showed up, installing apps, using it, I couldn't help but think about how much potential the iPad had and how great it was going to be in a few months when app developers took full advantage of it. A year later, there still really isn't anything other than what I said above. Mostly blown up iPhone apps. Very few that take full advantage of the iPad's "capabilities".
That's just your opinion, I think there's tons of great apps. What kind of 'capabilities' are we talking about
 
How does that concern the iPad 2? Well, It has significantly upgraded hardware, if the real world performance lives up to Apple's claims. Yet there are already 15 million original iPad owners and plenty more will still be buying up whats left of the original stock. So how are app developers going to take full advantage of the new hardware without ignoring 15 million potential customers when they haven't even fully begun to take advantage of the original device?
Apple have already had this with the iPhone, 3G, 3GS, 4 and soon to be 5. You'll have a few apps/features that are only for iPad 2 (i.e. already we have Photobooth, GarageBand and iMovie), and most other things will run acceptably on last years model, less so on the year before. Apple are a business and want to make money, same as any other. Are Galaxy Tab owners going to be happy their device already has about 2-3 replacements from Samsung already? Are Android handset owners happy that their particular device is replaced after several months with a better specced one? If people want the full experience of games like Metro 2033, then they need to upgrade their PC's components to ones that can actually handle the thing properly. It's how companies make money - if they just sold you one thing and never upgraded it, then they'd be out of business in a few years.
 
In short, I think original iPad owners should hold off and see how Apple is going to treat it with software updates, and see how the iPhone 5 will compare to the iPad.
I think the iPad 2 will outsell the iPad regardless and iOS 5 will bring some big changes, especially to the iPad's software.

 
 

 

[Mr Do]

I'll stick with gen 1 and wait till gen 3 before I consider an upgrade. I've no need for more storage since I have access to everything via the cloud and no use for FaceTime. The new covers are kind of of cool though. $349 for Refurb 16GB Gen 1 is the way to go.