Apple has done it again: they've under delivered on the expectations for the new iPad. The only problem is that Apple did not promise anything prior to any announcements. It's the media, and their "sources familiar to the matter." This is what makes Apple stand out as a consumer electronics company. The buzz around the brand is so immense that journalists are making predictions and spreading rumors on a new product months before it's announced. Some of these are too good to be true, while others are just downright desirable—but as always, only a portion of the rumors turned out to be right. Here, we will look into what the media got wrong about the new iPad: Starting with the name. This is shocking. It turns out that the new iPad will be simply called the "new iPad," instead of the iPad 3 or iPad HD. It's likely that Apple will drop the number sequence in naming its products once and for all. By doing so, Apple is putting the naming burden to the consumers, and you bet some of them will call the product in a less elegant way than when professionally determined by Apple itself. For now, "the new iPad" is clearly referring to the one announced yesterday. But in a year, after Apple announced the next iPad iteration, people would start coming up with their own way to name their iPad 3—say, iPad 2012 or iPad 3rd generation. Officially, I think Apple will be referring it as the iPad (3rd generation). It has been using the "n-th generation" term for the iPod touch for quite some time already, but personally, I still prefer it to be simply called the "iPad 3." It's more concise that way, and there's no way to get confused. Home button will be removed, or replaced by a larger gesture-based "button." Not. The home button is here to stay, and it will work the same way as the older iPads. Rumors about the home button are not new, but it got a whole lot hotter after Apple sent out invitations to the iPad event, with a photo of an iPad without the home button. It turns out that the iPad was in landscape mode when the photo is captured. Double the battery life. How I hoped this would be true. Rumors had it that the new iPad would last twice as long as the iPad 2. If true, the new iPad would be able to sustain about 20 hours of continuous usage. Alas, the battery life of the new iPad is similar to the one on the iPad 2. It will last 10 hours of continuous usage on non-LTE units, and 9 hours on LTE. Quad-core A6 Chip. Quad-core yes, but only for the GPU. It still has only two CPU cores, and it's called A5X, not A6. That said, the A5X is still pretty impressive for graphics-intensive apps and games. Apple says the GPU in the A5X is four times more powerful than Nvidia's Tegra 3. Micro dock. Rumors had it that the new iPad will sport a new dock connector, one that is smaller than the ones found on the iPhone and older iPads. That would save up some precious space, however insignificant it might be, for more important parts, like the battery. But that'd also make the older crop of data cables obsolete. Laurens Laudowicz of Juicies should be breathing a sigh of relief now, for the old dock connector is here to stay, and his colorful cables are not obsolete yet before they were even shipped. Siri is missing. And I don't understand why that is. The A5X chip found in the new iPad cannot be any worse than the A5 chip in the iPhone 4S, so processing power issues are out of question. Yet, Apple has only included a voice dictation feature for voice-to-text conversion on the new iPad. No clever AI. No personal assistant. Senseg touch technology. The new iPad would outright trump most, if not all, of its competitors should it come with Senseg's touch technology. Senseg's technology allows you to feel the texture and friction of an object on the screen, all without altering the screen's physical shape and form factor. Do check out CNET's video to learn how cool it is. The technology is yet to be available on any consumer tablets, as far as I know. Apple's New iPad: Over Promised, Under Delivered
Apple has done it again: they've under delivered on the expectations for the new iPad. The only problem is that Apple did not promise anything prior to any announcements. It's the media, and their "sources familiar to the matter." This is what makes Apple stand out as a consumer electronics company. The buzz around the brand is so immense that journalists are making predictions and spreading rumors on a new product months before it's announced. Some of these are too good to be true, while others are just downright desirable—but as always, only a portion of the rumors turned out to be right. Here, we will look into what the media got wrong about the new iPad: Starting with the name. This is shocking. It turns out that the new iPad will be simply called the "new iPad," instead of the iPad 3 or iPad HD. It's likely that Apple will drop the number sequence in naming its products once and for all. By doing so, Apple is putting the naming burden to the consumers, and you bet some of them will call the product in a less elegant way than when professionally determined by Apple itself. For now, "the new iPad" is clearly referring to the one announced yesterday. But in a year, after Apple announced the next iPad iteration, people would start coming up with their own way to name their iPad 3—say, iPad 2012 or iPad 3rd generation. Officially, I think Apple will be referring it as the iPad (3rd generation). It has been using the "n-th generation" term for the iPod touch for quite some time already, but personally, I still prefer it to be simply called the "iPad 3." It's more concise that way, and there's no way to get confused. Home button will be removed, or replaced by a larger gesture-based "button." Not. The home button is here to stay, and it will work the same way as the older iPads. Rumors about the home button are not new, but it got a whole lot hotter after Apple sent out invitations to the iPad event, with a photo of an iPad without the home button. It turns out that the iPad was in landscape mode when the photo is captured. Double the battery life. How I hoped this would be true. Rumors had it that the new iPad would last twice as long as the iPad 2. If true, the new iPad would be able to sustain about 20 hours of continuous usage. Alas, the battery life of the new iPad is similar to the one on the iPad 2. It will last 10 hours of continuous usage on non-LTE units, and 9 hours on LTE. Quad-core A6 Chip. Quad-core yes, but only for the GPU. It still has only two CPU cores, and it's called A5X, not A6. That said, the A5X is still pretty impressive for graphics-intensive apps and games. Apple says the GPU in the A5X is four times more powerful than Nvidia's Tegra 3. Micro dock. Rumors had it that the new iPad will sport a new dock connector, one that is smaller than the ones found on the iPhone and older iPads. That would save up some precious space, however insignificant it might be, for more important parts, like the battery. But that'd also make the older crop of data cables obsolete. Laurens Laudowicz of Juicies should be breathing a sigh of relief now, for the old dock connector is here to stay, and his colorful cables are not obsolete yet before they were even shipped. Siri is missing. And I don't understand why that is. The A5X chip found in the new iPad cannot be any worse than the A5 chip in the iPhone 4S, so processing power issues are out of question. Yet, Apple has only included a voice dictation feature for voice-to-text conversion on the new iPad. No clever AI. No personal assistant. Senseg touch technology. The new iPad would outright trump most, if not all, of its competitors should it come with Senseg's touch technology. Senseg's technology allows you to feel the texture and friction of an object on the screen, all without altering the screen's physical shape and form factor. Do check out CNET's video to learn how cool it is. The technology is yet to be available on any consumer tablets, as far as I know. 
