According to This Is My Next, sources are saying that, along with the thinner, lighter iPhone 5, there will be an updated iPad 2 with a Retina-grade display come this Australian spring.
As hard as it might be to believe, the new tablet is said to sport a double resolution screen (2048 x 1536), and will be dubbed the “iPad HD.” The idea behind the product is apparently that it will be a “pro” device aimed at a higher end market – folks who work in video and photo production possibly – and will be introduced alongside something like an iPad version of Final Cut or Aperture. This product is specifically said to not be the iPad 3, rather a complimentary piece of the iPad 2 line. Think MacBook and MacBook Pro.
This doesn’t seem too far off, considering that 300dpi tablet displays in general are nearly ready for the consumer market. But will Apple reveal these new products at once? Or stagger them out over multiple events? Do we even care? Probably. [This Is My Next]
Sam
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 8:03 AMI think the iPad HD is coming, I doubt this spring though, probably more likely next year as so far it’s on a (close to) 1 year release schedule much like the iPhone.
olearymo
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 8:39 AMMy feeling? This is also what will happen with the iPhone. We’ve been hearing that there’ll be a ‘high end’ and ‘low end’ iPhone. My bet is a retina iPhone 5 (HD) and a standard res iPhone 5 (SD)
Ian Exaudi (Creative Intersection)
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 9:57 AMDo we care? Of course – tech toys are cool, and cool tech toys are awesome.
Love the idea of an iPad HD, but not sure it would be useful as a HD video editing platform given the giant chasm between the A5 dual-core (or its likely successor) and a “real” CPU that you might find in a more battery-munching device like a laptop.
I’d prefer 1080p output from the iPad to an HD TV if I had to choose any improvement right now. 720p is *so* yesterday :-)
Having said that, it would be a really interesting challenge for developers like ourselves to work to that res on a tablet app … and would be very cool from an OS/user perspective to have 4 “full-screen” (read: “traditional” iPad apps) tiled on screen at once.
That, along with a bluetooth mouse input option, would go a long way to closing the gap between the tablet (a relative “toy”) and a laptop – especially for business use.
olearymo
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 10:10 AMBluetooth mouse would be a lovely option. It’s the sort of thing you wouldn’t even know about unless you were using a mouse, so it’s hardly as though it’d be intrusive.
huu
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 10:28 AMPeople get a tablet to get away from the mouse and keyboard isnt it?
Ian Exaudi (Creative Intersection)
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:47 AMMeh – there’s still a lot of stuff that works better using a mouse.
… or maybe we’re just more used to using a mouse for some things (http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2011/07/study-suggests-ipad-browsing-less-effective-than-using-apps/comment-page-1/#comment-66642).
Ian Exaudi (Creative Intersection)
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 10:38 AMTrue (from a user perspective) – although there are a few key differences in the paradigms of mouse (hover & click) vs touch (short/long tap, multi-touch etc) … so that represents a bit of a challenge in the core part of the OS and hence in the code on top of which apps are written.
Would definitely be nice to have mouse+cursor as a limited-but-traditional navigation tool though.
Sir
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 10:26 AMHopefully one day all displays, up to and beyond 55inch tv’s will be above 300dpi. I don’t care what they say about distance from screen, my eagle eyes need it asap. Seeing anything after an iphone 4 screen is like black and white tv to colour. I don’t find it hard to believe at all. They did it with the iphone, it’s only a matter of time before it works it’s way up the screen sizes. When they say the screen res will double but it won’t be an ipad 3, that’s a concern because surely it needs an A6 processor? Ahh whatever, I’ll buy it anyway, HD all the way!
Simon Reidy
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 2:13 PM+1 to that sir. I can’t wait for the high DPI revolution.
CraftyNinja
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 3:19 PMif only all the idiots stopped with the whole 3D fad…..
olearymo
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 4:09 PMAgreed. It should be like audio. 44khz and up is considered ‘good’, anything below is not adequate.
Should be the same for 300dpi. It should be the visual equivalent of ‘CD quality’.
Steve
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 7:43 PMA 300 ppi huge-screen is not only prohibitively expensive and an energy hog, it’s also pointless.
No-one would be able to do a ‘blind’ test with a conventional 1080 screen and a 300 ppi+ television. At that distance, there is no detectable difference in spatial resolution. And there’s also the risk of oversaturating an image.
The Retina display is just a marketing buzzword, since we’ve already arrived with screen size. Nice to see people being suckered into this fad, hook line and sinker.
villainsoft
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:31 AMIf the processing and the RAM stay the same, this is not going to be good. Working with high resolution in paint programs on the ipad2, it only just barely performs at realtime.
Up the processor and the RAM and this is an instabuy for me.
Lillee
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:35 AMWhen I can figure out what to do with an iPad other than play games, I might be interested…
olearymo
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 12:52 PMheard of browsers?
tsengan
Saturday, July 9, 2011 at 10:11 PMThe iPad HD won’t be a replacement for the laptop for people working in photo/video production. it’s a brilliant tool for previewing and live networking. I know a lot of pro photographers who use their iOS devices to show live previews to clients during shoots, especially useful in larger studios or different rooms.
froglegs:P
Sunday, July 24, 2011 at 7:07 PMi want the ipad 3 :P
Husky
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 9:42 PM2048×1536? That’s nuts. Surely the price would be insane, even a TV with that resolution on a 32 inch device would be expensive, and imagine the battery life.