The overages of $10/GB per month on both services mean once you go over your plan, you'll be looking at a little over $5/minute in new charges.
It is possible (though highly unlikely) to rack up over $200K/month in bandwidth charges if you managed to find an empty 4G cell for a month.
Sadly Sprint, which has unlimited 4G last i checked, was absent from the release of the new iPad.
In Australia, the ACCC banned the use of the word "unlimited" (with respect to Internet access, wireless or fixed-line) unless it truly was unlimited. No shaping, hard or soft quotas, excess usage charges and vague "fair use" provisions. The result? You get what you pay for and you pay for what you get. If you pay for 1TB/month on an ADSL line you're absolutely going to get it.
The real problem here is a combination of false advertising and people with completely unrealistic expectations. Not everyone can use 73Mbps all the time. There simply isn't the bandwidth for it. If you want to download 100GB+/month you should absolutely be paying more than someone who only downloads 2GB/month.
Back to the "new iPad" (why not iPad 3? Seriously!), i'm excited about it. Having it be able to do 1080p is great, although I think it's high time they up the flash storage at this point. 64GB doesn't go that far at Full HD.
The RAM, CPU and memory upgrades make this a pretty serious device now. The release of iPhoto is probably going to be unfortunately for many photo app makers (and hopefully it'll mean an end to Photoshop Touch's ridiculous 1600x1600 limit).
Apple just continues to cement their complete dominance against, well, everyone in the tablet space.
The resolution is kind of awkward for moving watching no? There's no 1:1 mapping of source pixel to hardware pixel, so you're going to get some filtering regardless. But, a step up regardless. The current iPad screen is downright painful to look at once you've been spoiled by high-DPI screens.
> "although I think it's high time they up the flash storage at this point. 64GB doesn't go that far at Full HD."
I actually don't think this is a big issue. It would seem to me that Apple is moving slowly towards the Amazon model - cloud-based content provision of everything. It used to be that you'd have to download giant files to a "mothership" computer, then pipe it over USB to your mobile device, but with iCloud and now downloading your movies over the air, this seems positively archaic.
The video shown at the end of the announcement event has an Apple employee referring to it as "the third-generation iPad".
This seems very strange to me, considering how on-message Apple has ALWAYS been in the past. It's just... sloppy.
I wonder if Apple has a future beyond its current momentum. I'll be convinced otherwise ifwhen they release another world-changing product that wasn't invented by Steve.
While I was not charged overage fees, my data rate was crippled to 57Kbps.
The thing sits in the drawer and I NEVER use it because its useless.
I am paying $100 a month for it. They want $400!!! to cancel it.
Fuck these carriers.
Your responsibility.
I bought an iPad 2 last year and I didn't even consider buying one with a data plan. I am near wifi about 99% of the time, discounting driving, hiking, and airplane time. In a pinch, I can check email on my Droid.
Eventually 4G will become inexpensive, but it isn't right now.
No. I don't use the work wifi because it is severely limited (paranoid IT guy) and my iPad may access material I'd rather they not sniff (just NOYB stuff). I use it on the road for mapping, impromptu parking-lot Grouponing, whatever far from wifi. Open routers still often have some irritant signin or blacklists. Even at home my iPad often gets 3G better than wifi.
Don't underestimate the value of "always connected". A legacy unlimited plan multiplies it.
There are also sites with rules about what's allowed to be on the network or not. Often a consultant or guest can't put his device on the network, at least without a lot of work (BYOD isn't done on many networks), but having network access is useful. There are also sometimes IP considerations (using an iPad or 4G hotspot during a break from a day job is less likely to be "using employer resources" to manage your startup if you're moonlighting than if you use their wifi...).
For +$130, it's worth it to me to have the capability. It also makes GPS more accurate, and maps is a really cool thing. I only replace my iPad every second generation, though.
Still, I bought a 3G ipad only because of the GPS chip in it. Even without the data plan it's quite valuable if you hook your ipad to your phone's hotspot or another wi-fi network.
Also, your download patterns are unlikely to change a lot. It'll still be email, web surfing and some youtube. LTE makes netflix possible while not on wifi, but that's about the most data-hungry thing an average user is going to do. For the most part the only thing this changes is that things like installing apps when off wifi are much faster.
If you use up your data, you have to manually sign up for more data. If you sign up for more, it's like starting the month over from the time you sign up. You're also given the opportunity to switch to a plan with a different data size.
I think Sprint is excluded because their 4G service is based on WiWax for now, although they are switching to LTE later this year and continuing into 2013.
The proper way to fix this is to have very local cells (or wifi). I would like to see cell networks pay individuals to connect mini cells to their home connections, and then allow any phone to connect to the cells. Wireless users get connectivity everywhere, mini cell operators have financial incentive to exist, and carriers reduce demand on their macro-scale network. If the telcos could agree on reasonably low prices (cost plus?), I would even agree to usage-based billing.
The wireless carriers would become dumb pipes (as they really are to begin with). Their new role would be to coordinate distribution of mini cells.
This system also creates incentive for wire line ISPs to increase their transfer rates to customers, and perhaps get into the mini cell game themselves.
It's time for these contracts to become more reasonable. Right now they border on being nothing more than theft. Imagine this: You pay AT&T for your DSL line and you also pay them for wireless access for your iPad. You are paying them twice but only using one of the pipes at any given time.
I definitely agree that they should do it your way though. Pricing is part of the product, and simple-to-understand pricing schemes will sell.
In the meantime, you might be able to get creative with swapping SIM cards around.
I explain it to laypeople in one simple sentence: "You can't really watch the game on your phone."
They do lack a plan with a decent cap, I can live without unlimited but the cap should be decent.
On my non-us LTE plan they reserve the right to throttle it if I use more than 30 GB a month. I think thats a decent cap (the price is approx. 52 USD a month including 25% VAT, cheaper plans with less data is available).
So in case you were wondering why Apple keeps obscene piles of cash around, that's why.
The other issue is that Apple has enough money to invest in factories, not that it owns them, but it can put money up front to encourage building them. I would not be surprised if they had a 1 year hold on screens of this size, just as they did for the iphone 4 (although even today noone is using the same screens as the 4).
You hold your laptop significantly farther from your face than an iPad, thus a lower PPI is sufficient. However, a 9.7" display with the iPad's PPI is getting close to acceptable sizes for small laptops, like the 13" MacBook Pros.
Then again, maybe those hints are only necessary because of the limitations of low resolution displays. If each pixel is barely large enough to be discerned by the naked eye, single-pixel accuracy may not matter so much. Clearly resolution independence is still desirable for accessibility reasons, even at the end of the pixel density road.
Its not like that part is a COTS part that is available to all OEMs.
Look at the prices of your average 47" LCD HDTV sets, way over $500. And they're probably making less money per unit than the iPad. I don't know how Apple is doing it.
I'd like to see a startup take on PowerPoint by releasing software to compose iPad-friendly presentations. Think one-pagers full of text, graphs, and figures. On an iPad they could be interactive, annotated, and linked together. Every iPad-toting meeting goer could scan a QR code on the way in to get on the same page, and then sit and discuss the content. Gone will be the days of presenters doling out bullet points at excruciatingly slow pace.
Having read Isaacson's biography of Jobs, it seems that Apple may be gunning to disrupt the textbook market. Having paper-like resolution is a great step in that direction.
Edit: Thanks to gte910h for pointing out iBooks Author. I wasn't aware of it!
Now if you could have the ppt (or whatever) allow attendees to collaboratively interact with the current dashboard slide then you'd really have something.
Maybe I should get to work on that!
But, we don't really have that issue with many other Apple products (iPod nano, all Macs, etc) that use the same naming scheme. So we'll see how bad it actually ends up.
This naming convention is simpler that appending a hardware version number to the name at each refresh. Also, it's what Apple currently does with most of their other product lines. It's the MacBook Pro, not the MacBook Pro 3. The iPods were always called just that, an iPod. People referred to them as the nth generation iPod, but Apple labeled them iPods. Easy.
I wouldn't be surprised if this naming convention spreads the iPhone.
This naming convention would be especially convenient for the iPhone. The next one would be the sixth generation but it could confuse people if they call it 'iPhone 6' since there was never an iPhone with a '5' in its name.
For reference, here are the previous iPhone names:
1. iPhone
2. iPhone 3G
3. iPhone 3GS
4. iPhone 4
5. iPhone 4S
iPods are also versioned. People refer to their '4G iPod shuffle' or their '2G iPod touch'
Similarly, the iPhone 4S simply says "iPhone" on the back and is not easily differentiated from the original iPhone 4.
Although admittedly we already have that with most of their other devices ("do i have an early 2011 MB or was it the mid-2010?") and it's not like other vendors are much better in this regard.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/07/new-ipad-vs-ipad-2/
Yes, I know why, but I was hoping against hope it would get a little lighter. But I didn't think it would. Maybe next year, when there's no reason to up the resolution.
I think a nice weight would be about 400g. The Kindles are 200-300g, except the DX-2 which is 540g.
I'm really curious to see what the battery is like when playing games. Quadrupling the effective required fill rate is gonna have that GPU working overtime.
So the next iPad will also just be 'the new iPad' the same way that every year we see 'the new MacBook Pro'. The iPhone will probably follow suit.
Edit: I guess it does have 1 GB of RAM. http://chronicwire.com/the-ipad-3-has-1gb-of-ram
Apple would say it has "enough" RAM. I thought that one of the game demos mentioned that it had more resources than an Xbox 360 or PS3, but I don't think they were talking about RAM.
Edit: It is also interesting to see that the ~ 2x increase in the size of the PNG can be explained by PNG's run length encoding. When you double the pixels in each direction, RLE should readily compress the horizontal pixel replication but not the vertical pixel replication.
They have been for a while...
It'll be the people doing software sleuthing that'll get you the answer.
However we are fairly confident that Apple didn't build their own GPU -- they would have bragged about it if they did. There are a limited number of GPUs IP blocks available for licensing, so that does mean that speculation can be relatively accurate. Their use of the term "quad-core" makes it highly likely they're using the SGX543MP4, twice what is in the iPad 2 (although perhaps higher clocked or with better memory bandwidth). That's also the GPU in the playstation vita.
Edit: never mind, there's a zoom widget I didn't notice.
It should look like this: http://i.imgur.com/WUQ7n.jpg
I do resent how poorly my iPad 1 performs now though. I only bought it 18 months ago!
It seems to be back now, but the iPhone is showing "From $0", and clicking on the iPad gives an "Oops" error page. Couldn't this all be worked out in staging?
This is actually the correct pricing for the iPhone, since the 3GS is available free when signing up for a 2-year plan from AT&T.
[Aside: The new Apple TV is impossible to order from the website because the page has no continue or buy button! Maybe they'll notice when first day sales are zero. You can add one to your cart from the Apple Store iPhone app, but so far I have been unable to check out. Apple seriously underestimated the order volume for these products!]
I am sure the tablet devices will follow a similar cycle as iPhone. Upgrade once in 2 years. I am beginning to wonder, the only aspects that might make me want to upgrade to IPad 4 next year, could be faster processor and more memory, thus making the overall experience better. I am sure Apple will have some exclusive software that will run only on their latest device (ex: Siri), that might force me to upgrade. Given how I use the Ipad right now - Videos, Netflix and eBooks (very limited browsing), I am ok with what I have now.
Will be good to know some statistics on how many upgraded to Ipad 2 from Ipad 1.
What I am trying to figure out is, what keeps you(/me) wanting to upgrade to new tablets frequently, where as we are perfectly ok, running our 3+ year old Mac. Maybe the price point makes it more affordable to upgrade frequently.
I would love to see how many hits they are getting.
Nowhere is it referred to as iPad 3, iPad HD or anything like that. It's just "The new iPad"
Referring to the maximum texture size, I assume? Don't current iOS / PowerVR implementations have a max texture size of 2048x2048? It isn't intrinsic to OpenGL but is implementation specific -- for instance the Mali-400 (GS II) and Tegra 2/3 is 4096x4096.
Please everyone stop calling this the iPad 3.
From what I remember, LTE does pump more data in a more cheap way; and the infrastructure for it is more cheap also.
A website built with a fixed with 1000 pixel design is suddenly going to look pretty silly on a new ipad.
Of course if you design around large resolutions you will marginalize those with standard displays.
But their store keeps crashing and going back to the offline state. Called their phone sales and they couldn't help me because they use the online system to enter orders. :-)
Ah well, I'll get one soon enough.
The integration with Google Talk and Gmail is a plus for Android, but Android on a tablet seems to still suck for usability otherwise. Additionally battery life sucks (some random app would occasionally just grab a wakelock and suck down battery to zero), and so does media management.
And after having an Android tablet for 10 months now, I still have yet to see apps for it that are as compelling as I've seen from day one on the iPad. Aside from Google's own apps, Android apps that actually take advantage of the tablet form factor (as opposed to just being smartphone apps that get stretched awkwardly to the giant screen) are few and far between.
I'm an Android believer from a philosophical and practical perspective, however I have to credit Apple: they don't talk about an HD display and then bring it out six months later, but instead talk about it when the shipments are loading on the trucks. Further the empirical strength of the A5X, thus far unproven, may not always top artificial benchmarks, but they seem to get a heck of a lot more out of it.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to my Desk 4 and have some Breakfast 2.
I've been watching consumer laptop sales for a year and the only one I've seen with a higher resolutions is a 17" beast. Luckily I got a 15" Macbook Pro from work with a 1680x1050.
Everyone's known since the iPhone 4 that Apple would do a hi-res Tablet display, but PC manufacturers still refuse to innovate and put in hi-res displays in their laptops.
I refuse to try to write code with only 768 vertical lines.
If Apple releases a retina screen Air, I would seriously consider getting it. If they make one about as heavy with a high resolution and a 15" screen, I'm definitely getting one unless it has a slow SSD or is really incompatible with Linux.
I have a new laptop with a 1366x768 resolution but my older P4 laptop with 1280x1024 (or thereabouts) is much more pleasant to write code (or write anything) on. Those extra 266 vertical pixels just make all the difference especially when you have so many toolbars etc.
I don't understand why everything has to be widescreen now, it may be preferable for movies but that's surely not the main use case for a computer. That's what a TV is for.
You can't really expect them to do a full redesign with every product iteration, especially when they've obviously already landed on a local maxima of aesthetics and usability.
- Resolution: Who cares. - Camera: Who cares. - 4GLTE with a ridiculous price and cap. No thanks
I don't think there's anything really compelling about the iPad 3 for the masses. Sure, they'll sell a bunch of them, mainly because, well, that's what they are selling now.
Being on WiFi most of the time I don't see any motivation to get an iPad 3 over my iPad 2. Most of the time the iPad 2 is used to casually browse the web on the couch, play chess and mess around with other games. In none of these use cases has the iPad 2 screen resolution proven to be an issue at all.
Once usage becomes more serious iPad 2 goes on the shelf and I/we switch to computers. All of our home computers are equipped with a minimum of two 24inch 1920 x 1200 pixel screens. There is no way the iPad 2 or 3 experience can compete with this at any level.
I think Apple needs to fix the issue of carriers gouging customers for connectivity. We have four iPhones and two iPads. Why are we paying six fixed-cost, limited usage data plans when the devices are on WiFi most of the time? Why is it that we can't buy a "family" plan, if you will, and pay one fee for connectivity. That's what you do with DSL: You pay one amount for a data rate and it doesn't matter if you have one or fifteen computers attached to the service.
The next revolution in mobile might not come until the recurring costs involved in using these devices come under control.
