I don't understand all the techie stuff (and don't want to). All I know is I love my iPad2 which I've had about 5 months and use all the time. All I would like to know - what's the main benefits of upgrading to number 3?
I use the one I have to use the web, show clients my work (the main reason for getting one), listen to a small selection of tunes (it's only 16gb) and watch tutorials from Kelby traing. And for all that it seems perfect....
Depends where you are coming from.
If you are coming from iPad 1 then there are a few things to tempt you.
1 - Screen
Going from SVGA (1024 x 800) to higher than HD, this is going to be amazing on paper. however the old (existing?) screen is never a bad one in the first place. In fact it is one of the best out there, IPS screen with amazing viewing angles, good blacks, good contrast and really clear. But I am going to reserve judgment until I see it in person. I have an iPhone 4 but i will wait until I have the new iPad side by side with the old one before maknig comments on how much better it is. Apple claims it has 40% better contrast as well. We will see.
That said, it should be a marked improvement. I remember putting the old iPhone to the iPhone 4 screen, the difference is remarkable when seen in person side by side.
The possible
down side of this, which I don't think people has mentioned is the extra storage needed. 4 times the pixels means any photos I load in now I will need to put them in a larger file, I also have (ideally) to rip any movies in a higher res to take advantage of the higher res. Apps too will start to take advantage of the higher res so it is possible they will also be larger as a result. So this time round I went for the 64G version, my last one was 32G and I filled it to 80%. I was kind of hoping they remove the 16G and made the 32G the bottom with 128G the top spec but keeping the same price structure. It was not meant to be, may be next year?
2 - Speed
The biggest limitation in iPad 1 is the lack of RAM:- 256mb, and according to people who know things better than me, since the release of iOS5, whenever an app tries to access/allocate something to RAM that it doesn't have, it crashes the app and dumps you back on the Home screen. In actual usage it means loading a large webpage, anything from image heavy to sites with embedded videos (it does play them you know, like youtube), it will crash it. Therefore the jump to iPad 3 with the increase speed fromt he A5x chip and the increase in RAM helps this massively.
3 - Camera
Well, from iPad 1 you are going from no camera to 2 cameras. From iPad 2 you are going from camera to much better camera. To be honest I don't care, i have an iPhone that I use to take photos with if i need to when without my SLR so this doesn't bother me. It might tempt others however.
Going from iPad 2 however things are not as clear cut. Unless you really need the better screen then I personally would skip this one. Same with speed, for now, iPad 2 can handle the current iOS5 (as can iPad 1 did with iOS 4), however, when the next one comes out, iPad 2 will struggle. So whether you want to future proof yourself in that respect with iPad 3 is up to you, persnonally I don't see a new iOS coming this year.
poo
