World of Apple

The new iPad with Retina display | Image courtesy of Apple

So there we have it, we’ve got a date—October 23rd. Invitations with the inevitable subtle clues are yet to grace the inboxes of the select few that will stream into the very same auditorium that Steve Jobs took to the stage exactly 11 years ago on October 23 to announce the iPod and change the direction of Apple forever but what will it be about this time?

All bets are on an iPad mini, a smaller 7.85-inch iPad with a distinctly slimmer shape in every dimension. It’s this newer iPad, whose name nobody knows yet, that may see Apple sew up the tablet market for a long time to come. You can bet those same dollars as you’ve got on the device actually turning up on how Apple will tout the smaller sibling to the positively huge original 9.7-inch iPad. A smaller iPad has different uses: it is lighter, so makes reading easier; it’s not as wide and much thinner so easier to throw into a bag or stick in your inside suit pocket.

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iPad with Ultrafast 4G LTE on Apple's US website

Outside of the United States Apple has been making headlines that aren’t exactly positive and it’s all surrounding how the company has chosen to advertise the new iPad. As is common knowledge these days Apple took the bold step to include LTE connectivity in its latest iPad model as one of the major features. Ahead of the iPad release I shot down the chances of Apple including LTE, stating primarily a lack of international adoption as a key reason for Apple to wait a year. I later relented and suspected it was inevitable.

However, LTE in the iPad is seemingly causing Apple more headaches than they would have envisaged and since before the iPad was even announced has been a point of frustration for myself and many others. This breaks into two simple ideas, the first idea being that LTE actually constitutes as true 4G connectivity and second the reason as to why Apple hobbled the iPad internationally?

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iPad 3 Battery as shown by iFixit.com

There has been a lot of talk about batteries and power usage recently. It was all kicked off by the announcement and subsequent release of the third-generation iPad. When the iPad was originally released in 2010 many, including myself, were amazed that the iPad had such incredible battery life that it no longer became an issue. It was not something that was worried about.

Apple was obviously proud of the quoted battery life figures it presented with the first iPad because it maintained them with the iPad 2. But what that demonstrated was that Apple was pleased with the battery life and saw it as a major feature and therefore worked hard to produce a System-on-Chip (SoC) that could be powerful yet power efficient. With the iPad 2 Apple doubled the processing speed from the original iPad and delivered up to nine times the graphics performance whilst making the unit thinner and maintaining (in fact, increasing) battery capacity.

But that’s nothing compared to what happened on the iPad 3.

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The new iPad with Retina display | Image courtesy of Apple

Apple today announced a new iPad finally putting an end to the chorus of iPad 3 rumours that have been circulating for many months. The new iPad, which is simply named iPad, is very much in line with the rumours. Also announced today, in line with expectation, was a new Apple TV.

Apple’s new Apple TV offers 1080p output and a new user interface which very much looks like Apple is positioning the device for more apps in the near future. Apple TV users can choose from over 15,000 movies and over 90,000 TV episodes on the iTunes Store, now available in 1080p. Apple TV also continues to offer content from Netflix’s streaming catalogue, live sports from MLB, NBA and NHL as well as Internet content from Vimeo, YouTube and Flickr.

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Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco decorated ahead of Apple's iPad 3 Event | Image courtesy of kiel

In a little under two hours Apple CEO Tim Cook will take to the stage alongside his other senior executives and show the world the new iPad. In addition to the new iPad Apple is expected to announce a new Apple TV too. Rumours about both of these products have been circulating for many months, catch up on the iPad 3 rumours here and the Apple TV roundup here.

World of Apple will not offer a live blog of today’s event but I will be tweeting key announcements on the World of Apple Twitter account. The following sites are my favourites for following these kind of events:

• The Verge
• The Loop
• Macworld
• Ars Technica

World of Apple will provide full coverage of the announcements from the event and detailed analysis. The event begins at the following times:

• 10:00AM – Pacific
• 11:00AM – Mountain
• 12:00PM – Central
• 01:00PM – Eastern
• 06:00PM – London
• 07:00PM – Paris
• 09:00PM – Moscow
• 02:00AM – Tokyo (Thursday 8th)
• 04:00AM – Sydney (Thursday 8th)

Siri on the iPhone 4S

With less than 24 hours to go before Apple unveils the new iPad, speculation has risen to a deafening roar about what will appear on the new tablet. Last month I set out most of what was assumed about the iPad 3, up until this point very little of that has changed.

Here are the known knowns:

• Retina display with a resolution of 2048 x 1536, most likely an IPS panel with dual backlights
• Slightly thicker exterior case
• A6 or A5x System-on-Chip with a PowerVR G6200/6400 GPU
• Upgraded cameras on both sides, rear-camera likely to mirror that of the 4S in terms of video

Then comes what Donald Rumsfeld would refer to as the known unknowns, the things that are likely to happen eventually but not necessarily on this refresh.

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Purported photo of iPad 3 rear enclosure (right) compared to iPad 2 | Photo courtesy of RepairLabs

Amongst the ranks following the path of Apple’s iPad updates it has been of reasonable certainty that the next major update to Apple’s hugely popular tablet would come in the March/April time period. With just one month to go before the iPad 3 (sometimes referred to as iPad HD) is announced the number of reliable rumours has begun to pickup and a picture of the device becoming clear and a timeframe coming into view.

Whilst I’ve been telling eager outsiders to expect an update to the iPad around March/April for some months now I have been known to explain that I believe Apple should adjust the update point of the iPad. But it would seem that this year is not when that is going to happen. Last year I published an article discussing some of the reasons why Apple had pushed the iPhone release from the regular June spot into the fall and wrongly assuming that the annual music event would be pushed aside for the iPhone. In fact the iPhone release fell in early October and sales have been nothing but stellar, I was wrong in my prediction.

It still remains odd to me that Apple would stick to a schedule of releasing a new iPad just three months after Christmas in the March/April timeframe followed by an iOS event in June (coinciding with WWDC) with that software release occurring alongside new iPhone hardware in October. This bizarre update cycle leaves new iPad owners with “old” software until the fall and puts Apple on the back-foot on the run-up to Christmas.

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iPad 2

It is rumoured that Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook travelled to South Korea last week to talk with Samsun executives about moving to an AMOLED display for the next-generation iPad dubbed by some as ‘iPad 3′.

The original story from The Korea Herald was picked up by OLED-info.com. Notably from the article the sources also indicated that Apple was looking to ship the third-generation iPad towards the end of this year.

The current iPad 2 makes use of an IPS LCD display with LED backlighting and it is reported that Samsung’s Super AMOLED would be brighter, less reflective of sunlight and consume less power. It is reported that Samsung has offered Apple “an advance” for active-matrix organic light-emitting diode displays.