Wednesday, March 07, 2012

The new iPad 3

Apple announced the newest version of the iPad today.  For most users, I don't think it will really make that much difference compared to the iPad 2, which is already very nice and I happen to own one.  However, from a technology standpoint, the iPad 3 rocks.  Two big things to me:

First, the new screen is off the charts for high resolution.  It has four times the number of pixels as the iPad 2, measuring in at 2048x1536.  This is higher than any laptop I have ever seen.  Most laptop screens have a long side of 1400 or 1650 pixels.  I have a ThinkPad W500 whose screen is 1920 x 1200.  Even a big HDTV is only 1920 x 1080.  Apple managed to squeeze all those pixels into a 9.7" screen.  I would love to see one.  It should be gorgeous.

Second, they increased the CPU to a quad processor, improved the graphics processor, quadrupled the pixels on the screen, added a 4G (LTE) cellular modem, and increased the battery capacity all without changing the price form the iPad 2.

Looks like Apple will continue to dominate the tablet market for a while longer.

2 comments:

Ken Polleck said...

Do you think this will start a trend of higher resolution devices?

That's what, about 250 pixels per inch? I've read that 35mm film cameras are estimated at 2x to 3x that, so a 4" x 6" picture would still be considerably higher resolution.

Actually, what will most likely drive higher resolutions will be if it improves readability of small fonts for 50+ year-old eyes!

Unknown said...

They say that DSLR's have definitely passed the resolution of slide film (estimated around 10-20M pixels). Printing photos is often done at 300 dpi, so the new iPad is pretty close.

I am not sure where the trend goes. I am finding fewer and fewer laptops with more than 1650 pixels wide. I need more than that for my photo processing work. I would love for some company to start throwing higher resolutions at 15" laptops!