iPAD2
A year after revitalizing the once-sleepy, now red-hot tablet market with the original iPad, Apple surprised absolutely no one Wednesday by taking the wrapper off a slimmer, trimmer version of the wildly popular slate, complete with a front-facing camera for video chat (finally!) and a souped-up processor.
The new iPad 2 took the spotlight during a press event at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, with none other than Apple CEO Steve Jobs—who is still on medical leave, mind you (“he looks good,” Engadget noted on its live blog)—taking the stage to unveil the much-anticipated follow-up to the best-selling original.
The “dramatically faster” iPad 2 boasts a dual-core A5 “system on a chip” processor under the hood, said Jobs, good for nine times the graphics performance of the original.
Also new: dual cameras (at last), including a front-facing camera for video chat, with the 8.8 mm-thick iPad 2 a bit slimmer than the current iPhone 4. A white version of the iPad will be available on “Day One,” promised Jobs, with Apple probably hoping to avoid last year’s debacle of the white iPhone that never quite arrived.
The iPad 2 retains the same price points as the original: $499 for the 16GB version, $599 for the 32GB model, and $699 for the 64GB model. The 3G-enabled versions will again come at a $130 premium, and they’ll be available for both AT&T and Verizon Wireless.
The ship date? March 11 in the U.S., and March 25 in 26 additional countries.
Jobs also announced a new “Smart Cover” to go along with the iPad 2—one with magnetic clasps that either wakes up the iPad or puts it to sleep depending on whether it’s being attached or removed. The polyurethane version of the case will sell for $39, while a pricier leather one goes for $69.
Another new accessory is a $39 HDMI video-out cable that’s capable of 1080p video mirroring. The cable works with all iPad apps, Jobs said, and it’ll charge your iPad when plugged into a power source. Before unveiling the new iPad, Jobs confirmed recent rumors that book publisher Random House, the last of the major iBooks holdouts, would be offering more than 17,000 volumes through Apple’s e-book store. Jobs also took a shot at Honeycomb, Google’s new Android-based tablet OS, by bragging that only 100 Honeycomb-ready apps are currently available for download, versus about 65,000 apps for the iPad—perhaps not the fairest comparison, since the first Honeycomb-enabled tablet only landed in stores about a week ago.
The event is still in progress, so I’ll be adding more details to this post as they’re announced. (For the record, I’m not at Apple’s event in person; instead, I’m following the festivities from my Brooklyn HQ.) Hit the “Refresh” button on your browser early and often for the very latest. The first iPad, originally unveiled last January before landing in stores the following April, was initially greeted with skepticism.
Where’s the camera, reviewers (including me, I’ll admit) and wary consumers asked? Why no SD card slot—or USB, for that matter? How are you supposed to hold the thing, especially while tapping the on-screen keypad? Isn’t it just a jumbo-sized iPod Touch? And what are you supposed to do with the thing, anyway? Valid questions all, but in the end, the numbers speak for themselves: 14.8 million sold in 2010 alone, a total that shocked even the most optimistic Apple watchers, with the iPad laying waste to the once-burgeoning netbook market and even taking a bite out of laptop sales. During Wednesday’s event, Jobs claimed that the iPad now has a 90-percent share of the tablet market.
Unsurprisingly, the massive success of the iPad has drawn a slew of competitors, with sleek new tablets from the likes of Dell, HP, LG, Motorola, and Samsung either on sale now or waiting in the wings. Most of the hottest new tablets (such as the Motorola Xoom and the upcoming LG G-Slate) are based on Google’s tablet-oriented Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” OS, although we’ll also be seeing HP’s WebOS-based TouchPad and the BlackBerry PlayBook from RIM.
(Image credit: Reuters, via Yahoo! News)
Author : Ben Patterson
— Ben Patterson is a technology blogger for Yahoo! News.
