Breaking away from the numerical tracking system used before (and still used in the iPhone range), Apple has decided to highlight the most major change in its newest slate by simply dubbing it "new." By and large, the new is the same as the old one (Home button included), but with a few nice amenities that could very well convince OG iPad owners to upgrade. Upon touching the HD variant, it's not the overall form factor that grabs us -- it's the screen. Seeing a 2,048 x 1,536 resolution display in the same area as the prior 'Pads is stunning.
Unsurprisingly, Apple has managed to produce something that's truly beautiful to look at, and while we've yet to see the full potential of having this many pixels on a 9.7-inch slate. Beyond being dazzling from a density standpoint, colors are sharp and accurate, and viewing angles are predictably ridiculous; even taking a peek from an extreme side angle gives way to a fairly solid image with next to no washout.
The rear camera has been greatly enhanced. The front-facing camera is the same, so those beaming their face from that one won't be doing so with any extra resolution. The A5X adds quad-core graphics power, and while zipping through home panes doesn't feel dramatically faster, the bulk of the added horsepower isn't truly appreciated until you fire up a forthcoming 3D title.
Apple's latest quarter has shown, people tend to spend money on even slight upgrades to existing hardware. Much like the first iPad, it's pretty tough to say what sort of market impact the new iPad will have without first waiting for developers. In fact, we're hoping for an entirely new wave of apps that will be enabled by the ability to show so much more content onto a single screen. It will be really interesting to see how new apps -- those designed specifically for the iPad's Retina Display -- scale down to the display seen on the iPad 1 and 2.
There's no doubt that this tablet feels every bit like a $500 product, oozing quality from edge to edge and being as delightful as ever to use. The new iPad is ever-so-slightly thicker than the iPad 2, but most accessories (including the Smart Cover) should work just fine. Moreover, the Voice Dictation feature here requires a web connection, which leaves us even more baffled at the omission of Siri. With Airplane mode toggled on, the microphone button on the keyboard simply vanishes.
There's also a new ability to delete photos from Photo Stream with iOS 5.1 (a particularly pointed issue for some users), and the camera shutter button has been relocated to roughly halfway up the screen in both horizontal and vertical orientations. Everything else, including the headphone jack, volume rocker, mic slit and Dock Connection, remain the same as the iPad 2. Settings menu do not have an option to disable LTE on the Verizon slate that we had in front of us; you may remember the ability to disable 3G on prior models, but it doesn't seem that those having LTE issues will be able to force themselves down to a slower network -- at least not on the VZW edition.
The new iPhoto app is simply astounding. It's fast, it's elegant and infinitely useful. And the tweaks that you can apply to your photos are seriously impressive; gimmicky this is not. At $4.99, it's probably the best bargain you'll find on the App Store, particularly if you're a photo lover, and those that rely on iCloud will appreciate the ability to edit on one's iPad and have the revised version synced sans effort back into iPhoto or Aperture. The new iPad has "the same CPU" as the iPad 2, but there's dedicated silicon for the camera module and a lot more horsepower on the graphics front.
