The iPad 3 Screen
Apple's press invite to the March 7th event in Apple's usual stomping ground of the Yerba Buena Arts Center in San Francisco (matching its predicted date) carried a simple image of a finger probing an iPad screen, and the simple text "We have something you really have to see. And touch."
A classic Apple teaser. But as almost everyone noted immediately, the fragment of screen in the image is shown in pretty good close-up detail...and the pixels in the icons are suspiciously small, with the font being curiously smooth compared to the iPad 2. Is this confirmation that all those rumors of a super-high-res iPad with 1,536 by 2,048 pixels are real?
Of course it is! It's a brilliant move by Apple to maintain the iPad as king of the tablets with a display that surpasses pretty much every rival in terms of sheer graphical brilliance. Heck, it'll even likely beat the laptop screen you're reading this on.
We knew it, you knew it, Apple's doing nothing to hiding it.
The iPad 3's Fatness
We'd heard many rumors the iPad 3 was going to be a bit fatter than the iPad 2, and recently leaked rear shells suggested this would happen as a mere deepening of the current shape. Now someone's done the obvious thing and put a measuring caliper to these pieces of alleged Apple hardware, and yes--while they're aesthetically almost identical, they mean the iPad 3 may be 0.81 mm thicker. That's about three sheets of standard printer paper, or one tenth the height a hedgehog can leap on the forty-first Wednesday after Pentecost. We mean it's really not very much, and you're hardly likely to sense it when holding the thing. It's hardly structural, and Apple wouldn't cede its title of (one of) the thinnest tablets without a reason: It's for a bigger battery, we're guessing... one that's chunky enough to meet the power draw of the new screen.
The iPad 3's CPU
Is it going to be powered by an A6 chip? An A5X chip? With two cores? With four cores? With a couple of super-powerful graphics cores bolted alongside?
it doesn't matter. As we pointed out, the smartphone world goes crazy about chip specifications in an attempt to give phone and tablet makers an almost meaningless marketing hook to tout at events like Mobile World Congress. But Apple tends to minimize attention given to its device innard's specs. It only took the unusual move of talking up the original iPad's A4 silicon because it was a big change for the firm, going with own-brewed chip tech for the first time. Expect Apple to only briefly deal with the AX chip inside the iPad 3.
And you shouldn't mind either--you can bet that Apple's polished the synergy between hardware and software to a brilliant gleaming shine: The iPad 3 will perform very slickly indeed, and thus what makes it tick is irrelevant.
The iPad 3's Home Button
Look again at that press image up the top there... notice anything? The icons are spaced in a way that means the iPad is in portrait orientation, but if so there's a certain something missing from beneath those probing phalanges: The home button. Is it a goner, at last? Has Apple chosen to abolish it, ditching occasional unreliability and a point of ingress for dust and liquid into their tablet? It's totally possible, and iOS has long offered a gestural alternative.
Check out these crazy concept renderings for a future iPad that lacks the home button...
But wait, it could be an Apple trick. Maybe the iPad's upside-down in portrait mode, which would put the button out of view. Why would Apple do this? To hide a remodeled iPod connector port at the base of the device?
It's all speculation. We're not betting on this rumor.
The iPad 3's Arrival Date And Price
More leaked info coming from China suggests Apple's already busy shipping iPads around the world to key distribution points to enable an almost imminent launch date after next Wednesday's big reveal. It's completely possible, and we're guessing something like availability inside a week in perhaps 10 nations (with a staged international rollout later). Apple could also surprise everyone, with Tim Cook suddenly touting an availability of "This Friday, March 9th" to a gasping crowd. That sort of supply chain supremacy is Cook's expertise, after all, and it would certainly bump Apple's stock price up higher--from its already astronomical altitude.
One thing that could knock that stock price is Apple's iPad 3 price. Another rumor suggests Apple may position it at around $80 more than the iPad 2 (an edition of which may, or may not, remain on sale as the cheaper entry-level offering). We're dubious here, as it seems unlikely a Chinese supplier would have sight of Apple's super-secret internal pricing decision. On the other hand, Apple may choose to do it.
A New Apple TV
Meanwhile Apple may slide out a wholly new Apple TV alongside the iPad 3, say more rumors. It would be undoubtedly an up-specced device, sporting a faster processor, the ability to play full 1080p streamed video on HDTVs, and may include niceties like Bluetooth 4.0 for improved remote control options.
Is it a full Apple Television? No. Is it possible? Very much so, as it's long overdue.
iTunes Audio
There's much buzz that Apple will also overhaul its audio technology, powering iTunes and presumably its Macs and iDevices, to incorporate extra high-definition audio codecs under a "mastered for iTunes" label. Speak to a mastering engineer, and they'll say there's some merit to mastering a recording for the format it's presented in (CD, or whatever) in order to optimize the sound experience for the listener...so mastered for iTunes makes sense. It would give iTunes an edge over some of its newer rivals, from Amazon to streaming services like Spotify. Will it come next week or at the iPod refresh event later in the year? Time will tell.
Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.
