The Unsurprising New iPad
The new iPad was announced on Wednesday, March 7th—not a surprise since many sources predicted the new iPad would come out in March. The main surprise from the announcement was the name, or rather, lack thereof. The announcement was reminiscent of the iPhone 4S launch (which analysts thought would be the iPhone 5); Apple didn’t announce the iPad3, but rather the “new iPad”. I’m not sure how long “new” can last. Though the name is a surprise, many of the new features didn’t surprise tech analysts.
Predictable Features
The most widely-predicted feature of the new iPad was the retina display. When I first heard about the rumors of retina display, I couldn’t understand why it was a big deal. But after Apple explained that it is higher definition than my HD TV, I understood what a big deal retina display actually is. The retina display seems to be the starting point for the new features. Without retina display, why even have an iSight rear camera? And without a more highly-functioning camera, why include the new and improved iPhoto and iMovie apps? In the keynote on Wednesday, Apple also addressed that battery life hasn’t been sacrificed with all these new power-guzzling features. The only drawback on the battery is that the functionality is accomplished by making the battery physically bigger rather than redesigning the battery as a whole. Apple did update the processor from A5 to A5X, creating a dual-core processor to support the retina display.
The new iPad in the Enterprise
So how will the new iPad be used in enterprise settings? With the addition of iPhoto and iMovie, the iPad greatly increased its content creation abilities. This improvement will aid graphic arts professionals. For writers, the new iPad has a dictation function, found in the iPad keyboard with the microphone icon. Sound familiar? That’s because the new iPad took one of Siri’s best functions: dictation. Too bad Siri didn’t make it onto the new iPad, though.
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