My prediction:
iPad 2 8gb - $299
iPad 3 16gb - $399
iPad 3 32gb - $499
iPad 3 64gb - $599
+$100 for LTE for each iPad 3 model
That sounds about right to me (except they could be sticking with the $130 price difference for the WAN models). The iPad 2 will be needed to hold the line against the Kindle Fire (I’d like to see $249 via some sort of partnership, but that’s probably crazy talk).
When I think about the hardware costs for a resolution-doubled model, though, yields on such large, dense displays could easily hold the starting price of the iPad 3 at $499. If they do a smaller screen size model, that’s where the $399 starting price could come into place a bit more easily.
I wouldn’t want to argue against this given the amount of rumors from everything from manufacturers to image resolutions in Apple’s own Firmware but I still won’t believe it till I see it.
2048x1536? That’s impressive to me being a resolution buff and no small feat for Apple and it’s suppliers. I haven’t been so excited about a gadget in years.
Seems reasonable, except for an 8GB ipad2. Make that 16, which is the smallest size currently offered.
I don’t think we’ll see an iPad 3 for less than $500. That might just mean that we scratch the 16GB off your list and the low end now comes with 32GB because memory prices have dropped enough for that to work, or it might mean keep the same 16/32/64 storage configurations and add $100 to each of your prices, but with the (assumed) improvements in processor and display, I suspect they still can’t comfortably price a new model below $500. It’s not like direct competitors are pricing similar offerings cheaper, and if they do keep the iPad 2 around as the sub $500 model, there’s even less pressure to position the iPad 3 any cheaper.
So I’m making the boring, conservative prediction: exactly the same price breakdown as it is now. iPad 3 in 16GB/32GB/64GB models for $499/$599/$699, with iPad 3 + LTE (or 4G, or whatever they call it) an extra $130 on each model.
And they’ll keep around one version of the iPad 2; Wi-Fi only, 16GB, available for $399. No more 3G models on the iPad 2 because they don’t want to have to keep making separate versions for separate carriers.
They can’t sell them fast enough as it is, so there’s no reason to drop the price of the 16GB current generation. It’ll be at least $500.
I basically agree with Menzo’s list, just adding $100 to each level.
Okay, forgive me for turning this into general-purpose iPad 3 speculation, but my roommate and I just had this conversation: Will the iPad 3 have Siri?
Of course it will, it’s certainly powerful enough (arguably the current model is) and Siri is the way forward for Apple. Expect it on future Apple TVs and eventually in Mac OS X, so of course it will be on iPads.
or
Of course it won’t. Apple can’t guarantee your iPad will have access to a data network and they don’t want to damage the image of Siri as your magical assistant with the much more mundane technical reality of holding down the button and having Siri announce “I’m sorry, you need to be connected to a network to use me”.
I lean toward the latter, but only a little. It seems like a pretty interesting question to me. And as a bonus for stusser, how about this “Wouldn’t it be crazy…” scenario? What if, as stusser suggests, all iPad 3s have cellular networking (maybe they all have 3G at no extra cost but LTE now costs extra?), and all iPad 3s have an always on, free, data connection for Siri use only? Sorta like the early Kindles with free 3G. It means Apple’s eating the cost of the cellular hardware as well as whatever they have to pay the carriers, so it seems unlikely, but I can almost believe it’s no more unlikely than a compromised Siri.
And I guess the same conversation applies on some level to iPod Touches.
I expect it will have Siri, but it won’t work without a data connection. They’re not going to follow amazon with free 3G, because apple doesn’t actually rely on sales from their app/media stores for revenue, they’re a hardware company.
I’m not sure how you mean that in relation to what I just said. And in relation to what you just said, skip to my second to last paragraph, because the rest of this is me restating my assumptions about how Apple is positioning Siri.
We all understand what Siri technically is and basically how it works. It’s using voice recognition to hear what you’re saying, then it’s using a pretty impressive interpreter that parses and figures out meaning and intent, and then a bunch of hooks into system functions and a (potentially) growing number of external services to act on your commands and provide answers for your questions. And we know that it’s offloading a lot of that to servers, not just the obvious requests you make for information, but the interpretation and parsing is happening off in Cloudsville. It needs an internet connection.
So we all know what’s going into Siri technically, but Apple doesn’t sell tech specs or bullet points. This sounds corny, but Apple is selling you a solution, they’re selling you this complete thing called Siri, personal assistant. It doesn’t have caveats, it doesn’t have requirements, it doesn’t have prerequisites. That they even stuck with the name Siri is evidence of this. Apple brought Siri to your phone, Apple didn’t bring text-to-speech to your phone. It’s there, on your phone, always, with no configuration or demands on you.
I know, I know, it does have caveats. Servers can be overwhelmed, you could be in airplane mode, you could be driving down an interstate with no coverage, but these are acceptable tradeoffs. Apple will work to improve server problems, and there’s nothing they can do if through action on your part or unfortunate geographical circumstances you remove your iPhone from the assumed operating environment of “has access to the internet”. But that’s a big difference from the iPads out there in the world. iPhones can be assumed to have access to the internet, iPads cannot.
Apple thinks Siri’s going to be big, and they’re not ready to reduce it to a bullet point on the iPad feature list:
So what I’m betting is that it’s going to be “Now with Siri, the exact same Siri you know and love from your iPhone”, not “Now with Siri*”. It’s all or nothing. It’s not going to be a half-assed implementation, and by extension I don’t think it’s going to be a full-but-only-occasionally-available implementation. In a couple years, something like Siri might be a commoditized and fairly standard service that everyone offers and it’s not going to be as big a deal. But right now, Siri is unique and magical and Apple’s not going to compromise that.
I don’t think Apple will put Siri on a device that it can’t assume will have access to the internet, and as they’re sold today, that means iPads. So I’m betting either no Siri on the iPad 3, or my pie-in-the-sky fantasy that Siri is included and has a behind-the-scenes data connection that Apple foots the bill for. It won’t have anything to do with apps or media from the store, because nothing on your iPad will have access to that data other than what Siri needs to work. You won’t get update notifications through Siri’s data plan, you won’t have access to the iTunes music or app stores. Nothing in the marketing will brag about this free data connection Siri’s using for all the same reasons above: Siri isn’t a cleverly implemented combination of technical features, it’s just Siri.
Maybe that’s way more speculation than this deserves at this point, and maybe there’s some other completely different scenario I haven’t come up with yet. I like thinking about it though.
I’m not talking about the cost of the modem, I’m talking about the cost of the bandwidth. There’s no way the carriers want to add millions of 4G, large/hi res screen devices to their networks without making sure their costs are covered. That may mean sticking to the a la carte data plans 3G iPads currently have, but I bet not, or if so, at a higher price point.
iPad 3 will not be less than $499. I don’t see the 2 going for less than $349 minimum and I think $399 is more likely. The iPad 2 is still the best tablet on the market (it’s not even close). $399 is pretty killer.
No way you could ever get a carrier here to go along with that. Bet Apple had to fight them pretty hard to get what is there currently.
If there’s a market for it, somebody probably will…eventually.
Epic 4g/Tapatalk
Most news sources are predicting a 100% jump from 1024x768 to 2048x1536. The Next Web also says:
I’m wondering what the increased resolution will mean for apps. Have the developers been working on these “Full HD(?)” iPad apps in secret, or are we going to have to wait months and months for a critical mass of native resolution apps to hit the market?
One thing we know for certain: Apple isn’t secretly telling App developers what the resolution of the iPad 3 is going to be. So if it’s a radical change, then yes, there will be a wait for developers to update their apps.
However, given the fact that we live in a multi-platform, multi-resolution world these days, it wouldn’t surprise me if most Apps are resolution independent anyway. Yes, they’d need to be updated, but hopefully it’s just a minor change that could be made between the announce of the iPad 3 and when it ships.
That’s insane. My 24" monitor has a lower resolution than that :(
I can only assume it will function similarly to how the iPhone 4 works. Unless specified by the developer, the app will continue to run at it’s native resolution and will look unchanged due to the very nature of the display (increase in resolution but not screen size).
Probably both, some apps ready and upgraded on day one, and others slowly adopting over time, but as Blips explains, the great part about increasing the resolution exactly by a factor of two is that existing apps will look almost identical to how they looked on an iPad 1 or 2.
It won’t be hard to tell when an app is still only built for 1024x768 as other apps start supporting 2048x1536, but they won’t look bad, certainly not like running iPhone apps magnified on an iPad.
How do we know that for certain? Especially since we’re talking about a secret, something we wouldn’t be intended to know about by definition.
In the past, Apple has worked with a select few developers to prepare apps in advance of new hardware to take advantage of it right out of the gate. It’s entirely possible that Apple hasn’t done that yet, but there’s certainly precedent for it, and I don’t know how we could be certain they haven’t told anyone yet. We can only be certain they haven’t told everyone yet.
I am sure we will see Angry Birds Double HD ed. on launch day.
Anecdotally, I don’t believe Angry Birds had retina support when the iPhone 4 launched. I was thinking more like a new version of Real Racing from Firemint, since they were the specific example I was thinking of that had done this before. Real Racing 2 HD was a “launch” title released the day the iPad 2 came out.
They’d for sure do it this time around though. Not having it would be a terrible business move, and they aren’t dumb. I’d be amazed if Apple doesn’t give them any necessary early access to make it so.
Well, this is kind of a weird tangent we’re running off on, but I’m all for weird tangents. I wouldn’t expect Apple to seek out Angry Birds in particular to work on a retina-display update for the new iPad in advance of any announcement. Angry Birds is a great success story if Apple wants to pimp the lucrative iOS development landscape, but it’s ubiquitous now and even when it wasn’t, it’s not the kind of thing they’d use to demo how amazing new hardware is. A good 3D game like Real Racing or Infinity Blade is better suited for that.
Of course maybe they’re primed to announce Angry Birds 2, exclusive to iOS, with all sorts of new bells and whistles that make more sense to push a new device. I won’t say it couldn’t happen, just that in the very specific case of Apple coming to Rovio in advance of any announcement just to have an iPad-retina-display version of Angry Birds available on day one, I think it’s unlikely. It’s also quite possible that Rovio already has the art assets at a high enough resolution that it wouldn’t take long to release an updated version even with no secret heads up from Apple.