IPad 2 Official Specs
apple.com
apple.com
My sister-in-law is a high school teacher and has been wishing she could hook her iPad up to the projector since the day she got it.
Think of all the possibilities...makes so much more sense for a school to spend $500 on an ultralight, ultraportable iPad than spend more on bulky desktops you have to cart around just to play a video or show a web article (citation: my old high school).
There's not much more this feature lets me do on the app front, but man I'm excited to see what people do with it.
(Edit: Didn't realize the original did VGA -- I don't see how HDMI is such a big deal for presentations then)
Edit: the reason it's a big deal is that the original iPad had to have the app specifically coded to deal with the external screen/projector (and few are). The new version just lets you mirror the content, whatever app you're in. It'd be nice if the new iOS retroactively made this possible on the original (at least at same resolution?) but I kind of doubt it. We'll see next week.
http://macdailynews.com/2011/03/02/apples-hdmi-cable-works-w...
The iPad2 is the only device which supports video mirroring.
For all other devices, restricted video out remains, even with the Digital AV Adapter. It will only send video when the application supports it.
But more and more lately I see big LCD TVs on meeting room walls instead of projectors. Those almost always have HDMI inputs.
I didn't see anything non-HDMI mentioned in the liveblog so I wasn't sure if Apple made it work retroactively. Glad that they did!
a) Apple is shipping, and loudly promoting, a feature that "doesn't work" because of a fundamental, immutable hardware deficiency.
b) The software implementation of an unsupported hack, used by an infinitesimal number of users, written by someone who is unpaid and not intimately familiar with the hardware stack and firmware, is inefficient.
Because of the cost, most places will not buy dedicated podiums: ours had to be carted around and wired into the computer setup for each professor.
An iPad is much, much more easy to deal with (everything's one unit) and there's a likelihood that the professor may have one of her own, meaning the tech doesn't need to set up what's needed.
I've been working on apps related to camera functionality, and the inability to show these apps on a projector is shitty. If I can mirror the display I'd be exceedingly happy.
And I'm sure it will be... Just makes me feel like I'm going crazy though (as I type this on a laptop connected to a 24" HD monitor via HDMI).
1. Take steps that make it easier to identify leakers (like embedding secret numbers into promotional photos so they can tell who leaked them if they get published)
and 2. They pursue anyone who dares leak information with the ferocity of a rabid dog.
No real mystery here.
Apparently they didn't just read Brooks and Peopleware, they also seem to act upon them.
Consider a more open example: Google. Internally Google is more open than I believe Apple to be (I have experience with the former, none with the latter other than what I've read).
You may think that a lot of stuff leaks from Google based just on TC stories and so forth and while there are things I'm sure we could manage better, when I joined I was (and still am) amazed at what doesn't leak.
Google doesn't have the same militant, even draconian, approaches to secrecy that Apple does. What they have in common is that most people in both companies (IMHO) are very loyal.
But the reality of working makes the magic unicorn dust wear off. I saw a bunch of prototypes and I knew a bunch of information that nobody else 'knew' but lots of outsiders suspected. I became more interested in my work than selling other people this idea that I had these secrets that I could pass onto others. (We were also told to 'eat our own dog-food' which makes me highly suspicious of every Software Update to this day. I always wait a couple weeks before installing anything new.)
That's an important part of the equation. If your employees are more interested in leaking information than working, maybe you're doing something wrong. (Just to clarify, I still consider Apple a great place to work; I left because I wanted to do something different, not because I felt that it was a poor place to work.)
[Edited for grammar]
The problem with 'eating your own dog food' is that it is dog food, so it's really hard to eat. To comply with this edict, I would set up a separate machine and install the latest build and play around with it for about 15 minutes and spend a half hour (or more) filing bugs. Thus, I wasn't really eating my own dog food...
Installing new builds turned out to be a big time-sink. It took time for the build to install and then you had to go through the paces of setting the machine up. You also had to do a clean install because of incompatibilities with previous releases.
After all of this, you started testing. Then you started finding bugs, and since I was in engineering, I tried to make sure the bug was reproducible and even tried to track down which component was responsible (which is a mess if you're dealing with overlapping stacks of software). THEN, you had to crawl through the maze of reported bugs to see if there was something already reported that was close... Hopefully they've made the bug reporting system better since I was there (but I doubt it… the system I used had been in place for a long time).
On top of that, I needed to get actual work done. There was no way that I was truly going to use a ever changing system of dubious quality to do work. I tried, and it was too difficult (although I knew of some folks that were faithful and did so).
'Eating your own dog-food' is an ok idea. It's not clear to me that it was the best idea for this particular situation. As a general practice, it seems that if your particular product scope is small enough, this would be a good idea. If it's larger, hiring a set of dedicated test engineers would be awesome. (The ironic thing is that Apple had those too!)
Cache-Control:max-age=221
Announce product, push deploy button on website, people hit website and browser requests a new copy of the page because its current copy expired at 10:59:59, and presto, it all magically works.
most sites use assets with additional query parameters added to keep them fresh (i.e. file?1234566778.js). Apple looks like they are adding some parameters into the filenames themselves.
It probably also involves cache-control settings as mentioned, but I think file renaming is the more reliable method of cache busting.
Really? That would be by far the most aggressive die stacking I've ever heard of, if true. I thought it was soldered to the motherboard in stacks of 2-4 dice.
To support my original point, though, iSuppli's breakdown of the iPhone 4 last summer had the 16 GB flash chip as the second-most expensive component, after the retina display, at ~15% of the total outlay on parts.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/24/archos-70-and-101-interne...
Definitions of decent vary.
I'm not referring solely to the iPad. Apple charges an extra $100 for 16GB of flash storage for iPhones and iPods. That's not market rate.
The whole idea of pricing storage like that came from the iPod, and I think by the time you have devices that are used for general computing like iPads, it's time to drop it. I would prefer to have a card slot.
(By the way, for people who may be downvoting my earlier comment because they think I'm some crazed anti-Apple partisan, I do own a MacBook Pro and an iPod. A client is also buying me an iPad 2 for completing a project, so... that's just my opinion about the storage pricing).
I am not sure whether I would want one. Having one would introduce a lot of opportunities, but also would remove lots of ease of use. Install an app => user must select where to install it. User interface-wise, what would happen to the home screen if I take out a card with some applications on it? What if I plug in another card? What if that card contains an application that already is on the built-in flash? Will this support separating executable from user settings? Etc.
The best solution for this I know of is the one Microsoft chose for their phones: no built-in flash, and the card slot is in a place where it cannot be removed without shutting down the hardware. However, I am not sure that solution adds sufficient value to the device to warrant its downsides (some compartment door that makes the device slightly larger, and that likely makes the device look a little bit less nice)
I'm not saying I want that back, but I am saying that I thought it was a pretty nice easy way of making that work.
I think the autorun.inf standard could serve as a model.
I'm confident that Apple could figure out how to do this right. You're not?
As far as cheaper, maybe the Nook Color would be a smarter buy for the "penny-pincher".
A laptop.
Those were developed by "Power Users".
If you want to participate in a market where things are priced according to what they cost the vendor, look into gypsum. In tech companies, cost-based pricing is good mostly for getting you fired from your Product Manager role.
Tech products are priced according to the market. For many products, Apple competes aggressively on price. What that means is that within the product line, Apple wants there to be a SKU with the best pricing among its substitutes. It may also mean that every product in the line "wants" a price that is competitive according to its specs. But neither of those pricing goals means Apple will price anything according to the cost of components.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, in complex markets one of the most important jobs marketing has is to segment the market, which means finding product attributes that command different price points to maximize profit for the company. It may be the case that, regardless of what it costs Apple to add storage to the iPad, the most common kind of customer that wants a large-storage iPad isn't very price sensitive.
This works in both directions. You can play the segmentation game in exactly the opposite direction in enterprise sales: release your product as open source, but sell a supported site-licensed edition. In virtually all Fortune 1000 companies, it is next-to-impossible to embark on any new IT initiative without an accompanying purchase order; the whole of what IT does is structured around selecting, procuring, and maintaining products.
That is making my inner pedant twitch uncontrollably. :)
(successfully resisted. back to vi.)
The price model is competitive enough for the price to sink in hundred dollar decrements, although a 32GB flash memory chip is only $50. Maybe that's something you only can do if you expect to sell millions of them?
Either this is turning out to be what people are actually using the iPads for, or Apple is actively steering people towards using iPads. Maybe they don't want to cannibalize the sale of Macs.
Look at the screenshot of the camera app: http://www.apple.com/ipad/built-in-apps/camera.html
Notice the placement of the "record" button. Now imagine holding the device up to take a picture with two hands.
Even assuming another app developer will come along and fix this, who's going to use a tablet as a giant, awkward digital camera?
- iPhone 5G will use this dual-core A5 chip
- there'll be a smaller, low-cost iPhone model (nano iPhone?)
- the next nano will play video (maybe combined with the above?)
- iPad 3G will play 1080p, and have 1GB RAM
- iPhone 5G will have HDMI out and keyboard in.
You might think Apple would be hesitant to do this, because it will cannibalize their own laptops and desktops. I think they will do it as soon as they can, because: they have a history of racing down the tech curve as fast as possible; if they don't do it and it's possible to do, someone else will, and the strategic losses from not being first are enormous; it will only start to cannibalize their other products (because a smartphone really isn't as good yet; people are familiar with the old way; power users are a long way off being disrupted).
I've been waiting for this. Ye Mark my Words, the End is Nigh for the PC: July 2011
Why not maintain the same size and use the extra room for a larger battery, improved performance, or cooling?
Furthermore, Apple did increase the processor size, memory, and probably battery (considering it has same 10hr life) and also decreased the total volume of the enclosure.
Finally, if you've ever used an iPad at length you'd realize it doesn't need cooling 99.9% of the time. It just doesn't get warm... this is a huge differentiator from the netbooks it's often compared to.
However, it also makes it easier to pick up from the table, right?
Weight: 1.35 pounds (613 g) (AT&T)
Weight: 1.34 pounds (607 g) (Verizon)
My guess is that they are using the gyro for this. Is it a good guess?
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2011/03/02/live-blog-apple-ipad-...
But sensing the vibration of a more vigorous touch would be interesting, too!
Tech Specs don't show SOC memory. Guess we'll have to wait till March 11th or later for iFixit to do a teardown.
Unfortunately, I don't think it'll have 1gb. Apple loves their margins too much, I think.
Will there be sim free version?
In Germany it’s the same deal as before. UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA, GSM/EDGE and unlocked. It will consequently, as before, work with every carrier.
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/03/201103...
Same bad cameras as 4G iPod Touch - 1MP in the back, even worse in the front. Suitable for video calls only IMHO.
Too bad the models with cell connection don't support audio calls. Could've completely replaced a phone with a wired or bluetooth handsfree.
Not sure what you mean - all iPads have been IPS.