Apple releases Ipad 3
apple.com
apple.com
The overages of $10/GB per month on both services mean once you go over your plan, you'll be looking at a little over $5/minute in new charges.
It is possible (though highly unlikely) to rack up over $200K/month in bandwidth charges if you managed to find an empty 4G cell for a month.
Sadly Sprint, which has unlimited 4G last i checked, was absent from the release of the new iPad.
You can't objectively define what constitutes "royally fuck[ing]" their customers.
Just saying "this cost more than I think is reasonable as a wireless customer" means absolutely nothing in court.
Clearly you do not live in America. We abandoned the concept of consumer protection decades ago.
We have a saying in my country, when a child exhibits some great talent, that we also use ironically when a child does or says something very dumb.
"How can you not send this kid to college?"
I think one of the two intentions applies perfectly to the quoted comment.
However, 3G (and 4G) are much more expensive, in terms of the price it costs to transmit a given quantity of data. And compared to glass and copper, the total number of bits available within a given geographic area at any given moment is a fraction as large. Unfortunately, cellular companies failed to realize that offering "unlimited" data plans would set up poor expectations. They (apparently) didn't anticipate seeing a significant percentage of their customers try to use the cellular networks for transferring large quantities of data, and thought that for most people "unlimited" would just be a marketing-friendly euphemism for "a couple hundred megabytes."
In turn, people who assumed that "unlimited" really means unlimited, and assumed that the prices that were originally offered for "unlimited" were realistic prices for high volumes of cellular network usage, now seem to think that the prices that cellular network providers want to charge for data usage are rapacious. On the contrary, it's not that the price they're trying to charge now is disastrously high; it's that the price that they used to be charging was disastrously low.
There's also a serious resource contention issue on cellular data. The towers can only be placed so close together before they start interfering with each other, and the bandwidth that's being advertised is the bandwidth you'll get if you've got the tower to yourself. Chicago's an illustrative story: A company came along offering household internet service through a 4G network, promising impressive bandwidth numbers. And they delivered on them for the few months between when they first opened for business and when they started getting serious traction in the market. Since then, they've earned a reputation as a pretty crappy ISP, simply because the technology itself couldn't deliver quality service to that many users at once. A wireless network cell is effectively a hub, and like on any hub resource contention can be a serious issue.
Which, I suspect, is ultimately why Apple goes along with the file size caps for cellular network transfers: From a user experience perspective, they would much rather allow everyone to transfer small files at high speeds, than let everyone's user experience suffer because the network is being choked by large file transfers.
not exactly, that's if you've got the sector to yourself. AFAIK one tower has at least 3-12 sectors.
That's why LTE can't replace all of our data connections (for now).
I wonder if many execs and marketing people at large mobile companies really didn't see this coming, as we had years of 'unlimited texts' being promoted, and an entire generation of people texting thousands of times per day. Did execs get adjusted to 'unlimited' as it applies to texting, and naively assume that 'web' usage wouldn't be significantly different?
I can't really say for sure, but that just struck me as a possibility for why many mobile execs don't seem to 'get it' with respect to mobile data.
I'm pretty sure they 'get it' just fine, but did the math and carefully worked out exactly how shitty service they can offer at what price without making too many people cancel.
The proper way to fix this is to have very local cells (or wifi). I would like to see cell networks pay individuals to connect mini cells to their home connections, and then allow any phone to connect to the cells. Wireless users get connectivity everywhere, mini cell operators have financial incentive to exist, and carriers reduce demand on their macro-scale network. If the telcos could agree on reasonably low prices (cost plus?), I would even agree to usage-based billing.
The wireless carriers would become dumb pipes (as they really are to begin with). Their new role would be to coordinate distribution of mini cells.
This system also creates incentive for wire line ISPs to increase their transfer rates to customers, and perhaps get into the mini cell game themselves.
If you use up your data, you have to manually sign up for more data. If you sign up for more, it's like starting the month over from the time you sign up. You're also given the opportunity to switch to a plan with a different data size.
While I was not charged overage fees, my data rate was crippled to 57Kbps.
The thing sits in the drawer and I NEVER use it because its useless.
I am paying $100 a month for it. They want $400!!! to cancel it.
Fuck these carriers.
If you don't have free roaming, a similar strategy might work with unlimited minutes on their own network if you just use enough of them that their costs are too high to support you. If you don't have unlimited minutes, you can probably upgrade your plan, use a ton, then if they try to force you to switch or pay overages, you will likely also have the option to walk away from the contract without a fee.
1) You're a multimillionaire without aspiration, and shouldn't be giving financial advice to the rest of us non-millionaires.
2) You're a troll, or are acting like one to get yourself hellbanned for some reason.
3) Your recent spat of negative karma comments are the result of some kind of new mental health issue, and you need to see a doctor.
And what kind of crap-ass site would ban someone for the three (out of five) comments I've made today which have been downvoted?
Pretty sure I can spot the actual troll here.
If you make enough comments that are bad enough then your account is likely to be banned. If that's your goal then at some point along the way you'll be only three comments in.
(I am not remarking on the quality of your other comments; I have not read them.)
Personally, I think it's a terrible idea. It's a much better plan to work together a couple decades of good borrowing history without paying much interest and then get unsecured loans totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars and cash out.
It's not about not being able to borrow, it's about companies refusing to accept your business because you're a "risk", even when you offer to pay out the entire contract up front to show you're good for the money. It's a fucking pain in the ass
Your responsibility.
I can see how others may be misled by that marketing, though, so it’s no super great. No reason to get angry, just reason for concern. Some German carriers are much more upfront about that (they might say “1GB of data, throttled to GPRS speeds above that”) and I obviously prefer that kind of marketing. It’s less confusing and more honest.
My problem isn't about "you know what you're getting, it's clearly communicated"
My anger is because THERE IS NO FUCKING UNLIMITED PLAN AT ALL
We are on HN, I have been on the internet DAILY for 15 years now. EVERY SINGLE DAY for many hours.
As a travelling consultant, I rely heavily on mobile access to the internet.
The fact that I had an unlimited account in the past - but now that speeds are getting acceptable, they are crippling them by cost.
It is corporate greed and it is bullshit.
That is a load of horseshit.
Thank you.
- unlimited data plans were doled out when network operators knew full well that people couldn't actually use enough data to cause a crisis.
- Data usage spiked because people found new uses for phones which demanded more and more data (e.g. streaming shows)
- Operators found themselves underdeveloped with no prospect of demand tapering off
- At these levels, it maximizes the operator's profits to push people into rate-limited plans.
But, thanks for the insults. This place is really friendly!
Are you kidding me?
We went from simple networks to 3G to 4G --which requires new infrastructure deployments every few years.
We went from the mobile web being almost nothing to hundreds of millions of very capable mobile web devices in the past ten years (iPhone/iPad/Android...).
Network usage increased exponentially with the newer, more useful devices. People were buying "unlimited" plans and used 100-300MB per month, not they can easily go to over several GBs.
It's like you have a "unlimited free refills" soda fountain. When everyone has 2-3 drinks it's ok. When everyone starts having 10-20 sodas, well, you start putting some limit to those "unlimited refills".
I'm pretty sure no carrier in the US offers a better deal than $10/GB.
While it is perhaps somewhat legitimate to criticize an HN'er for failing to calculate the rate at which a data plan will be consumed at a given bandwidth, it is of questionable appropriateness in regard to the general public.
and no, there is no censorship or anything either. i dont have quite the same speeds as theus does, buti get ehat ipay for, andits cheap.
Once they had a critial mass they could release some new device and restrict initially just that one to their network.
I don't think it makes sense, but I'm sure they've evaluated it. As a customer, having Apple as my single point of contact for everything mobile would be amazing, even if I had to pay a premium. Still wouldn't get around the limitations on spectrum and towers, though, but given that Apple's cash on hand is probably 15x Sprint's market capitalization, ...
Also, your download patterns are unlikely to change a lot. It'll still be email, web surfing and some youtube. LTE makes netflix possible while not on wifi, but that's about the most data-hungry thing an average user is going to do. For the most part the only thing this changes is that things like installing apps when off wifi are much faster.
I think Sprint is excluded because their 4G service is based on WiWax for now, although they are switching to LTE later this year and continuing into 2013.
I bought an iPad 2 last year and I didn't even consider buying one with a data plan. I am near wifi about 99% of the time, discounting driving, hiking, and airplane time. In a pinch, I can check email on my Droid.
Eventually 4G will become inexpensive, but it isn't right now.
There are also sites with rules about what's allowed to be on the network or not. Often a consultant or guest can't put his device on the network, at least without a lot of work (BYOD isn't done on many networks), but having network access is useful. There are also sometimes IP considerations (using an iPad or 4G hotspot during a break from a day job is less likely to be "using employer resources" to manage your startup if you're moonlighting than if you use their wifi...).
For +$130, it's worth it to me to have the capability. It also makes GPS more accurate, and maps is a really cool thing. I only replace my iPad every second generation, though.
Still, I bought a 3G ipad only because of the GPS chip in it. Even without the data plan it's quite valuable if you hook your ipad to your phone's hotspot or another wi-fi network.
No. I don't use the work wifi because it is severely limited (paranoid IT guy) and my iPad may access material I'd rather they not sniff (just NOYB stuff). I use it on the road for mapping, impromptu parking-lot Grouponing, whatever far from wifi. Open routers still often have some irritant signin or blacklists. Even at home my iPad often gets 3G better than wifi.
Don't underestimate the value of "always connected". A legacy unlimited plan multiplies it.
I explain it to laypeople in one simple sentence: "You can't really watch the game on your phone."
It's time for these contracts to become more reasonable. Right now they border on being nothing more than theft. Imagine this: You pay AT&T for your DSL line and you also pay them for wireless access for your iPad. You are paying them twice but only using one of the pipes at any given time.
I definitely agree that they should do it your way though. Pricing is part of the product, and simple-to-understand pricing schemes will sell.
In the meantime, you might be able to get creative with swapping SIM cards around.
In Australia, the ACCC banned the use of the word "unlimited" (with respect to Internet access, wireless or fixed-line) unless it truly was unlimited. No shaping, hard or soft quotas, excess usage charges and vague "fair use" provisions. The result? You get what you pay for and you pay for what you get. If you pay for 1TB/month on an ADSL line you're absolutely going to get it.
The real problem here is a combination of false advertising and people with completely unrealistic expectations. Not everyone can use 73Mbps all the time. There simply isn't the bandwidth for it. If you want to download 100GB+/month you should absolutely be paying more than someone who only downloads 2GB/month.
Back to the "new iPad" (why not iPad 3? Seriously!), i'm excited about it. Having it be able to do 1080p is great, although I think it's high time they up the flash storage at this point. 64GB doesn't go that far at Full HD.
The RAM, CPU and memory upgrades make this a pretty serious device now. The release of iPhoto is probably going to be unfortunately for many photo app makers (and hopefully it'll mean an end to Photoshop Touch's ridiculous 1600x1600 limit).
Apple just continues to cement their complete dominance against, well, everyone in the tablet space.
The video shown at the end of the announcement event has an Apple employee referring to it as "the third-generation iPad".
This seems very strange to me, considering how on-message Apple has ALWAYS been in the past. It's just... sloppy.
I wonder if Apple has a future beyond its current momentum. I'll be convinced otherwise ifwhen they release another world-changing product that wasn't invented by Steve.
They are simply moving the iPad to their established naming scheme.
Numbers are messy, it's better to have a product represented by its name and have its generation just be a property.
That's why they make the extra effort of saying "third-generation" rather than iPad3. They don't want it to be referred to as an iPad3, just as an iPad.
I was surprised they called the second one iPad2.
My point is that they're not being consistent. They call it "the new iPad" in the presentation, but then the guy in the video calls it "the third-generation iPad".
I've not really read up a huge amount on the specs of this, just a couple of basic articles - new stuff includes higher def screen, better camera, 4G support. Evolutionary rather than revolutionary, maybe that's why they decided it doesn't need a whole new release number. Who knows.
I'm not arguing the evolutionary/revolutionary angle, just that it's completely unprecedented for Apple to use TWO DIFFERENT NAMES to refer to ONE PRODUCT in their marketing materials.
The resolution is kind of awkward for moving watching no? There's no 1:1 mapping of source pixel to hardware pixel, so you're going to get some filtering regardless. But, a step up regardless. The current iPad screen is downright painful to look at once you've been spoiled by high-DPI screens.
> "although I think it's high time they up the flash storage at this point. 64GB doesn't go that far at Full HD."
I actually don't think this is a big issue. It would seem to me that Apple is moving slowly towards the Amazon model - cloud-based content provision of everything. It used to be that you'd have to download giant files to a "mothership" computer, then pipe it over USB to your mobile device, but with iCloud and now downloading your movies over the air, this seems positively archaic.
They do lack a plan with a decent cap, I can live without unlimited but the cap should be decent.
On my non-us LTE plan they reserve the right to throttle it if I use more than 30 GB a month. I think thats a decent cap (the price is approx. 52 USD a month including 25% VAT, cheaper plans with less data is available).
Then again, maybe those hints are only necessary because of the limitations of low resolution displays. If each pixel is barely large enough to be discerned by the naked eye, single-pixel accuracy may not matter so much. Clearly resolution independence is still desirable for accessibility reasons, even at the end of the pixel density road.
I was thinking the same thing. It's amusing to think that Apple found resolution independence harder than waiting for/making panels quadruple in size. Certainly good for marketing though :)
You hold your laptop significantly farther from your face than an iPad, thus a lower PPI is sufficient. However, a 9.7" display with the iPad's PPI is getting close to acceptable sizes for small laptops, like the 13" MacBook Pros.
I'm still sad that even the MBP 17 comes with a 6-bit PVA panel. It's a nice panel, but dramatically inferior to an 8 or 10 bit IPS.
It all makes the IPS panels in the iPads even more impressive. From what I've read the IPS panel yield goes down with DPI, too, so the panel in the iPad (Early 2012) is amazing.
Apple is probably the worst offender on that issue, in fact.
They aren't standouts (although the 15" at 1680x1050 is really nice), but they're no worse than anybody else.
EDIT: I misread the original post. Sorry about that. That said, OS X isn't appreciably worse as far as resolution independence than the rest of your options. (Not that that's praise for OS X, but neither GNOME nor Windows are particularly good either.)
Windows 7/8 "kinda" work in this regard - I have to use accessibility addons in firefox to make it play nice, IE just stretches everything, I have no experience with OSX.
Its not like that part is a COTS part that is available to all OEMs.
So in case you were wondering why Apple keeps obscene piles of cash around, that's why.
The other issue is that Apple has enough money to invest in factories, not that it owns them, but it can put money up front to encourage building them. I would not be surprised if they had a 1 year hold on screens of this size, just as they did for the iphone 4 (although even today noone is using the same screens as the 4).
Look at the prices of your average 47" LCD HDTV sets, way over $500. And they're probably making less money per unit than the iPad. I don't know how Apple is doing it.
I'd like to see a startup take on PowerPoint by releasing software to compose iPad-friendly presentations. Think one-pagers full of text, graphs, and figures. On an iPad they could be interactive, annotated, and linked together. Every iPad-toting meeting goer could scan a QR code on the way in to get on the same page, and then sit and discuss the content. Gone will be the days of presenters doling out bullet points at excruciatingly slow pace.
Having read Isaacson's biography of Jobs, it seems that Apple may be gunning to disrupt the textbook market. Having paper-like resolution is a great step in that direction.
Edit: Thanks to gte910h for pointing out iBooks Author. I wasn't aware of it!
If you're intending to publish via Apple, I'd say wait. After two weeks of waiting for Apple to approve a book I yanked it and am having the manuscript converted for Kindle sale as we speak. The conversion from the .ibooks file to anything usable in the real world was a giant pain. All of which was predictable and I knew that going in.
But as a book-writing tool it is great. I wrote an entire book on a direct flight from Los Angeles to Dubai. Edited it on the way back. Way, way better than Word.
Now I'm using Scrivener.
Web standards are probably your best bet as a smart paper API.
Now if you could have the ppt (or whatever) allow attendees to collaboratively interact with the current dashboard slide then you'd really have something.
Maybe I should get to work on that!
But, we don't really have that issue with many other Apple products (iPod nano, all Macs, etc) that use the same naming scheme. So we'll see how bad it actually ends up.
Although admittedly we already have that with most of their other devices ("do i have an early 2011 MB or was it the mid-2010?") and it's not like other vendors are much better in this regard.
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipad/family/ipad
(look at the bottom of the page)
Similarly, the iPhone 4S simply says "iPhone" on the back and is not easily differentiated from the original iPhone 4.
I think the reason people misattribute Apple's success to marketing is because everyone else's marketing is just godawful.
And no, I didn't make that name up.
Apple has unique model number codes for all their products, but they try very hard to hide it in the logistics department. It's not listed anywhere on their online store, for instance, and in Apple Support documents they always use a consistent date system, e.g. "late 2011 Macbook Pro."
Also, you could have shortened that to: 15" MacBook Pro with the best CPU, 256GB SSD, and antiglare screen. 66 characters vs. 118. ;)
This naming convention is simpler that appending a hardware version number to the name at each refresh. Also, it's what Apple currently does with most of their other product lines. It's the MacBook Pro, not the MacBook Pro 3. The iPods were always called just that, an iPod. People referred to them as the nth generation iPod, but Apple labeled them iPods. Easy.
I wouldn't be surprised if this naming convention spreads the iPhone.
iPods are also versioned. People refer to their '4G iPod shuffle' or their '2G iPod touch'
This naming convention would be especially convenient for the iPhone. The next one would be the sixth generation but it could confuse people if they call it 'iPhone 6' since there was never an iPhone with a '5' in its name.
For reference, here are the previous iPhone names:
1. iPhone
2. iPhone 3G
3. iPhone 3GS
4. iPhone 4
5. iPhone 4S
http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/07/new-ipad-vs-ipad-2/
Yes, I know why, but I was hoping against hope it would get a little lighter. But I didn't think it would. Maybe next year, when there's no reason to up the resolution.
I think a nice weight would be about 400g. The Kindles are 200-300g, except the DX-2 which is 540g.
I'm really curious to see what the battery is like when playing games. Quadrupling the effective required fill rate is gonna have that GPU working overtime.
So the next iPad will also just be 'the new iPad' the same way that every year we see 'the new MacBook Pro'. The iPhone will probably follow suit.
Edit: I guess it does have 1 GB of RAM. http://chronicwire.com/the-ipad-3-has-1gb-of-ram
Apple would say it has "enough" RAM. I thought that one of the game demos mentioned that it had more resources than an Xbox 360 or PS3, but I don't think they were talking about RAM.
Edit: It is also interesting to see that the ~ 2x increase in the size of the PNG can be explained by PNG's run length encoding. When you double the pixels in each direction, RLE should readily compress the horizontal pixel replication but not the vertical pixel replication.
They have been for a while...
It'll be the people doing software sleuthing that'll get you the answer.
However we are fairly confident that Apple didn't build their own GPU -- they would have bragged about it if they did. There are a limited number of GPUs IP blocks available for licensing, so that does mean that speculation can be relatively accurate. Their use of the term "quad-core" makes it highly likely they're using the SGX543MP4, twice what is in the iPad 2 (although perhaps higher clocked or with better memory bandwidth). That's also the GPU in the playstation vita.
Edit: never mind, there's a zoom widget I didn't notice.
It should look like this: http://i.imgur.com/WUQ7n.jpg
I do resent how poorly my iPad 1 performs now though. I only bought it 18 months ago!
It seems to be back now, but the iPhone is showing "From $0", and clicking on the iPad gives an "Oops" error page. Couldn't this all be worked out in staging?
This is actually the correct pricing for the iPhone, since the 3GS is available free when signing up for a 2-year plan from AT&T.
[Aside: The new Apple TV is impossible to order from the website because the page has no continue or buy button! Maybe they'll notice when first day sales are zero. You can add one to your cart from the Apple Store iPhone app, but so far I have been unable to check out. Apple seriously underestimated the order volume for these products!]
I am sure the tablet devices will follow a similar cycle as iPhone. Upgrade once in 2 years. I am beginning to wonder, the only aspects that might make me want to upgrade to IPad 4 next year, could be faster processor and more memory, thus making the overall experience better. I am sure Apple will have some exclusive software that will run only on their latest device (ex: Siri), that might force me to upgrade. Given how I use the Ipad right now - Videos, Netflix and eBooks (very limited browsing), I am ok with what I have now.
Will be good to know some statistics on how many upgraded to Ipad 2 from Ipad 1.
What I am trying to figure out is, what keeps you(/me) wanting to upgrade to new tablets frequently, where as we are perfectly ok, running our 3+ year old Mac. Maybe the price point makes it more affordable to upgrade frequently.
I am sort of a 'gadget freak', but I force myself to be on a budget and that usually requires me to sell my devices pretty frequently. With that said, I will probably use the ipad3 for the 2 year cycle unless I'm not impressed with the ipad5 (doubtful).
I still have a 27" 2009 iMac that I absolutely love and probably won't be upgrading for a few more years (when desktop retina displays are common place). Once you get into the apple product cycle, if you buy early in the cycle and sell late, upgrades are not that painful. When I sold my netbook 2 years later I basically gave it away... that was painful.
I would love to see how many hits they are getting.
Nowhere is it referred to as iPad 3, iPad HD or anything like that. It's just "The new iPad"
Referring to the maximum texture size, I assume? Don't current iOS / PowerVR implementations have a max texture size of 2048x2048? It isn't intrinsic to OpenGL but is implementation specific -- for instance the Mali-400 (GS II) and Tegra 2/3 is 4096x4096.
Please everyone stop calling this the iPad 3.
From what I remember, LTE does pump more data in a more cheap way; and the infrastructure for it is more cheap also.
A website built with a fixed with 1000 pixel design is suddenly going to look pretty silly on a new ipad.
Of course if you design around large resolutions you will marginalize those with standard displays.
But their store keeps crashing and going back to the offline state. Called their phone sales and they couldn't help me because they use the online system to enter orders. :-)
Ah well, I'll get one soon enough.
That's sadly how it usually is for products from just about any other company, and I wish they would learn from Apple. One company that seems to have gotten a clue on that is Samsung who are quite rightly trying to quiet the Galaxy S III noise until it is close to general availability.
As to the actual CPU power I think it's reasonable to say that we're at a stage where how you use the CPU becomes far more important than the CPU itself. Apple manages to make a "1st generation" iPad operate competitively with a current generation Transformer Prime. That is just perverse. I want to fully exploit those dual A15 cores of the Infinity LTE, but sadly a lot of it is just trying to overcome the software gap.
I'm an Android believer from a philosophical and practical perspective, however I have to credit Apple: they don't talk about an HD display and then bring it out six months later, but instead talk about it when the shipments are loading on the trucks. Further the empirical strength of the A5X, thus far unproven, may not always top artificial benchmarks, but they seem to get a heck of a lot more out of it.
The integration with Google Talk and Gmail is a plus for Android, but Android on a tablet seems to still suck for usability otherwise. Additionally battery life sucks (some random app would occasionally just grab a wakelock and suck down battery to zero), and so does media management.
And after having an Android tablet for 10 months now, I still have yet to see apps for it that are as compelling as I've seen from day one on the iPad. Aside from Google's own apps, Android apps that actually take advantage of the tablet form factor (as opposed to just being smartphone apps that get stretched awkwardly to the giant screen) are few and far between.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to my Desk 4 and have some Breakfast 2.
I've been watching consumer laptop sales for a year and the only one I've seen with a higher resolutions is a 17" beast. Luckily I got a 15" Macbook Pro from work with a 1680x1050.
Everyone's known since the iPhone 4 that Apple would do a hi-res Tablet display, but PC manufacturers still refuse to innovate and put in hi-res displays in their laptops.
I refuse to try to write code with only 768 vertical lines.
If Apple releases a retina screen Air, I would seriously consider getting it. If they make one about as heavy with a high resolution and a 15" screen, I'm definitely getting one unless it has a slow SSD or is really incompatible with Linux.
I have a new laptop with a 1366x768 resolution but my older P4 laptop with 1280x1024 (or thereabouts) is much more pleasant to write code (or write anything) on. Those extra 266 vertical pixels just make all the difference especially when you have so many toolbars etc.
I don't understand why everything has to be widescreen now, it may be preferable for movies but that's surely not the main use case for a computer. That's what a TV is for.
You can't really expect them to do a full redesign with every product iteration, especially when they've obviously already landed on a local maxima of aesthetics and usability.
- Resolution: Who cares. - Camera: Who cares. - 4GLTE with a ridiculous price and cap. No thanks
I don't think there's anything really compelling about the iPad 3 for the masses. Sure, they'll sell a bunch of them, mainly because, well, that's what they are selling now.
Being on WiFi most of the time I don't see any motivation to get an iPad 3 over my iPad 2. Most of the time the iPad 2 is used to casually browse the web on the couch, play chess and mess around with other games. In none of these use cases has the iPad 2 screen resolution proven to be an issue at all.
Once usage becomes more serious iPad 2 goes on the shelf and I/we switch to computers. All of our home computers are equipped with a minimum of two 24inch 1920 x 1200 pixel screens. There is no way the iPad 2 or 3 experience can compete with this at any level.
I think Apple needs to fix the issue of carriers gouging customers for connectivity. We have four iPhones and two iPads. Why are we paying six fixed-cost, limited usage data plans when the devices are on WiFi most of the time? Why is it that we can't buy a "family" plan, if you will, and pay one fee for connectivity. That's what you do with DSL: You pay one amount for a data rate and it doesn't matter if you have one or fifteen computers attached to the service.
The next revolution in mobile might not come until the recurring costs involved in using these devices come under control.