Apple Increases iPad with Retina Display to 128GB | Hacker News Reader

Apple Increases iPad with Retina Display to 128GB

apple.com

44 pointsorrsella74 comments

This is a paradigm shift. Apple is embracing three numeral technology while their competitors are stuck in the two numeral age. Apple's ability to increase numerals a full fifty percent when pundits were expecting a mere incremental refresh is perhaps the most amazing news of 2013.

I'm surprised they didn't even bother waiting for the new model to provide it, and just added it to the current one.

A mid-cycle refresh is not unusual for Apple.

No, but the availability of 128GB modules (and devices) was a long time coming (the first modules were announced ~30 months ago, it's the first storage update since the iPad's original release, and further back for iOS since the 3rd generation Touch added a 64GB option back in 2009)

Maintaining double digit digit growth year on year will be tricky.

What are you talking about!? There are loads of 128GB tablets available on the market.

Edit: for more info check out Samsungs 128GB eMMC memory chip

I only know of the Surface Pro with 128Gb built in.

Edit: Removed Surface RT as it only provides 32/64Gb options

While the Surface Pro offers a 128GB model, the device itself only provides 83GB of that space to the user. The remainder is used by the operating system and its files.

http://gizmodo.com/5979796/the-128gb-microsoft-surface-pro-o...

Let's add it up:

128GB (not GiB) = 119GiB of actual space.

System requirement to install Microsoft Office = 3.0 GiB of space

System requirement to install Windows 8 Pro = 20.0 GiB of space

(119GiB - 3.0GiB - 20GiB) = 96GiB of usable space.

Now what programs or files could explain that difference of 13GiB?

I'm guessing, but perhaps a recovery partition?

A small list:

  Dell Latitude ST Tablet
  Samsung Series 7 11.6" Slate
  Microsoft Surface for Windows 8 Pro
  Acer Iconia Tab W700

If a 128GB tablet was released and it wasn't voted to the front page of HN, did it really happen?

Is this comment being sarcastic? I sure hope so.

Upvoted because I think you're being amusingly sarcastic and everyone else is missing it.

Indeed. I'm just waiting for the new advertisement :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWGsvcFpwNY

I think this is just another step towards tablets replacing personal portable computers(notebooks, netbooks). More storage on the tablet means less dependency on other devices.

I don't think storage is something that is standing in the way for tablets to replace portable computers. If it was, all you need to do is to slap in cloud storage and voila, theoretically unlimited space. Its more to do with productivity and flexibility and these two things can never be fully achieved under walled gardens. Once OS providers start porting their full OS suite to tablets, we might see a good traction. Glad to see Windows and Ubuntu are moving in that direction and hoping others to follow.

When I can run xcode, matlab, microsoft word, endnote, spss, sas and every other software product that make me somewhat productive, then I'll buy the post-PC garbage. And I'm not even a developer.

I guess Apple has decided to no longer make it easy to own "the best" of any given Apple device for more than a few months. I don't really see a problem with this (although maybe it will hurt the generally-strong resale value, although that will put less expensive but still great devices into the secondary market faster).

I am more on the theory that storage will be a selling point on the surface pro since it has the 128GB option, and Apple's reaction to that.

> it has the 128GB option

The 112GB option, 16 is tied up in the operating system on the RT. Presumably even more would be consumed on the Surface Pro.

ED: Fixed math.

112GB

how much does ios take? and how about a comparison in functionality?

A little under a gigabyte for iOS 6.1. This has increased over the 150mb for iOS 1.0, before it was even called iOS.

I'm not sure how you'd even do a feature comparison.

I think only 83 gb of it is usable space after the os is installed with the other applications.

Correct:

http://gizmodo.com/5979796/the-128gb-microsoft-surface-pro-o...

Do you necessarily need "the best" of any given Apple device?

It's probably a smart practise though, if they can make those with a serious Apple product addiction shell out multiple times a year whilst still being able to sell perfectly useful devices to everyone else.

>Do you necessarily need "the best" of any given Apple device?

Almost nobody does, but the people who buy them as status symbols are unlikely to know and/or care.

This has been true in most categories of devices for a long time. (Before things shook out and Samsung ascended, HTC and Motorola were leap frogging each other monthly with the "best" Android phone)

It is interesting to see Apple release a bump up in specs outside of a staged presentation. Does this mean their product release cycle will become leaner and quicker to update instead of being on the January -> June -> October release cycle?

What's the difference between the iPad 3 (retina) and this 4th generation they're talking about? Are they referring to an iPad Mini as 4th gen or are they saying the retina iPad (3rd gen) is 4th gen now?

Thunderbolt. When the iPad Mini was announced, they announced the new iPad (regular) would have a Thunderbolt port, which put them at 4th gen.

You mean lightning connector.

Lightning, not thunderbolt.

Apple call it a "lightning" connector, and I don't think its mechanicalally or electrically compatible with the Thunderbolt port... I think it even connects to bog standard USB 2.0

You mean "Lighting connector"?

No, the iPad Mini is just the iPad Mini. The 4th gen iPad was updated at the time the Mini came out to give it the same new dock connector and boosted specs, probably to prevent people from flooding to the cheaper option due to the perceived outdatedness of the larger iPad.

I don't know why they didn't stick with just iPad 3 and iPad 4. Maybe people have different reactions to version numbers?

In any case: The third-generation iPad ("The new iPad") was released last Spring. The fourth-generation iPad ("iPad with Retina Display") was released last Autumn. The iPad Minis internally have the same major version number at the iPad 2s. There isn't much difference between the third and fourth generations, other than a new port and a slight spec bump.

Wait, the newest one (the second version to have Retina) is "iPad with Retina Display"? Are you sure those aren't backwards? Because that'd make no sense to me.

Yeah, that's the right way round. Crazy, huh? The only reason I can think of is to have parity with the "MacBook Pro with Retina Display".

The iPad 4 also has the A6X processor compared to the A5X in the iPad 3.

The biggest hardware improvement is the inclusion of the Apple A6X processor. The third generation iPad had the A5X.

iPad 3rd gen was released in March with retina. iPad 4th gen was released in November (alongside the mini) and added a Lightning connector.

Apple obviously knows how to squeeze every ounce of profit margin they can out of the consumer. But why does it cost the same amount to double the 16 GB model as it does to double the 64 GB model?

Probably for the simple reason that their market research shows that that's what people are willing to pay for it.

I'm pretty sure that first $100 upgrade from 16 to 32 is a huge profit maker. It only costs Apple a few bucks, and anyone who wants to seriously use their iPad has to do it because 16GB is just too small.

I find 16GB satisfactory. If I would store tons of videos and audio I'd want more but I stream all the audio and video. (I agree that it's a huge profit maker for them though).

16GB is fine if all you're doing is using iTunes Match and/or Netflix and not too many big game apps, etc.

Not for the power user or "homesteader" ie, I put most of my music/apps/movies on my 64GB model.

I suspect some of it will be profit, some of it will be engineering.

I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of engineering from 16gb to 32gb is roughly similar to the cost of going from 64gb to 128gb. The components could be cheaper, the actual hardware for 64gb might be more versatile than the hardware for 16gb and so on.

The increase in margins is huge for them. With a PC desktop, and with most laptops as well, you can simply upgrade the hard drive or ram yourself and save a ton of cash. But tablets have changed how easy it is to do this, and Apple is also soldering their laptop (at least, on the Air) hard drives and ram in place. So if you want an upgrade, you pay for it upfront, and you dig deeper into your pocket to do it.

128GBs is still not enough. That should be the base storage for a Retina iPad. How can they even sell a 16GB one with a straight face?

Because they've found that 16GB is adequate for many peoples' usage? Heck, I don't feel too constrained with 8GB on my Nexus 7 for the way I use it.

What are you putting on a tablet that fills up 128GB of space?

Well, I stand corrected and am again pushed into the marginal category. That's OK. But it seems to me that if you're going to push HD video, you need the storage capacity to match it. And my overall point is that if the iPad is intended to be the next computing revolution, it needs to offer the storage capacity to get a lot of things done. Could any of you plop your entire photo, music, video, and eBook collections into an iPad and still have space leftover even with 128GBs? I couldn't. How many of you would want to pare down a 1TB hard drive down to 128GBs because, for some odd reason, that was now the maximum storage capacity any device offered? Maybe I'm still not making myself clear, but I think we should be far beyond 128GBs of storage by now.

I guess I'm also kinda marginal too. I don't expect my main device, be it a desktop, laptop or tablet, to be where I store everything. It's way too subject to data loss. I can steam (from personal sources or services) most of the time, and if I need access while radio quiet, 8GB is more than enough to cache a few interesting things locally.

I guess I'm too old school. I want my stuff with me, on my device. And I worry about public WiFi and the threat of my stuff being hacked if I'm accessing it that way -- and not having WiFi to access it too.

What do you use to sync your 100GB+ of stuff across your devices?

Sync? What sync? Even though I have a lot of stuff, I'm not dealing with all of it at one time. I can keep track of what's being done because it's just a handful. But it's the access to all of it that I need because who knows when I'll need what?

I'm still on a 16GB iPad 1.

Of the machines I own, internal storage is just cache. I have a 9TB zfs NAS for stuff I actually care about. Whether an iPad has 16GB or 128GB of storage doesn't really matter; they are both equally inadequate. There would need to be two orders of magnitude increase to fit all my stuff in.

If you put your photos or music on an iPad, you will chew up a lot of space. Even more if you put a movie or two on it (for off-line viewing).

My iTunes folder is currently at 60+ GB, and that's after purging all the TV shows off of it.

Because plenty of people just use the iPad for e-mail and surfing the web so they don't need more than 16GB.

I have a 16GB iPad 1 still going strong - I barely use any apps outside of the ones preloaded [exceptions being Twitter, Facebook + Kindle].

When I travel, I load on a few movies / tv eps and I watch those. When I travel again, I just swap them out. I do the same at home. 16GB is ample if you're happy to swap content on & off your device.

Eventually long-time users need to be selective for what they sync. Between music, videos and games I've always had to choose what I don't want, even on my laptop these days thanks to HD movies and retina apps.

16GB iPad user here. With most content streaming, I have never found the need for more storage.

16GB is enough for my books and enough movies (compressed appropriately) to keep me entertained on a transcontinental flight.

I have a large music collection, but that typically lives on my phone, not my ipad.

My father in law as a 16 GB iPad 2, bought shortly after it was released. Last time I checked he had 8-9 GB of free storage left on it despite having everything he could possibly want in the way of apps and pictures on it.

$900 for a tablet. Damn.

That's a lot of space, considering my movies/TV shows are on Netflix, and music on Spotify. Still, makes sense to offer it.

What reason is there for the capacity not being 128, 256, 512GB?

Because that's incredibly expensive to produce and hard to sell.

It will be interesting to find out if most of the people buying the 128GB models will either be affluent assholes or those who do a shit ton of photo/video(/music?) editing on their iPads.

RIP Apple. Your products are no longer interesting...Sad to see such a great company fall to pieces.

Apple's only strength was the desirability factor. And this desirability factor arose from the fact that they had really few product lines that were easy to remember - There was only ONE good iPhone and ONE iPad at any given point in time, so, people would easily remember those.

Right now, what's the newest/best iPad out there? Is it the iPad 3? The iPad Mini?? The iPad 4?? (I was aware of the 4th version only a few days back).

And what's the newest/best iPhone? The iPhone 4S? The iPhone 5?? The iPhone 5S??

When Steve was alive, the most recent product line from Apple would automatically mean that it was the best. However, that isn't the case anymore. Now, they just increment technical aspects (screen resolution, storage size..etc) of their products to fake desirability.

This was the only difference between Apple's strategy and other companies like Sony/Samsung/HTC's strategy. Heck, even HTC is getting better, they are having fewer phones that make it easier to remember (The two latest and best phones from HTC are the Butterfly J and the One X+)

If Apple is going to follow its competitors, destroying its only edge over the others (ie, desirability), I fail to see how they can sustain this way. In other words, they are digging their own grave.

Just FYI - If you are wondering if I'm a fanboy, no I'm not. I lost all respect for them the day they sued Samsung.

No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

Posted this before: Apple is dead as in: http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html

It's not like they are promoting this on their front page. It's just a spec bump.

Currently owning both a macbook and a dell laptop, I assure you that there are differences besides the number of lines they carry.

The same holds true if you look at tablets or phones instead of computers. The difference you describe isn't the "only" difference, and it's not even one of the more important differences.

ah, the wonder years when Steve was alive and the last apple product line was better than the previous one aka the iPod shuffle better than the iPod nano - the MacBook Air which he pulled out of a manila envelope better than the MacBook ( or Pro) , where there was just one MacBook or one iPod and when the iPhone 3GS was not sold alongside the iPhone 4.

Cut to present - nobody knows that the iPhone 5 is the best iPhone - and everybody knows that having an iPad mini alongside an iPad has cut it's desirability to zero. All becuase Steve is no longer at Apple and it will soon follow him to the grave becuase of doing exactly what he did when he was alive.

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