iPad 3? No, it's the New iPad.

A simple meme comic I made regarding the New iPad name.

After many, many rumours of a new iPad for months after the release of iPad2, Apple has released their new iPad and named it, well, "The New iPad".

The internet has been abuzzed with rumoured names like:
1) iPad 3 - a direct sequel to iPad 2.
2) iPad 2S - following the naming sequence of the iPhone 3G-3GS and iPhone 4-4S.
3) iPad HD - following rumours of a Retina Display screen.

Apple officially unveiled their new iPad and just called it that, The New iPad, showing everyone time and time again that Apple rumours are what they are, rumours. This new iPad is essentially the iPad 3rd generation, going by the same naming convention as their iPod, iPod Nano and iPod Touch lines. It'll probably just be released as iPad, further adding to the confusion.

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With that out of the way, here's just a quick summary of what the new iPad is all about:

1) 9.7" Retina Display (3.1million pixels, 2048x1536 resolution)
2) 5 MP BSI camera
3) Dual Core A5X processor w/ quad core CPU
4) 3G/4G LTE antenna
5) 652g (heavier than iPad 2)
6) 9.4mm thick (thicker than iPad 2)
7) iOS 5.1
8) 10 hr battery life (claimed by Apple)
9) 16/32 GB storage (non-expandable)

And that's about it. If you're wondering, what's so special or ground breaking about this new tablet, the answer is nothing, or unless you want to count the Retina Display. It has a nice screen, good colours though artificially saturated by the GPU, high resolution display. It is a worthy upgrade from the original iPad but it hardly warrants the upgrade from the iPad 2.

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With Apple setting the benchmark (whether good or bad, you decide), the competition will find ways to try to best it. Android tablets are coming out strong, with some tablets already better than the new iPad specification-wise. In terms of performance, Android is not as smooth or may not have the same eye-candy as iOS, but apps on Android are more stable and crash less often according to a recent study. Furthermore, Windows 8 tablets are just about to show themselves later this year and are already looking pretty good themselves, as can be seen in the demo below. Also Windows 8 has the advantage of being able to run in both a tablet mode and a desktop mode on the tablet, thereby allowing more flexibility and possibly heralding the true tablet PC though this still remains to be seen.

In the end, tablets are still a new commodity and their future is still yet unpredictable. It will still be as exciting to see how they will turn out to be a year later as it is now, 2 years after Apple released the first iPad.