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It was no real secret that it would happen today, but Apple officially raised the curtain on its new iPad 2 tablet today at an event in San Francisco. A launch date for Canada on March 25 has been confirmed as well, despite rumours of a delay, and pricing has been set as well. The iPad 2 officially goes on sale at 5:00 PM local time on Friday.
Dubbing 2010 the “Year of the iPad” and 2011 as the “Year of the copycats”, the event initially began with Steve Jobs surprising the crowd by leading the keynote, while also gushing about the impact the original iPad has had on everyone from students, doctors, DJs and in business.
On paper, the iPad 2 looks to be a definite improvement over the original. It will have a new A5 dual-core processor to double the CPU speed, up to 9x faster graphics and be one-third thinner in size. It will also weigh slightly less at 1.3 lbs., compared to the 1.5 of the original. Jobs made a point of saying that the iPad 2 is actually thinner than the iPhone 4 is. It will also come in black and white, with Jobs stating that there won’t be the kind of production delays that hurt the white iPhone 4.
The tablet also has two cameras, one front and one rear-facing. Apple will include Photo Booth, which will have the same capabilities as that on the Mac, except effects can be manipulated by using touch. Naturally, FaceTime is also being added in, and will allow for calls between iPads and iPhones or Macs.
The iPad 2 also has HDMI-out capability using an adapter that has two ports: one for HDMI cables, and another for to use the charger. This means you can do whatever you want on a monitor or TV and charge the device at the same time.
What will stay the same as the original iPad are the battery life (10 hours), screen size, capacity (16GB, 32GB and 64GB) and pricing. Rumours of two models with different screen sizes clearly didn’t materialize today.
Smart covers are new — “not a case” as Jobs insists — but rather a nifty cover that attaches to the iPad 2 using magnets. It can flip a number of ways to prop the device up for use in a variety of situations. They will come in either polyurethane or leather.
Apple also showed off iOS 4.3, which includes faster Safari browsing, iTunes home sharing to share content between the iPad and Mac. Airplay has also been improved to allow for video, audio from the web, as well as apps to work with the Apple TV. The iPhone 4 will also gain the ability to turn its 3G connection into a Wi-Fi hotspot, but there are no details yet on what Canadian carriers will do about that.
An iPad version of iMovie was also demoed, and will allow for precision editing, multitrack audio recordings, Airplay to Apple TV and HD playback. Uploading and sharing on YouTube, Facebook and Vimeo are part of the mix too. A version of GarageBand was also shown, utilizing touch capabilities with instruments. The options are quite extensive, and it’s likely that musicians, both aspiring and established, might make use of this. It will be ready to buy and download for $4.99 on March 11.
So, the iPad 2 pricing shapes up like this:
$519 for the 16GB model (Wi-Fi only)
$619 for the 32GB model (Wi-Fi only)
$719 for the 64GB model (Wi-Fi only)
The 3G + Wi-Fi models will be going for $649, $749 and $849, respectively. You’re basically paying an extra $130 premium (before taxes) to get 3G access. If you have a smartphone that act as a mobile hotspot, you should probably be fine with a Wi-Fi-only model.
