iPad 2 March 11, 2011

iPad 2 will be available on March 11, 2011 starting at 5 pm. If you missed the announcement event from Apple or would just like to watch it, you can find it here.

For a quick recap. It is 1/3 less thinner, lighter, faster with dual core processor, up to 9x faster graphics, front and rear facing cameras, iOS 4.3 and will come in black or white bevel (body still made out of aluminum), allows for smart cover, and it still has 10 hour battery life! Both WiFi only or 3G + WiFi on both AT&T and Verizon networks and kept the same pricing starting at $499. It will have FaceTime and Photo Booth. You will be able to buy Garageband and iMovie for a low price, I can’t wait to try both of those and I know the kids are going to love playing with Photo Booth.

Smart cover is pretty cool. Where to start. It’s a screen cover that snaps into place and aligns itself. It will help clean the screen and it will roll up into a stand for typing or prop it up for watching a movie. Oh, and one more thing. The cover wake up or put the iPad to sleep. I’m wondering how many people are going to test this to see if it works like they do to see if the refrigerator light goes out when you close the door. Smart covers will not work with the iPad 1 as the 2 has magnets built-in. You can find the information here. See the iPad Smart Cover in action.

My take on this, go get one! If you been holding out, now is the time. If you have one already, couldn’t you use a second one? You’ll have to decide that one, I think it’s worth it, you can always sell your first one. If you’re sitting on the fence about getting one, just go get one. Read reviews and opinions all you want it’s not really going to help. Why? Because you need to experience it. I could talk till I’m blue in the face and you’ll hardly hear me. Spend a day with it and you’ll see. Touching makes it so much more personal and the iPad itself is more personal than a laptop. I use the laptop about 80% less now that I have an iPad. Want to look something up, the instant on and the quickness makes it a joy to use. Like I said you need to go use one for a little while, sometimes it doesn’t even take that long.

A little guide to help you pick out which one to get. Black or white that’s all you. There are 2 hardest decisions and that is storage size and to 3G or not to 3G. Storage size. This will mainly be how much stuff you have and want to keep on the iPad. Mainly it will be how much music and pictures you have and maybe movies. Apps will take up a 1 or 2 Gig, in general. So add up the size of music and video’s you have that you will want to put on it. If you have no idea what I’m talking about then you can probably get away with 16G version. If you feel that it might not be enough then spend $100 more and get the 32G. 64G is more for users with a lot of stuff and want it all on the iPad. Don’t forget there is always cloud storage like MobileMe, Dropbox and your machines at home. If possible, I would buy one from an Apple store, put everything you want on there and see how much space is left. If it’s not enough then take it back (within a week or 2) and get the next size or 2 up. Since you’re getting the next model up Apple will not charge you a restock fee. Side note. If you believe your going to shoot a lot of HD video with it or editing, remember that when picking storage size. Storage size cannot be upgraded, what you get is what you have.

3G. Advantages: GPS and access to the internet everywhere (you can get a signal). Disadvantages: Extra $130 and that’s about it. On AT&T it’s a month by month basis if you want to use it or not, you can stop and start it (monthly) all you want so there doesn’t have to be a monthly charge. If you have the AT&T unlimited from iPad 1 you can transfer it to iPad 2 from what I’ve heard but you might want to double check to make sure. You need to look at your life style and how you think you will use it. I’ll give you a few examples to help you out. If you are mostly either at home or work and do the driving you probably don’t need it. If you travel a lot or take the public transportation you probably will want it. You can use a MiFi instead but it’s not going to last as long as the iPad. If your usually at a spot with wi-fi access or hot spot. I have it and it’s mostly off but there are a couple of times it comes in handy. Like I said AT&T it’s monthly and you can start and stop it anytime so that part is a no brainer. As for Verizon I don’t know as the first one used MiFi. As for choosing AT&T or Verizon? AT&T 3G is usually faster than Verizon and you’re not worry about drop calls, so it’s your choice on that. You’ll have to do a little research about Verizon’s pricing and if it’s going to be Monthly.

Maybe your trying to decide about iPad or one of the other tablets. Easy, iPad. 7” is to small, you might as well go with the 10”, besides you have your phone with you. Xoom is too costly and no WiFi only and having a Motorola Android phone has made me lose respect for them. Android itself is a problem, it’s more like beta software and hardly any software has been written to take advantage of tablets. You might say but Android has mostly free software. You get what you pay for and if you didn’t pay for the product YOU and your data are the product. From what I’ve seen apps for iOS is more polished than Android ones. Any updates for Android has to come from the manufacturer and it’s a if and when and how much will it cost type of deal. When Apple comes out with an update it’s available to everyone right then and there and no extra charge. I’m not sure on the battery life of the others but 10 hours on the iPad is GREAT. WebOS isn’t even here yet, RIM is still vaporware and MS is fall of 2012. As of late I’m not liking Googles practices and they are collecting way too much data on people. The sole existence for Android is to collect your data.

Even though I have iPad one I will be getting an iPad 2, they have made enough changes to justifying me to get the new one.

Bye 2010 Hello 2011

Originally posted on 12-31-2010

Good bye 2010, hello 2011.  This will be an interesting year for slates (they really shouldn’t have been called tablets, those are the old bulky ones and slate sounds modern too), smart phones and TV appliances.

I can say one thing for sure, I’m glad to be back to Apple and I think I might have went a little overboard …. nah lol.  I love my iPad and my MacBook Air.  So which do I use more?  I would have to say iPad.  Even though the Air is light it’s still more enjoyable using the iPad.

Some of the things we have coming in 2011.  We’ll start off the new year with CES showing us what is coming or might be coming. App store for Mac, iPhone coming to Verizon (about time), iPad 2, iPhone 5 and who knows what else for Apple.

When iPhone comes to Verizon it will be interesting to see how Android phones really do when it’s on the same carrier, other than AT&T.  Both Apple and Verizon needs this.  One of the main reasons Android has been doing so well is it being on many different carriers, this is going to change.  You can see, on my regular blog, what I think of the Droid.

On the slate front.  We will probably have a slew more of Android tables and then there is RIMs playbook.  I think they are finding it is harder than they thought.  There was a report that it only lasted a couple of hours on a charge, then there was a statement that it didn’t have power management yet, even so they are not going to get 3x more even with aggressive power management.  I can see it now, your ready a page and 10 seconds later it goes dim to save power.  Or they will have to turn down the processing speed.  Looks like it will not be out till May and the iPad 2 will already be out.

I would like to be there when Balmer announces their new tablet.  I would yell like last years hp tablet you showed.  Microsoft is way behind and it’s going to be a year or 2 to catch up.  I believe they are even going to start to use ARM processors.

Android shows promise but even Google said it’s not ready for tablets yet, that’s coming.  It’s still not very polished.  I also like it how people keep saying that it’s got a SD card slot to expand memory (which is wrong) / storage space.  That’s not totally true.  You can’t expand the main storage area by adding a card, it treats it like another drive.  When you run out of storage space, your out.  You can move Some programs to card, to free up main storage, but if you remove it then you can’t run it.  You know how much slower SD cards are over SSD, magnitudes.  I also don’t trust SD cards, how many times you had one where it had errors and needed correcting, possibly loosing pictures etc.  I’ve also seen a lot of them stop working.  For me an SD slot would only be good for moving pictures from the camera over.  I think we should start demanding that camera makers start putting in wifi and/or bluetooth and do wireless transferring instead of a card.

Even if you hate Apple you have to thank them for pushing technology forward.  I wonder how long it would have been before we would have seen a slate if it wasn’t for the iPad?  Microsoft has been trying for 10 years.

Go out and enjoy New Years Eve, see you next year 🙂