New iPad 2012
The battery life claims are as good as with the previous models, despite there being more pixels to run and a faster processor. The other expected main upgrade is the camera and the new iPad has been given an Apple five megapixel iSight camera. Not quite as good as the camera in the iPhone 4S which has eight megapixels, but still a very welcome improvement. This new camera also does HD video recording, so that you can record high definition video in 1080p. The camera should work pretty well because it has a f 2.4 aperture, but as with the other upgrades we will have to just see how well it looks in actual use. This new
Apple iPad is the iPad 3 concept, which includes software upgrades as well as hardware upgrades.
The iPad gets 4G mobile connectivity
Apple are obviously thinking to the future, because there are not too many places yet that have 4G networks available. It is also true that to a certain extent the mobile phone companies are dragging their heels with implementing the hardware changes required to roll out the faster 4G. As soon as these fast new networks do become available, the iPad will be able to take advantage of them though. Apple of also made changes to the software so that, so long as the carrier supports the personal hotspot,
iPad tethering, you will be able to use the iPad to connect up to 5 other devices. That is a great idea as it is always good when we can carry fewer devices with us and of course the relevant chargers to go with them.
I once tried to use a dictaphone, but I kept getting the wrong number.
With the complete success of Siri on the iPhone, Apple have brought dictation to the iPad. I would expect that the microphone has been improved to be able to take advantage of this new technology. I use dictation software on my Mac,
Dragon Dictate, which I really love using as it allows me to ‘write’ at about three times faster than if I were to be using the keyboard instead. In the new iPad there is a new keyboard button with a microphone icon on it. All you need to do is to tap on the microphone on the keyboard and say what it is that you want to say and tap on done when you have finished. You can use this dictation within e-mail, for creating texts, for searching the web and creating notes, as well as for interacting with Twitter. The demonstration on dictation at the Apple event looked pretty impressive. A great reason to buy the
new iPad 2012.
New apps for a new iPad
The iWork applications for iPad, Pages, Numbers and Keynote all received updates to be able to take advantage of the higher resolution screen of the new iPad. I would imagine that there are other improvements made to those applications and I will find out more once I get a chance to try them out.
iPhoto was added to the list of applications for the iPad in the iLife suite. At the same time iMovie got an upgrade and so did Garageband. The upgrades were not completely confined to taking advantage of the higher pixel density in the iPad and new features were added also. The iPhoto application looks really good and obviously well-designed in terms of the user interface. I have already bought the application from the iTunes App Store and I’m looking forward to diving in to see what it can do. I have done quite a few reviews of photo editing applications for iOS and a particularly good one is
Snapseed and I would expect iPhoto for the iPad to be as good, if not better.
iPhoto Smart Browsing – Pointing and picking your photos
As a photographer, I can tell you that it is great when you are able to compare a number of pictures side-by-side. With iPhoto you can do this easily. There is also a thumbnail grid which you can use to scroll through your photos on the left hand side of the application. The fact that you can double tap on an image and let iPhoto select automatically, your similar photographs in the library, helps you to choose your favourites and for you to flag them if you want to be able to find them quicker later on.
Paint in the finishing touches with brushes
There are a number of touchup brushes that you can use, such as repair, red-eye, saturate, desaturate, lighten, darken, sharpen and soften. So whether you want to brush out some wrinkles to make yourself look younger, or to use the sharpen brush to bring out fine details, you have ways of precisely editing your photos. You even have edge detection which will allow you to do your touchup without worrying if you’re brush goes over the line.
Sharing with a Photo Journal
This is kind of like the photo gallery idea, except it is better looking and with extras. What you do is to select a group of photos and allow the application to flow those photographs into a Photo Journal. iPhoto is able to position the photos as close as possible to the way that you would want them, based upon how you have marked up photos in your library. This means that favourites will be put into the bigger spaces. After iPhoto has done its job you can then move things around to get it picture perfect and you can also add extra notes, dates and maps. The date takes its information from the exif metadata information on the photo and the maps get information from GPS information, if the photo has it. After you have created your Photo Journal you can then share them as webpages or send them to your friends and your family via iCloud.
It is about time that iPhoto was added to the list of Apple applications for the iPad. I have bought the application already, I downloaded it right after the Apple event was screened and I will create an article giving my first impressions of actually using the new iPhoto for iPad. It will be interesting to see if there are any synchronisation features between the iPhoto on my Mac and this new iPhoto iPad application.
The iOS operating system goes to iOS 5.1
An operating system for whatever device is never finished and can always be improved upon. It will be interesting to see what improvements are brought to this latest version. I have begun the process of downloading this latest iOS operating system, but as you can imagine the servers are getting a hammering at the moment and it is taking a long time for me to get my hands on it. The largest change to the operating system will probably be the support for the retina display. The new
iPad resolution for the retina display is 2048 x 1536 which is pretty impressive when you consider that your high definition television only has a smaller resolution of 1920 x 1080. I wonder if I will still need to put on my spectacles when I use the iPad, I probably will.
What are you going to do?
Will you be upgrading your iPad that you are using presently? Do you think you’ll get the iPad 2 at the lower price, or will you go for the new iPad? Maybe you are not interested at all and couldn’t give a monkey’s about the new iPad. Leave a comment below in the comments section of this article, I look forward to hearing what you have to say. I know I want to buy iPad 3 now that I have seen the iPad 3 information for real.
