<p>The world is suspended on the lips of the Apple Führer.</p>
<p>On the 12th day of Christmas, my BFF brought me a iPadMini 2 with retina
And it might look as nice as what comes out of Korea’s SameSong
On the 11th day of Christmas, my BFF brought me a iPad5 with a keyboard
And it might not crash as often and become (finally) useful</p>
<p>On a serious note, it does seem that the competition might have forced the hand of Apple to try to regain a bit of technical superiority. The real great news would be to price the iPad a full 100 dollars cheaper than they have been.</p>
<p>iPad Air it is. Will sell brisksly in the land of the AirHeads aka the Valley. </p>
<p>Ok, ok, quips set aside. The new line of products is actually quite remarkable. A bit less (very) expensive, but a decent ratio quality/specs/price. </p>
<p>That black R2D2 (or glorified trashcan) also looks spiffy, and it will be faster than anything produced by the geniuses in Cupertino. </p>
<p>Now, if they’d would care to make iTunes less stomach-churning and a lot clearer, we might have to applaud their chances to keep the stock at 50 percent of Google’s.</p>
<p>Ipaid 2 is the one that has been available until today. iPad Air is none other than the iPad 5. We can assume they did not look forward to iPad X or iPad IXS. </p>
<p>As far as technical changes, it is a faster and thinner iPad (7.5 mm now) with upgrades in processing speed and a better set of cameras. It will cost the same as the older one when unveiled. The now older iPad will go down 100 dollars in price. </p>
<p>The new Mini now features the Retina display it should have had last year. Prices also are down for the now older Mini. </p>
<p>Plenty of sites will share all the other technical issues, as well as the new versions of software and free applications.</p>
<p>I’m in love with the new iPad Air! I can’t wait to try it out. Any thoughts on Maverick? I’m impressed that Apple is offering it for free, although I’m worried my system will have a hard time upgrading, along with all my old software.</p>
<p>They managed to cut 29% of the weight out of the iPad, from 22.4 ounces to 16. That’s only about 4 ounces more than the mini, which is just a bit more than the weight of an iPhone (and less than many other smartphones). I’m curious to see how it feels in hand. The mini is like holding a few pieces of paper: so light it’s easy to hold in any orientation. </p>
<p>To discuss in a bit of detail, you can start to see the importance of 64-bit chips in the iPad. These aren’t old legacy chips but ARM 64-bit built to be much more efficient. They can move stuff in and out faster. They handle all sorts of processing better. And having this 64-bit chip in their iOS is a big step toward unified apps for desktop and portable. These things are becoming very powerful very quickly. </p>
<p>One of the most interesting tidbits from the presentation was that Apple has paid developers $13B. That’s a huge number. That is why there are so many apps for iOS. Another tidbit - which I’ve seen in various forms - is that iOS is over 80% of web usage for portable devices. Feeds into that $13B number. </p>
<p>You’ll be able to take a complex design for something like an airplane and work on it from an iPad, with all that implies. You can meet a supplier, make a change, check tolerances, etc. Heck, I’ve been thinking about the uses in labs for these things because with some minor attachments they make neat microscopes.</p>
<p>Lergnom, my H works in aircraft manufacturing, he would love if they had iPads instead of the POS laptops they are required to use.
He has lost a lot of production time because of technology problems.</p>
<p>I agree that it would have been nice to have a retina mini last year, then I probably wouldn’t have upgraded my iphone.
I am still thrilled with my ipad3 however, so I probably won’t upgrade to the latest till they have re-furbed versions available.</p>
<p>I “almost” could understand why Apple decided to NOT offer pre-order for its iPhone 5S. Protecting the sales of the ■■■■■■■ cheaper cousin made some sense. But why would Apple decide to make the iPad available in stores in China before the shipped orders. </p>
<p>Are the damn lines really that important to Apple. And don’t they know that Samsung is bound to make fun of the people (see the correct qualifier below) who line up? </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Every time the company seems to earn some warranted credit (as in this volley of new products and free upgrades) they lose it just as fast because of arrogant and obnoxious decisions that speak volumes about how this company treats its customers. Not mention the slaves it employs abroad. </p>
<p>PS It is not that I mind waiting until Nov 1 to order the darn things and receive it a few days later. It is all about why not making it simpler and let the people connect to the Apple store without connection delays.</p>
<p>Dang. The air thing goes on sale in November - I was soooo hoping to see a line of applehead zombies forming by the mothership store in Palo Alto last night.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I try to take these idiotic comments as humor but you blew this one: they are making the iPad available in China to prevent people from lining up in the US to buy them to ship to China. This was a big problem, for example, with the iPad 2 release. </p>
<p>As an anecdote, I showed up at an Apple Store early one morning to find about 40 people in line. Skipping the details, the store had only Verizon models and 30+ people left because they needed ATT models because only those would work in China. With the newer models and with 3G and a number of 4G LTE bands supported, they would rationally expect lots of people to line up to arbitrage the difference in prices between here and there - or rather, as was obvious, people hired to do this.</p>
<p>Lergnom, there was nothing idiotic nor jocular in my statement. I am not really interested in comparing my purchases with some bootlegging foreign grey marketer’s. All that Apple had to do is to delay the availability to their foreign stores by 48 hours to close that early buy and foreign shipping loophole and arbitrage, which seems to be more an issue of pricing than immediate delivery. </p>
<p>No matter how we slice and dice the issue, it remains that Apple could (and should) have easily maintained the ability to process pre-orders, even if it meant that the orders would be confirmed and shipped after November 1st. The point was to avoid navigating the Apple store on 11/1.</p>
<p>*
Dang. The air thing goes on sale in November - I was soooo hoping to see a line of applehead zombies forming by the mothership store in Palo Alto last night.*
They always have a delay between announcement and sale.
I think that it is just an excuse for a party, like standing inline to get concert tickets used to be.
Now we just hit F5 over again.</p>
<p>My DD – a devoted Macbook Pro user – will be studying abroad in France next semester. Would any of the new Apple products be appropriate for her to take (perhaps with an external keyboard?) in lieu of the big Macbook Pro? She will need to be able to do word processing, surf the web, and access her music, etc. but will not be doing anything like video editing. How difficult is it to transfer one’s “stuff” from a Macbook Pro to a smaller Apple device? Many thanks…</p>
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