Like most of you, I have been discussing the new iPad with my technophile friends, ripping apart the news and taking a look at what the big deal is. During the course of our conversations, the overarching question that we are working to answer is "What will Google do to counter this new device with Android OS?" The largest reason for us looking for answers to that question is the inevitability of our group getting asked for our opinions by friends (and editors).
While there have been times where we have been pretty impressed with the technology that Apple has announced, this was different. While we agreed that the new screen resolution is going to be nice, there really isn't anything game-changing that would make the tablet device a must-own. This is the same reason why Google and its Android team doesn't care about this release, and aren't scrambling to one-up Cupertino with some killer feature for the upcoming Jelly Bean update.
As a user of a number of Android devices, including a Galaxy Tab 10.1, the different features that Tim Cook and his team rattled off were underwhelming. I will totally concede the point that the Retina screen is a large step forward for mobile computing, but at the same time is a bit of a marketing ploy. It's interesting that Apple made the effort to explain away the fact that the new iPad's screen can have the Retina classification even though it only has a PPI of 264 compared to the 326 that the iPhone 4 packs into its screen. While the viewing distance math presented on stage is correct, it does still smack of marketing spin. Nevertheless, the resolution is pretty amazing for a portable device. However, nothing else that was announced made me envious in the least because they were largely inconsequential.
Take for example the dual-core A5X. While I won't say that multi-core computing in mobile devices is a bad thing, it's a bit humorous to me since the applications available right now don't take full advantage of the power available. This fact isn't something that I attribute to just iOS; Android has the same issue. Nvidia was so desperate to make money on the Tegra 2 that it had to create its own application in the Android Market so users could find the apps that were specifically written for the architecture. Don't get me wrong, hardware advancement is a great thing, but multi-core means nothing to the average consumer except for marketing purposes. If they think there is a device that's faster and more powerful than what they are currently using, they are going to buy it.
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