iPad Air

I really, really dislike how much hate there is in this thread. I feel like someone always ends up making similar comments every time there&#x27;s a new launch from Apple&#x2F;Microsoft&#x2F;Google&#x2F;whomever, and there is never any change. Do you guys get psyched about <i>anything</i>?<p>On the one end we have &quot;Oh man, iPad air only has 1GB of RAM and 16GB of flash, how stupid&quot; and on the other end we have &quot;iPad hasn&#x27;t cured cancer yet; would have expected more from Apple under Steve Jobs.&quot;<p>Has it occurred to people to like, take a step back for a moment and think about how amazing it is that we as a society have advanced to the point where we can even have something like iPad? The iPad, and devices like it, have done so much to enrich so many people&#x27;s lives, and isn&#x27;t that what we&#x27;re about in this community? We&#x27;re all trying to make people&#x27;s lives better with computers, and Apple is as much a part of this mission as any of the people on this site.<p>Maybe it&#x27;s easy to get karma by ranting and raving, especially on a site like this where controversy drives more upvotes than downvotes simply because more people have upvote-only privileges. But I want us to be better than this; I don&#x27;t want this to be the norm for discussion in this community.

One of the more interesting aspects of this is that they&#x27;re keeping the iPad 2 at $399 (compared to the Air&#x27;s $499). I can&#x27;t imagine the value proposition for a new iPad 2 is at all attractive at that price point (I bought mine used for ~$250 last summer.)

Can someone explain to me the obsession with &quot;thinner&quot;? This model is 2mm thinner and it&#x27;s touted as taking &quot;years of work&quot;. Lighter, I understand. Thin is a good goal, but 2mm is pretty pointless when you&#x27;re just going to put a 5-10mm thick cover&#x2F;case on it anyway.

I find it slightly odd that Apple goes into a decent amount of technical detail on the processor in the iPad - calling out the number of registers and transistors - but still doesn&#x27;t ever disclose how much RAM is in the thing. This is especially vexing, as my biggest complaint with my current iPad is that it doesn&#x27;t have enough of it.

No TouchID? Surprised they&#x27;d introduce a new feature on their premium phone and not include it on the (currently) premium iPads, especially since the other 5s hardware (motion coprocessor, 64-bit architecture) has been carried over.<p>I would have thought they&#x27;d want to build a basic foundation for the future, e.g. &quot;all devices better than the 5s include 64 bit, motion, and TouchID&quot;. When you vary on a feature (like TouchID), you discourage people from building cutting-edge experiences that require it.

So their new commercial for the iPad focuses on the fact that so many people use it for productivity, so why can&#x27;t Apple create a decent, first-party pressure sensitive stylus, so we don&#x27;t have to deal with expensive, clunky, third-party solutions.

Lighter. Faster. More magical.<p>Sigh.<p>Disappointing. What happened to doing something revolutionary? Where is the the text input? Apple are driving by creatives. When can I write my book on my Apple tablet?<p>And what&#x27;s with the 16gb model. As they said, it has been almost 4 years now. And the 16gb model persists.

Okay. Looks good.<p>Recently, Apple seems big on iteration and small on innovation. Miniaturising an existing product is definitely a <i>good</i> iteration, but when I see Microsoft experimenting with touch covers and the like, I do wish Apple would try one or two new things again.

How can the iPad 5 have x2 the graphics power over the iPad 4, when the iPad 5 has the same A7 as the iPhone 5S - rather than an A7X, as they&#x27;ve done previously.<p>Have they just stopped using the A7X style name? Have they just x2 the GPU frequency? (seems implausible, but it&#x27;s Rogue, which is apparently extremely efficient, and maybe could handle x2 frequency?).<p><i>edited above for clarity</i><p>BTW: The anandtech iPhone 5S review (<a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/7" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.anandtech.com&#x2F;show&#x2F;7335&#x2F;the-iphone-5s-review&#x2F;7</a>) noted that the A7&#x27;s rogue G6430 is more powerful than was utilized in the iPhone 5S:<p><pre><code> At 200MHz that would give the A7 twice the peak theoretical performance of the GPU in the iPhone 5. And from what I’ve heard, the G6430 is clocked much higher than that. </code></pre> If 200MHz is correct, I bet the iPad 5 just doubled the GPU frequency to 400MHz.

Where is the mac mini update?<p>This is really what I want to see. An updated mac mini with Haswell would be really nice.<p>I hope they just update it even if it didn&#x27;t make it to the main announcements.

Apple is going for even higher margins, and it will still sell well since who doesn&#x27;t want a lighter iPad?<p>* SoC: A5X was 165mm^2. A6X was 123mm^2. A7 is only 102mm^2 with a 64-bit memory interface instead of 128-bit. They can do PoP memory too for even smaller PCB area. So much cheaper. * WiFi&#x2F;LTE: same chips probably used on iPhone 5c, 5s, iPad Air, and iPad mini. Simpler inventory and buy in even higher quantities. * Screen: same screen as all previous retina generations likely. * Battery: much smaller since the GPU is more efficient. More cost savings.

Why does Apple depart from the series numbers with the iPad?<p>New iPad, now iPad Air... seems silly?

With all due respect, I really hope HN doesn&#x27;t end up turning into an Apple fanatic site as was the case on certain tech blogs a few years ago.<p>Also 2mm thinner warrants the &quot;Air&quot; title? I seriously think Apple are parodying themselves sometimes...<p>Disclaimer: I am not any sort of &quot;fanboy&quot;, I own an iPad and an android phone because they seem to be most suitable for me in those areas, I just feel as though HN is getting a bit caught up in the &quot;hype&quot; of Apple today.

I know that not everyone uses a keyboard case, but I am saddened by the fact that the new one is too small to support a usable keyboard case.<p>When I purchased a Clamcase Pro, I started using my iPad for pretty much everything, from term papers to code. While it was still pretty small, I could comfortably type about 90wpm on it, which is only about 10-15 less than I normally type.<p>For everyone else, this looks like pretty good upgrade.

&quot; I can&#x27;t imagine the value proposition for a new iPad 2 is at all attractive at that price point.. &quot;<p>Its interesting how most people here assume that the world at large makes same choices as themselves. Consider iPhone pricing: Apple has been selling previous years models for $100 less than the latest version, yet they sold millions of outdated iPhones even in the US.<p>Not everyone wants the latest gadget or cares about the greatest tech specs as long as they can extract the desired utility at the least possible price. There are laggards in the adoption curve who are more price sensitive than the early adopters.<p>I&#x27;m a victim of this fallacy myself. I used to wonder who on the earth is clicking on those ads displayed next to Google search, why don&#x27;t everyone just install AdBlock on their browsers? Yet Google raked in billions of dollars as people clicked on those ads that I considered spam.

Does anyone know what the airplane game they&#x27;re showing here is? <a href="http://images.apple.com/ipad-air/features/images/performance_hero.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;images.apple.com&#x2F;ipad-air&#x2F;features&#x2F;images&#x2F;performance...</a><p>I&#x27;d like to get it.

&gt; Sadly, one thing it doesn&#x27;t appear to have—at least, not yet—is a gold casing.<p>Can&#x27;t tell if sarcasm or not.

1lb! finally a reasonable weight for the full size iPad, I was worried they&#x27;d lower it back to the same weight as the iPad 2 rather than make a dramatic change like this.

Article has little info, is this just a rebranding of the &quot;big iPad&quot; line?

Looks nice. I&#x27;ll be ordering one (my daughter accidentally destroyed our old iPad2).<p>The only thing that bugs me is that they&#x27;re still able to charge crazy money for more internal storage. $100 for going from 16 to 32GB, seriously?

From Apple&#x27;s tech specs, the only differences I can see between the Retina Mini and the Air is the weight and size of the screen (the resolution is the same). So the extra $100 is for bigger heavier pixels?

Interesting, not sure if its enough to make be upgrade but still. Weirdly when the &#x27;ipad air&#x27; moniker leaked I figured they were going to a do an iOS version of the Macbook Air to capture the &#x27;appliance laptop&#x27; market that the Chromebook and Surface 2 are gunning for.<p>The graphics and cpu boosts are nice (and nice that they are accompanied by a run time boost) but what about the camera? What about the sensors? Looking forward to the full appraisal post event.

Revolution and innovation don&#x27;t happy everyday, that&#x27;s what makes them special and amazing. Expecting one company to be revolutionary and innovative once a year is expecting too much, once every ten years is probably expecting too much. Good incremental steps is not only expected, it&#x27;s probably all that&#x27;s possible.<p>Most people go through their entire life without thinking up something innovative, much less making it.

Interesting that it&#x27;s also getting the new M7 motion co-processor. It&#x27;s good to see the market for always-on motion sensor computing increasing.

The performance and weight are exciting, but does anyone else prefer the old thick bezel? I always loved that about the original iPad design, that there was seldom any concern about accidental touches and where to put your thumb(s).

Is there really enough here to persuade a current iPad owner to upgrade? Not for me. Apple&#x27;s really going to have to push developers to crank out resource-intensive apps.

I don&#x27;t know how Apple does it. I want one of these.

&gt; Apple says is 8 times faster and has 72 times better graphics performance than the old processor.<p>I am always amused by this.

I really hope Apple can make these products: iMac Air, iPad Pro &amp; Macbook air Retina.<p>Sent from iphone air pro.

Apple keeps disappointing me

At this point they are not even trying anymore. They put up the same tactic as with the iPhone 5C (marginally cheaper, definitely worse device than the top line just to make the step to the high-end device seem more reasonable and will be taken faster whilst getting rid of their old iPad supply), made everything a bit thinner, did some software updates and upgraded the hardware components.<p>So, enjoy your time waiting for the NEW IPAD AIR 2014, TWICE AS LIGHT, NOW WITH FINGER PRINT SCANNER. RETINA MACBOOK AIR 2014. You can say anything you want, but this is nothing new. Gimmicks, I tell you. Which is absolutely fine if it weren&#x27;t for Apple to market this stuff as revolutionary, insane new concepts beating the competition at every point. They are basically scamming customers and they don&#x27;t even care as long as they get an Apple logo with it.<p>To those Apple zealots down voting me: do you really need to suppress criticism this bad? Maybe it is because you are in denial or something? Feel bad, because it hurts to know you are being scammed?