Overall, I was very disappointed at what Apple announced today concerning their much anticipated update to the iPad. Let me state for the record that I absolutely love my 1st generation iPad. I love it so much that I touched my Kindle and netbook for the first time in months the other day only to brush the dust off of them as I was cleaning up my bedroom. And I loved both of those devises when they were new. But back to the iPad 2.
The rear and front facing cameras on the iPad 2 were expected since dual cams are pretty much standard on every new tablet devise and phone out now. Uncle Steve must really hate Adobe because there is still no Flash support on the iPad despite it being supported on many of the new Android devises. The new A5 dual core processor was expected as well since most of the new competing tablets are sporting faster processors and graphics upgrades for mobile gaming. The slightly thinner and lighter iPad 2 is alright, but if the 1st gen was breaking your back that much then you really should be hitting the gym. The new HD video camera and iMovie are good. The same goes for Garageband for the iPad. However Garageband and iMovie for the iPad looks like it is gonna be a separate purchase. The video conferencing application Facetime kinda sucks since it can only be used on WiFi and not on 3g/4g networks. The upside is that at least now you should be able to use Skype instead. Well unless Apple gets very dickish again and doesn’t let the app in the app store.
I was really shocked that we didn’t see a jump in the storage space especially with the HD camera (64gb is still the max). I was hoping for a 128gb storage option or at least some SD card expansion option but ….nada. Overall there was nothing revolutionary from the first version. They did the minimum amount to keep slightly ahead of the new Android based tablets from Motorola and others.
On the bright side….you should be able to pick up the 1st gen models for a song.