iPad 2 - The Apple 2nd Generation Tablet

So Steve Jobs announced on 2nd March at a media event in San Francisco that the 2nd generation iPad called, following the company trend, iPad 2 will ship in the US from 11th March, and from 25th March all over the world.

The obvious question that comes to mind is: "Is it really worthy?" The first generation iPad came out less than year ago (it was April 2010), and it was a huge success, much bigger that everybody expected. Since then, all the big companies have been working hard to catch up with Apple, trying to come up with some better tablet solution. We've seen the Samsung Galaxy Pad, the Motorola Xoom, the HP TouchPad, the BlackBerry PlayBook and many many more, each one with its own pros and cons. The competition got fierce, the prices are aggressive and the performances grew. So Apple was forced to anticipate their next generation tablet to avoid losing precious market shares, and here we have it, the iPad 2, according to Jobs, faster, thinner and lighter than its predecessor.

It has a dual core processor, the old one had only a single core; the graphics performance are 9 times better than the old one; it comes with two cameras, one in the rear at 720p resolution, and one in the front at VGA resolution, where the original iPad had none; it has a gyroscope just like the iPhone 4. Those are pretty much the new features, everything else is the same, like the screen size and resolution (9,7" 1024x768), the storage sizes (16/32/64GB) and the connections. So yes, it still lacks a USB port, for some reason Apple doesn't think it's a good idea to put one, and they're right, as nobody really seems to care. The prices are the same as the old generation, the basic model, 16GB and no 3G, sells at $499, while the more accessorized one, 64GB and 3g connection, ships at $829.

No matter what the competition offers, more power, more connections, more resolution, more battery life, no tablet can come close to the Apple product, no other tablet has the same appeal as the iPad 2, and that is due to the incredible marketing work that Steve Jobs has done. All Apple products have become a status symbol, because they do exactly what they're supposed to, and they do it better than the rest. And not to mention, they're beautiful piece of hardware, and this 2nd generation iPad is no different.