Originally Posted by
thesmoth 
I've seen a few iPad 2 suggestions and they have me thinking a couple of interesting things. I think I have a bit of a unique perspective for these forums because I currently have an android 2.2 phone that I LOVE, and the videos from CES of the android honeycomb tablets have been really steering me away from apple. After seeing the videos of honeycomb and the playbook at CES I knew 100% in my mind the the iPad 2 would probably not compete, and that unless apple stepped up with great hardware AND a major iOS revision, I was going with honeycomb. Now after reading through the speculation in this thread it has me a bit excited, but let me explain. Right now i'm not in the position of an apple fanboy that will buy anything apple releases for the iPad 2 and is just hoping for the best specs possible, i'm in the position of an android user that sees honeycomb competing and wanting to get the best value for my dollar.
Now seeing these specs posted in this thread makes me excited, and makes me think "hell ya, if apple did that I think they would win me over from honeycomb and i'd buy the iPad 2 instead no question".
2048x1536 s-IPS screen
1 gig of ram
dual core A9 processor
fast GPU (possibly dual core gpu to keep up with the big screen)
32 gig base size
Now my 'old school' mentality for these kinds of crazy upgraded specs from apple would be "never going to happen". With apple the give you the LEAST that they can, while charging the most that they can. These specs not only MATCH what the other android tablets are providing, but they are actually beating it by a good margin (well the CPU, Ram, and possibly GPU are just matching the new android tablets, but the screen would be destroying them). Usually what happens is you think of what you would really WANT apple to provide, and think of the competition and what apple would need to provide to MATCH them, and then drop that down quite a bit and that is what you'll get.
So my old school thinking goes "hell no apple doesn't compete like that, they use the app store and iOS as selling points and keep the specs lower than competition in order to keep margins high". So then we might expect...
Dual core A9 processor
512 megs of ram
Same resolution screen as iPad 1, maybe better colour or something
better GPU, single core
16 gig base size
BUT, then I start thinking about those first specs I posted, the crazy ones people are speculating in this thread based on the image leaks in 4.3. I think about how they made me feel about the iPad in comparison to the awesome stuff we saw at CES from honeycomb and the playbook. Even most apple fanboys were watching those videos and saying "ok apple, check mate" cause for the first time google and RIM not only matched the iPad, but totally blew it away on the hardware and software side. So maybe apple will take things seriously and really blow us away in turn with the specs, which it doesn't normally do. Like people in this thread are saying if they can come out with the high end specs listed above, but sell 40 million units (lets say maybe if they come out with the lower end specs I listed above, they might sell 30 million units because people like me and many other might go over to honeycomb or RIM) they are still turning huge profit in numbers AND getting tons more users for the app store and iAds.
Coming from partial outsider view with my android phone replacing my ipod touch and my desire to get an iphone, completely, I was thinking about the lower specs shown above and thinking "without a major iOS overhaul, and I mean MAJOR update, I will probably go with a tegra 2 honeycomb tablet", but with the specs above I was thinking "holy shit that looks awesome, even though honeycomb looks great I'm going to get the iPad 2 even if the iOS update doesn't quite match honeycomb". Those specs look so good I would be swayed over and I think a lot of other sceptical people would too.
This is probably juts wishful thinking and we'll probably see something more like the lower end specs I posted above, but man wouldn't that be cool to see apple step up and squash the competition? I mean really, with iOS, the app store, iAds, etc... this isn't a hardware pushing game anymore, this is a battle of online ecosystems where you want to be able to tell developers/advertisers that you have XXX million people on your system. If the iPad 2 is so spectacular that people have to turn away the already impressive looking playbook and honeycomb tablets, then apple can say "hey we sold 40 million this year and honeycomb/playbook sold only a couple million" and guess where developers/advertisers will go?
It could be a case of the earlier iphones where apple had a lot better hardware ready to go, but put in the minimum they needed based on the competition. For a few years there was no smartphone competition and apple could reign with minimal updates, and then all of a sudden android starts taking over and so apple releases the iphone 4 (probably one of the most drastic hardware upgrades we've seen from apple) with new case, retina display, more ram, better CPU, better camera, front facing camera, etc...
I could see the same thing happening now going to the iPad 2, only earlier now because the competition was more ready to jump at apple and fight back.
