Speculating on the iPad 3

As we come close to the holidays I have been getting a lot of questions about when the iPad 3 is going to be announced and what is it rumored to have and if someone should get the iPad 2 or wait. So let’s get started and talk about all of these things.

Announcement

Going off what Apple has done in the past I would say the announcement should be sometime in January or February. This is because all former iPads 1-2 have been announced in this time. However the iPhone 2G-4 was always announced at WWDC and this year it was announced a little later so who knows! Just expect the announcement to be in January or February.

Release Date

Well given everything in the past I would say the correct release date would be around April. The Original iPad was launched April 3rd for the wifi and April 30th for the 3G iPad. With the iPad 2 the release date was March 11th. So the iPad 3 would be likely to be somewhere in those dates. It could also be available very soon after launch date so keep that in mind.

Features

There are only some features that I really want to talk about and what I want to see for the upcoming iPad.

1. 4G LTE. This is going to happen. If you want to say it is or not this is going to happen. However 4G LTE is not available in many places so you might not be able to take advantage of this for a few years. See your carrier for details and coverage.

2. Retina display. I was kind of sad when Apple didn’t put this into the iPad 2 but that was for a very good reason. It wasn’t ready. Now however it seems to be ready and this is going to be a real thing coming to the iPad.

3. Form Factor. The form factor is probably going to be the same thing. There has been rumors that there will be a little bit of thickness to the actual thing but still thinner than the original.

4. New Processor? Every single year the iPad has been announced there has been a new AX processor. So this year we may see a brand new A6 all the best processor.

5. Better camera. Let’s face it the camera on the current iPad sucks. There isn’t anything good to do with it other than facetime your friends and family. This is annoying. Let’s hope that we see a better camera with the new iPad.

Holiday

If you don’t care about any of the above then I would go for the iPad 2 for the holidays. Now if you think those features are amazing then hold off for the iPad 3. Remember you can always give a gift card for the mystical device. Just remember there will probably be more than those features and maybe some of those above like the camera or processor won’t make it. Launch dates are always hard to predict but for me I would give the gift card to apple for the amount of the 3G iPad 2 (if you want them to have LTE) or wifi (if no LTE) and then when the time comes they can go get it. Or they can use the gift card for something else.