Tech
'iPad 3 with Retina Display coming in 2012' rumors won't die
The iPad 2 has only been available for three months but this isn't enough to kill off the rumors that Apple is preparing to release the iPad 3 this year, and that this iPad will feature a 'Retina Display' screen.
The iPad 2 has only been available for three months but this isn't enough to kill off the rumors that Apple is preparing to release the iPad 3 this year, and that this iPad will feature a 'Retina Display' screen.
This batch of rumors seem to have been kicked off by a TechUnwrapped tipster who came across mention of 1,536 x 2,048 resolution images in the iOS SDK for the new Twitter and Newsstand .framework.
The thinking by Techunwrapped is that because the high-resolution images are found in the Twitter and Newsstand parts of the iOS SDK, which are new to the iOS codebase, it means an iPad 3 will come out at around the same timeframe as iOS 5.
This doesn't make for a number of reasons:
- Why release another iPad within months of the iPad 2? I'd understand this knee-jerk move if Apple was under pressure from other tablets in the market, but it's not.
- Why restrict the high-resolution 'Retina Display' to certain aspects of iOS (like Twitter and Newsstand) rather than making it available across the whole OS?
- Supply chain contacts say that there is no iPad 3 incoming any time soon.
- It's not the first time that people have used 'evidence' gathered from the iOS SDK to convince themselves that a 'Retina Display' iPad is imminent. Remember all the speculation before the iPad 2 was released?
- A 'Retina Display' panel the size of the iPad's would be a serious number of pixels to move about and it would need some serious hardware. The cost doesn't justify the benefit. Yes, sure, a 'Retina Display' panel might be nice and 'cool' but what's the point when HD movies would run windowed or need upscaling?
- How do you explain this?
I'm putting this rumor firmly into the 'wishful thinking' file.