Photo Source: 91mobiles.com
You know what they say about things that look too good to be true. That’s how I feel about the new 8th Gen iPad rumor making the rounds right now. However, the source has been right before, so this rumor is at least worth paying attention to.
No, as good as Jon Prosser is, he has not ascended to oracle status yet. According to @ApplTrack, he hasn’t even passed up Mark Gurman at this point. No, if you want a source of release information that is pretty much 100% reliable, then you should be paying attention to the Eurasian Economic Commission’s filings. They are open and Apple major devices always hit there within a month or so of release.
Photo Source: AppleInsider
This story of a new patent potentially combining two Apple devices into an interesting hybrid has been circulating for over a week now, courtesy of AppleInsider. iPad news is fairly slow at the moment so I finally had a chance to circle back to it this weekend.
Before saying anything else, as with all Apple patents, there is no guarantee that this product or anything like it will ever come to market. However, these patent applications can be an effective way to track things that Apple is interested in and putting research dollars into.
Apple just reported an unexpectedly huge 3rd quarter overall, with revenue up 10.9% year over year. Earnings-wise, it’s actually the biggest third quarter in company history. Revenue and sales increased pretty much across the board, including iPhone sales, making Apple the only company that saw an increase in smartphone sales last quarter,
All of that aside, it was the iPad that saw the biggest increase of all year over year, with sales up a whopping 31%. That’s a significant increase, especially on the heels of two straight quarters of declining revenues.
Rumors about Mini-LED iPads have been bouncing around for well over a year. Thanks to the effects of a worldwide pandemic, they have been all over the place in more recent months. First these new devices were coming in 2020 and later they were reported to be delayed until next year. The Mini-LED iPad Pro is still pegged for a 2021 debut. That said, now a report from DigiTimes says that Mini-LED could be back on for late 2020.
Ming-Chi Kuo was back a few days ago, calling for a new “iPad” in the second half of 2020. This report came courtesy of MacRumors. The problem is, we really don’t know which one model he’s talking about yet.
Even though it looks like the enhanced iPad Pro with a Mini-LED screen has been bumped to next year due to the impact of COVID-19, we have fresh rumors of another new Apple tablet coming in 2021. There have already been rumblings about a new iPad Air coming in late Summer or Fall, but according to Ming-Chi Quo, we should also expect a new iPad in the second half of this year. Well, maybe.
If you haven’t read Paris Martineau of Wired’s article iPads Are Crucial Health Care Tools in Combating Covid-19, then do yourself a favor and go take a look now. It’s a really insightful piece that shows the major impact that the iPad and other smart devices are having right now and in real-time across US hospitals and healthcare systems.
The iPad officially turned 10 years old yesterday! Hurray! A full decade has now passed and so much has changed with the hardware and software of the iPad and how I use them. It’s natural to look back after a milestone, so now is a good time to do just that. (You can see my previous strolls down memory lane here and here.)
9to5Mac has been a trusted source for Apple news for a long time. However, I didn’t really consider them to be quite on the level with Mark Gurman and Ming-Chi Kuo when it came to new device and iOS rumors. Gui Rambo has made quite an impact over the last couple of years revealing lots of information hidden inside of Apple’s various OS betas, but those details don’t start coming until after WWDC, when those of us with Apple Dev Accounts get our hands on the goodies.
I wrote about my first experience with the iPad back in January, right around the 10th anniversary of Steve Jobs announcing the device in 2010. As we close in on the 10th anniversary of the device’s release, I’ve been thinking a lot about where the iPad is today and the things I love about it, both new and old.
While I enjoyed using the original iPad and saw enormous potential in Apple’s tablet platform, it was the iPad 2 that really won me over. It was everything that was good about the iPad, just better all-around. It was thinner, lighter, faster and had better battery life. As big of a jump as we got from the original iPhone hardware to the iPhone 3G, this was even bigger. Add to that the fact that developers were fully onboard with making iPad-specific apps by this point thanks to the success of the first-gen device, and you had a really compelling package for the price.