Apple has just made its second-generation iPad official! It features a 1GHz dual-core A5 chip and, finally, cameras, both on the front and rear. The new CPU is said to be up to twice as fast, with graphics performance up to nine times better than on the original iPad, while power requirements have been kept the same. Battery life is, consequently, unaltered, with Apple promising 10 hours. Pricing, too, has been left unchanged, starting at $499 for a 16GB WiFi-only iPad 2 and stretching up to $829 for a WiFi + 3G SKU with 64GB of storage. The new tablet will come with an HDMI output capable of 1080p — which will set you back $39 for the requisite dongle, called an Apple Digital AV Adapter — but there will sadly be no rumblings of Thunderbolt connectivity here. What you will get is an enlarged speaker grille on the back, as expected, and the same 1024 x 768 resolution and IPS LCD screen technology as on the original iPad.

[via engadget.com]

Bad news, jailbreakers: as promised, Apple’s just released iOS 4.0.2 for the iPhone and 3.2.2 for the iPad, both of which close the PDF exploit used by JailbreakMe. That appears to be the only change — it’s definitely good news for anyone concerned about iOS security, although we’re guessing the Dev Team is hard at work finding a new way to crack iOS open once again. We’ll let you know if we find anything else — won’t you do the same?

[via engadget]

We heard some pretty ridiculous estimates over the weekend, but these figures are straight out of Cupertino’s mouth: over 300,000 iPads were sold on April 3rd. Specifically, that many were moved in the US as of midnight (PT, we’re assuming) on Saturday, though this does include deliveries of pre-ordered units to customers, deliveries to channel partners (such as Best Buy) and sales at Apple Retail Stores. We should point out, though, that just because Best Buy purchased a bundle of ‘em doesn’t mean that end users have (yet), but still, this is a pretty impressive feat for something that not everyone was convinced that they “needed” in January. If you’ll recall, Apple only sold 270,000 iPhones during its first 30 hours on the market, yet it moved over a million iPhone 3GS units during that handset’s opening weekend. In related news, iPad users also downloaded over a million apps and over 250,000 ebooks from the iBookstore during launch day, with Steve Jobs himself noting that “iPad users, on average, downloaded more than three apps and close to one book within hours of unpacking their new iPad.” Now, let’s see if these guys can keep pace through the first full week.

[via engadget]

AppShopper is listing 3,266 iPad apps available at the time of this writing. That’s slightly more than 100 apps added since this morning. As of the morning of April 4th there were a total of 3,122 iPad apps available in the App Store according to Mobclix, a mobile ad exchange. At launch yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported 2300 iPad apps available in the App Store.

Of the 3,100+ apps Mobclix counted, 2,523 — or roughly 80% of them — were paid apps with the average price being $4.99. 942 of the iPad apps are games (804 paid, 138 free) and of the 154 book apps virtually all of them are paid. To put all the apps on your iPad would cost you a whopping $12,572.78.

TechCrunch contrasts the iPad app numbers with the iPhone apps. Of the 180,000 iPhone apps, 75% are paid. TechCrunch also theorizes that the prices of most iPad apps should go down as developers seek a median level where they can achieve the highest profit possible. After all, selling a hundred thousand copies of your app for $1.99 is much better than selling five copies for $49.99.

[via tuaw]

Up until now, a shroud of mystery has surrounded Apple’s custom engineered A4 system-on-chip; we know it’s clocked at 1GHz, likely tied to Apple’s prior acquisition of P.A. Semi and manufactured by Samsung. Outside of that, the only other knowledge we’ve gained has come not from the mouth of Cupertino, but from the extracting wizards over at iFixit. The A4 contains at least three layers of circuitry layered on top of each other, though it’s packaged just like the iPhone processor: microprocessor in one package and two memory modules in the other package. We also learned that the iPad RAM is actuallyinside of the A4 processor package, and we’re expecting to learn even more from those folks in the coming days. All that said, there’s still much debate on whether Apple’s own silicon can stand up to Qualcomm’s heralded 1GHz Snapdragon, the chip powering Google’s Nexus One among other things. AnandTechpitted their iPad against the iPhone 3GS (600MHz ARM Cortex A8) and the aforesaid Nexus One (1GHz Snapdragon QSD8250), using a number of website loads as the primary benchmark. Overall, the A4 proved to be around 10 to 30 percent faster, though it’s impossible to say what effect the operating system has on things. Have a gander at that source link for more — we get the feeling the competitions have just begun.

[via Anandtech]

Obviously updates are coming, software clues or not.  Maybe iPhone 3,2 = AT&T and iPhone 3,3=Verizon?

Also, why is there still an iProd when it was later discovered that the iProd was the iPad?

[via BoyGeniusRepor]

A lot of you (arguably smarter) people out there aren’t participating in iPad unboxing day today because you’ve ordered the 3G iPad. You are patiently waiting until later this month to get your 3G iPads and will smugly point out how much more awesome they are than the Wifi only versions.

Little has been said so far about the 3G version’s hardware, but today iFixit posts pictures of the internals which shed some light on Apple’s parts selection:

• Infineon PMB 8878 X-Gold baseband IC.
• Skyworks SKY77340 Power Amplifier Module
• Three Triquint power amplifier / filters.
• Infineon U6952
• Numonyx 36MY1EETriQuint power amplifiers: TQM616035A, TQM666032B, and TQM676031A. These are the same three chips that Apple used in the iPhone 3G nearly 2 years ago.

More images below from iFixit:

The 3G module resting in its place along the top left of the iPad

Modified 3G iPad casing and antennas:

[via 9to5mac]

Apple updated its site last night to reflect the enormity of the iPad launch.  The lead up to people finally being able to get their hands on one has been something to see.  Some have said the launch  “will make iPad the biggest cultural phenomenon since The Beatles”.  We aren’t quite ready to back that up but it has taken popular culture by storm like no other product in memory, including the iPhone.

iPads have shown up at the Grammys, all over late night TV, and even have been the subject of primetime television shows.  Experts expect Apple to sell anywhere from 3-10 million this year.

Today, hundreds of thousands of people will get their hands on one for the first time.  We’re interested to know what you think.

[via 9to5mac]

For all of you Gmail users out there, Google just announced that they are optimizing their web-based mail service for the iPad.  Hoping over to mail.google.com on your iPad will show you the new interface.  It looks very similar to Apple’s native ‘Mail’ iPad app with two panels (one for your inbox and one for the selected message).  Most importantly for diehard-Gmail users, it gives the user ALL Gmail features, including ‘Archiving’ and ‘Starring’.

In our opinion, this thing looks pretty darn good for an “experimental user interface,” as Google refers to it.  Check out a screenshot below:

Also of note, Google says they’re working on optimizing the ‘Google Mobile’ app for the iPad.  We’ll let you know when they show off that interface…

[via 9to5mac]

The iBookstore is now live on the App Store (free) and comes with Winnie the Pooh and the ability to sample of any book in the store before buying.  US-only and iPad-only for now, global editions are expected in the near future.

It isn’t certain if Apple will build versions of the iBookstore for Mac and iPhone/iPod touch like Amazon has built with the Kindle but it would certainly be welcome.

You can also drag free ePub books manually into iTunes as demoed here.

[via 9to5mac]