The iPad 2. It's just what I said it would be, just good enough

Ben Harvell is a freelance writer and former editor of iCreate magazine. He writes for a wide range of international technology magazines and websites including Macworld and MacFormat. He has written several books on consumer technology and blogs at benharvell.com. Ben reviews apps and has also commissioned his own. He’s also rather obsessed with Twitter and suggests you follow him.

So the announcement of the iPad 2 came and went and this writer still manages to retain some credibility. Granted, my previous post only mentioned a couple of features that the iPad 2 wouldn’t have and some very easy guesses at what it would. That said, in the words of Charlie Sheen, I’m still “winning”. We didn’t see a Light Peak connection as some had absurdly suggested and the display doesn’t appear to have changed a great deal. What we saw were minor tweaks to the design, processing power and the addition of two cameras. So do you agree with me now that this was a fairly dull upgrade?

I think this further cements my thoughts that this was indeed the iPad 1.5 even if Apple has decided to call it the iPad 2. And as I suggested in my previous post, people are already talking about the iPad 3 and the slightly more groundbreaking features it might offer perhaps later this year. One thing I am prepared to take back, however, is that Apple may lose its lead in the tablet race this year. I’m more than happy to admit when I’m wrong and this update, albeit small, is certainly a statement from Apple to other manufacturers more than it is a full product release. Everything magical, amazing and insanely great (among other superlatives) regarding the iPad 2 was already present in the original iPad, this model simply raises the game for those still a long way behind in terms of development and specs for their own “post-PC” devices. Did you notice how Apple was very keen to get that phrase into the mainstream? This isn’t just a tablet, apparently.

For the hipsters out there, we’ll see two colours of iPad iPad 2 (assuming Apple can figure out how to paint a device white this time) as well as a range of colourful cases that not only protect but clean your iPad’s display for about the same amount of money as it would cost to pay a small child to wipe it down at the end of each day.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be buying an iPad 2 for work as well as pleasure but I still hold true to my belief that this is far from a second-generation iPad. Apple is going to have to do a lot more to impress me and, should my day-to-day work not involve using the device so heavily, I don’t think I would have made the same purchasing decision as just a consumer.

It’s now up to the developers (yet again) to prove the worth of the iPad 2. With the addition of a faster processor, cameras and a gyroscope, there are a lot of new goodies to play with when it comes to producing apps. So, if you fancy working night and day until the 11th, maybe your software could appear in the first run of iPad 2 commercials.