The iPad 2: What Wasn't Said

02.03.2011
The next iteration of the at 5 p.m. local time. features an Apple-branded 1GHz A5 dual-core processor, 9.7-inch screen with 1024-by-768 resolution, front- and rear-facing cameras, up to 1080p video out support via HDMI, 10 hours of battery life, accelerometer and three-axis gyroscope, and separate GSM and CDMA 3G connectivity options. The iPad 2 will be available in black or white.

That's what the company said, but what about the things it didn't say? Apple hinted at a few interesting points Wednesday about where the company might be going in the future. Here are a few noteworthy items that may not get much press, but are well worth noting.

Post-PC

Welcome to the post-PC era, at least according to Apple. Company CEO Steve Jobs and several other executives took great pains to mention the term 'post-PC' during the iPad 2 announcement Wednesday. To understand what 'post-PC' means you have to look back to Jobs' appearance at the D8 conference in June. "PCs are going to be like trucks," Jobs said at D8. "They are still going to be around...but they are going to be used by one out of x people." Apple is looking forward to a time when most people will use a tablet as their main computing device, and only a small minority of users will hang on to traditional PCs such as laptops and desktops. It appears Apple may even be hoping for the PC-to-tablet switch to happen this year, as it's calling 2011 the "Year of iPad 2."

But is a post-PC world realistic or even practical? The iPad is a great tool for casual Web surfing, videos, and light e-mail use. But when you need to create a word processing document while researching information on the Web, the iPad just isn't up to the task of switching quickly between windows like a desktop PC is.

Then again, many critics believe the iPad and other tablets, such as Motorola's Android-based Xoom, will take a healthy bite out of the PC market this year. Market research firm IHS iSuppli on Wednesday said tablets are a major reason that demand for hard disk drives (HDD), the most common form of storage in PC devices, is dropping. HDD demand will drop 3.9 percent in the first three months of 2011, according to IHS iSuppli predictions. The research firm also believes netbooks are particularly vulnerable to being decimated by the demand for tablet devices.