Tech employees waited anxiously around monitors and packed in conference rooms (at least one here in Austin had a full taco table) for Apple’s big iPad announcement this Wednesday.
Then it finally came – “The new iPad.” Not iPad HD, or even iPad 3. But the name wasn’t the only revelation that Tim Cook shared. He also announced a sharper screen, a faster processer, better connectivity, and a 5-megapixel camera – mostly matching everyone’s expectations.
The one surprising omission from Wednesday’s announcement was any talk of the iPad in Enterprise. The iPad 2 made huge bounds in this space, and the new iPad is poised to take that relationship to new heights.
In the wake of Apple’s latest release bonanza, we look beyond the consumer hype to see how the newest iPad could drastically change your business.
New Retina Display
One thing’s overwhelmingly clear – the new iPad’s 2048 x 1536 display will take app quality to unprecedented levels.
The new Retina display will greatly impact design and development in terms of the increased scale of apps, as designers adjust to fit a new mobile standard. More than ever, designers will need to rely on creating vector objects and layer styles for flexibility when it comes to resizing.
Weighing in at 1.4 pounds, just slightly more than the iPad 2, the new iPad offers comparable battery life even with its intensely enhanced graphics capabilities. Designers will be able to pack more onto the same screen size without sacrificing the amount of time an iPad can stay charged in the field.
What does this higher resolution mean for existing apps? Businesses will be rushing to update their existing applications to the new viewing standard, and we can expect to see app size multiply as designers and developers take their applications to new visual heights.
Quad-Core A5X Processor
Combined with the new Retina-display, the A5X Quad-Core processor’s enhanced speed will allow developers to push graphics and visuals even further. The processor’s capabilities will allow for better, more complex animations when performing actions such as data visualization and when using the iPad as an interactive display or sales tool.
The new processor also brings the iPad’s speed even closer to the desktop and laptop, ensuring that the tablet stay a viable contender as a primary enterprise computing tool. With the right solutions, workers in the field and office will be able to reach levels of productivity on the iPad that simply can’t be attained on any other device.
4G LTE Speed
The tablet’s faster 4G LTE data speeds will greatly impact workers who depend on data-heavy applications even more than the casual consumer. Fields like fleet management and medical workers in emergency response vehicles will heavily rely on this feature to quickly transmit large amounts of information on the go.
Lower Price Point for iPad 2
Apple also announced that they would retain the iPad 2, while dropping the price to $399 for the WiFi-only version. With this move, Apple could see a huge increase in sales as it saw when it continued the iPhone 4 after the release of the 4s.
By reducing the cost of baseline entry and making it more accessible, Apple opens up the iPad to previously untapped industries, like education, where a $100 lower price point brings the possibility of the device into far more hands.
In Closing
iPad enthusiasts are still waiting for the full spec announcement to explore every included feature as it goes on sale (like how they mentioned voice dictation, but gave no nod to Siri), but these features are enough to spark serious response in the Enterprise mobility space.
With more pixels, better graphics, faster processor, speedier data, and a cheaper baseline version, Apple continues to raise the bar for Enterprise tablet competition.
