Tom A Lloyd One of them designer types

Apple announces the new iPad… ‘The new iPad’

Yesterday evening (UK time) Apple held a media event and announced the highly anticipated 3rd generation iPad. Interestingly Apple has now dropped the numbering system it introduced with the iPad 2 and continues to use with the iPhone. This new iPad is simply called ‘The new iPad’, which of course will change to just plain ol’ ‘iPad’ in time.

I for one think this is the right move for Apple. I think they should have dropped numbering for both iPad and iPhone long ago. The more quickly they release products the more confusing and unnecessary the numbering becomes. Unlike a company like RIM or Nokia which have tens or hundreds of models, all needing differentiating from each other, Apple only has one phone and one tablet. I really hope the next iPhone (5) is just called ‘the new iPhone’.

There’s little point in me going into huge detail about the new iPad, as that’s already been done here, here and here.

The most important upgrade to the iPad is undoubtably the introduction of the Retina display as seen in the iPhone 4 and 4s, which will most likely find its way into every other tablet device over the next 12 months. This has caused quite a reaction around the web design world. The question now is:

“How can design take advantage of a retina display?”

At a time when there is so much change in the web industry, with movements toward content first, content strategy, mobile first and responsive web design, the introduction of high resolution displays adds another thing to consider. The balance between download speed, data consumption and providing the best possible visual experience just got a whole lot harder to manage. There’s a really interesting article over at .Net Magazine and Brad Frost has written an article called ‘iPad 3′s retina display will wreak havoc on the web‘ which is worth a read.