“Apple is expected to lift the curtain on the new iPad Air 3 come March,” Brian Mastroianni reports for CBS News. “But what can consumers expect?”
“From the tech industry rumor mill, it appears likely we’ll see design and size changes along with new features coming to the tablet,” Mastroianni reports. “On top of this, the new iPhone 5se is expected to take its bow at the same Apple announcement event.”
“It’s been a long wait — in Apple years — since an update to the iPad Air has hit store shelves. The most recent version, the iPad Air 2 debuted all the way back in October 2014,” Mastroianni reports. “It is unknown whether it will have the iPad Pro’s A9X chip processor, the iPhone 6S A9 chip, or something else entirely, according to CNET. Price is also up in the Air (pun intended), but it is considered likely that the device will fall in line with the price range attached to the current iPad Air 2.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Again, just give it enough RAM and well be there with bells on.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
A Light-Hearted Observation:
Love the MDN site. Couldn’t live without it. But take a close look at the “We Recommend,” “You May Like,” and “Popular Offers” segments.
Whoever edits/creates the articles here absolutely LOVES the expressions “jaw-dropping, “dropped jaws,” and other minor variations thereof. WTF?! Who drops his/her jaws nowadays? Dropped pants, maybe, but my jaw, at least, has and always will remain firmly in place! Just sayin’ . . .
MacDailyNews Take: Again, just give it enough RAM and well be there with bells on.
What is enough RAM though? The current iPad Air 2 out since 2014 has 2GB of RAM and that hasn’t been the source of many complaints really that I have seen.
This is an example of the analyst/comentator/individual paradox concerning Apple updates. On the one hand it is stated that Apple need to get out of the “updates/upgrades every 12 months” pattern and concentrate on more quality. On the other hand we all go “bonkers” when Apple doesn’t provide an update/upgrade every 12 months. Yike!!! It has been (or likely will be) a whole 18 months since the iPad Air 2. Which do you want?
I don’t think anyone is proposing that Apple needs to stick to a fixed schedule for most of its products. But obviously Apple does have a regular update schedule: every decades or so for displays and iPods, every 5 years or so for iWork or any professional products, every 3 years or so for Mac portables, and a tick-tock every year or two for iOS stuff. That is clearly a problem, because Apple’s rigid internal plans DO NOT take best advantage of sub-supplier innovations. It has caused Apple to have inadequate rollout inventory, it has cause Apple to completely skip major GPU and CPU updates, and it has left the door wide open for competitors to grab customers from under Apple’s nose.
Let’s look at the Apple TV for just one example: the newest configuration is obviously a rushed job, software poorly designed and incomplete, and Apple completely blew it for future-proofing. It doesn’t measure up to the competition on features (Roku 4) or price (Roku, Amazon, Google), nor capablity (dedicated gaming consoles for the best gaming, dedicated Tivo or DVR for merging your content with delivered content).
Apple lately just keeps showing that it’s too slow to keep up with the smaller, more hungry competition. Apple is the new Microsoft.
Make the Air 3 just like the iPad Pro, let it use the stylus and the A9X processor and you’ll sell a ton.