Rapid Reaction: iPad 2 announcement
If you haven’t been glued to your tech twitter feed, blog feed, live stream from engadget or Macworld, Apple released details of the iPad 2 starting at noon CST. While the next 9 days until the March 11 release date will be covering all the great new tech specs, a couple things stood out to us.
The numbers
Apple usually starts these presentations with a hearty pat on the back for themselves where they state numbers, tell you how magical the products are, and occasionally diss the competition (there was more than one dig at Android tablets). A couple telling stats were that 100 million iPhones have been sold and 15 million iPads have been sold. Add that to the fall 2010 estimate that 45 million iPod touches have been sold and you have over 160 million iOS devices in the hands of consumers. Regardless of your opinion Flash, an audience of 160 million is too big to ignore. You don’t have to abandon Flash – it adds a lot of great value to websites – but it’d be wise to start having alternative content for those without it.
Android phone sales have been no slouch either, and Google is doing great things. This begs the question, “Does your website work on these mobile devices?” Here at The Nerdery we are well equipped to do HTML5 targeted websites and mobile targeted websites, and we want to help.
The iPad 2
The iPad 2 is 33% thinner, has a dual core processor that is twice as fast, 9x faster graphics performance, and has video cameras. You can read up on all the tech specs at http://www.apple.com/iPad. One of the things that really stood out is the HDMI out and video mirroring. We’ve done presentation apps here at The Nerdery which allowed sales representatives to give very interactive presentations at conference booths or even in smaller settings. Getting video out has always been difficult to say the least. Now, with the iPad 2, you can have a monitor mirroring everything for you so potential customers can ooo and ahhhh at your next great app that is displayed on a projector or HDTV.
In terms of utilizing the full, unbridled power of the iPad 2, we’ve got your back. When The Nerdery went to WWDC in 2010 and the Apple engineers said, “You should really adopt these certain programming practices. We can’t say why, but just do it.” We listened. We always follow the best and recommended practices in programming, and we’re ready to hit the ground running. Apps we’ve built in the past should run faster, and apps going forwards will be faster as well.
iOS 4.3
Apple also rolled out a peek of iOS 4.3. We’ve had several devices running iOS 4.3 here for what seems like ages. We’re ready for the new iOS and are comfortable with all the new changes and fixes in this build. One thing to note is Airplay. Take the scenario where, on your new, important, client site, you have a HTML5 video embedded. A user comes along, sees the video, and wants to AirPlay it to their HDTV to show off your cool important client site video to their friends and family. We have the know-how to make this happen.
While the iPad 2 is cool, and lots of new things are coming, it doesn’t flap us unflappable, unstumpable Nerds. We’re always on the cutting edge and we’re ready to help you out.
