Sprint has confirmed that they will indeed be offering the recently announced 128GB variant of the iPad 4. This also leads us to assume other carriers will follow suit.
No sooner was support for 128GB NAND flash storage capacities found in iOS 6 beta 5, than reports pop up saying Apple is readying 128GB "ultimate" versions of the iPad 4 for launch. The news come by way of Mark Gurman of 9to5Mac, who typically has excellent sources on imminent product releases.
Apple has just announced that the Wi-Fi + cellular versions of the iPad mini and iPad 4 will be launching in China this Friday, January 18. According to Apple
The iPhone 5, along with the Wi-Fi only versions of the iPad 4 and iPad mini would go on sale in China within the next few weeks. According to Apple, the iPhone 5 will debut on Friday, December 14, and the iPads will debut on Friday, December 7.
If the special someone(s) on your holiday gift list already have iPads, and love them, and are looking to get even more out of them, you're all in luck. There's an embarrassment of great apps, accessories, and content that make the iPad ever so much more functional, and more fun. Here are some of our favorites.
Rene and Seth review the iPad mini, including the design, non-Retina display, screen size, radios, stereo speakers, Lightning connector, interface, apps, accessories, price, and more. This is the iMore show!
The iPad 4, variously referred to as the "4th generation iPad" or the "iPad with Retina display" is the second full-sized iPad released by Apple in 2012. While that makes it tempting to flip the proverbial tablet in this review and simply say "this year it comes with an A6X", not only would it be lazy to play that particular card twice, in this case it would also be inaccurate. 7 months after the iPad 3 launched, Apple's has improved more than just the processor in this new, new iPad. They've also included their all-digital Lightning connector, bumped the FaceTime camera to 1.3 megapixels and 720p video, and upgraded the cellular chipset to support international LTE 4G networking.
The iPad 4 has an Apple A6X system-on-a-chip (SoC) is marketed as twice as fast, both in central and graphics processing, as the iPad 3 released only 7 short months ago. Apple's custom, manually-set ARM v7s processor -- called Swift -- remains the 32nm CMOS dual-core beast found in the iPhone 5, but it's been cranked up to 1.4 GHz. The X in the iPad 4's A6X once again represents a quad-core graphics processor, this time the PowerVR SGX554MP4. On spec, that's some serious fire-power.
The iPad mini, by contrast, has the same die-shrunk Apple A5 SoC found in the iPad 2. That's a 1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex A9 and PowerVR dual-core SGX543MP2. But the iPad mini also has the same 1024x768 display as the iPad 2. It's smaller but denser, going from 9.7-inches to 7.9 inches, and 132 ppi to 163 ppi, but it's the raw pixel count here that makes the difference.
Retina comes at a price, and that price is performance for the first generation devices that have to support it. The iPad 3, iPhone 4, the iPod touch 4, even the Retina MacBook Pros were and are maxed out trying to push all those pixels. Once that's done, though, once the price has been paid, however, performance improvements go back to where they belong -- making things feel faster.
So, even with the older, less powerful Apple A5, the iPad mini should fly. But will the new A6X help the iPad 4 do likewise?
The iPad mini is the first non-Retina display iOS device Apple has introduced since the iPad 2 in the spring of 2011. The iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and iPhone 5 are all Retina devices, as are the iPod touch 4 and iPod touch 5. There's are a lot of technical reasons why Apple made that choice. Lighting, powering, and paying for a 2048x1536 panel would have resulted in a substantial thicker, heavier, more expensive iPad mini. But how much of a difference does it really make?
Whether it's strategy, shooter, sports, casual, physics, action, role-playing, racing, word, sims, or puzzle, iMore has carefully collected all of our favorite free iPad App Store games and listed them below for your playing pleasure.
