4 ms·
Apple Increases iPad with Retina Display to 128GB
- rdl 14y agoI guess Apple has decided to no longer make it easy to own "the best" of any given Apple device for more than a few months. I don't really see a problem with this (although maybe it will hurt the generally-strong resale value, although that will put less expensive but still great devices into the secondary market faster).
- emp_ 14y agoI am more on the theory that storage will be a selling point on the surface pro since it has the 128GB option, and Apple's reaction to that.
- nwh 14y ago> it has the 128GB option The 112GB option, 16 is tied up in the operating system on the RT. Presumably even more would be consumed on the Surface Pro. ED: Fixed math.
- andyjohnson0 14y ago112GB
- aw3c2 14y agohow much does ios take? and how about a comparison in functionality?
- nwh 14y agoA little under a gigabyte for iOS 6.1. This has increased over the 150mb for iOS 1.0, before it was even called iOS. I'm not sure how you'd even do a feature comparison.
- sthkr 14y agoI think only 83 gb of it is usable space after the os is installed with the other applications.
- uptown 14y agoCorrect: http://gizmodo.com/5979796/the-128gb-microsoft-surface-pro-only-offers-83gb-of-usable-space http://gizmodo.com/5979796/the-128gb-microsoft-surface-pro-o...
- jiggy2011 14y agoDo you necessarily need "the best" of any given Apple device? It's probably a smart practise though, if they can make those with a serious Apple product addiction shell out multiple times a year whilst still being able to sell perfectly useful devices to everyone else.
- pervycreeper 14y ago>Do you necessarily need "the best" of any given Apple device? Almost nobody does, but the people who buy them as status symbols are unlikely to know and/or care.
- bdcravens 14y agoThis has been true in most categories of devices for a long time. (Before things shook out and Samsung ascended, HTC and Motorola were leap frogging each other monthly with the "best" Android phone)
- brudgers 14y agoThis is a paradigm shift. Apple is embracing three numeral technology while their competitors are stuck in the two numeral age. Apple's ability to increase numerals a full fifty percent when pundits were expecting a mere incremental refresh is perhaps the most amazing news of 2013.
- masklinn 14y agoI'm surprised they didn't even bother waiting for the new model to provide it, and just added it to the current one.
- officemonkey 14y agoA mid-cycle refresh is not unusual for Apple.
- masklinn 14y agoNo, but the availability of 128GB modules (and devices) was a long time coming (the first modules were announced ~30 months ago, it's the first storage update since the iPad's original release, and further back for iOS since the 3rd generation Touch added a 64GB option back in 2009)
- alexkus 14y agoMaintaining double digit digit growth year on year will be tricky.
- ohwp 14y agoWhat are you talking about!? There are loads of 128GB tablets available on the market. Edit: for more info check out Samsungs 128GB eMMC memory chip
- barredo 14y agoI only know of the Surface Pro with 128Gb built in. Edit: Removed Surface RT as it only provides 32/64Gb options
- nikolakirev 14y agoI think this is just another step towards tablets replacing personal portable computers(notebooks, netbooks). More storage on the tablet means less dependency on other devices.
- nivla 14y agoI don't think storage is something that is standing in the way for tablets to replace portable computers. If it was, all you need to do is to slap in cloud storage and voila, theoretically unlimited space. Its more to do with productivity and flexibility and these two things can never be fully achieved under walled gardens. Once OS providers start porting their full OS suite to tablets, we might see a good traction. Glad to see Windows and Ubuntu are moving in that direction and hoping others to follow.
- rogerchucker 14y agoWhen I can run xcode, matlab, microsoft word, endnote, spss, sas and every other software product that make me somewhat productive, then I'll buy the post-PC garbage. And I'm not even a developer.
- mikecane 14y ago128GBs is still not enough. That should be the base storage for a Retina iPad. How can they even sell a 16GB one with a straight face?
- estel 14y agoBecause they've found that 16GB is adequate for many peoples' usage? Heck, I don't feel too constrained with 8GB on my Nexus 7 for the way I use it.
- dschep 14y agoWhat are you putting on a tablet that fills up 128GB of space?
- mikecane 14y agoWell, I stand corrected and am again pushed into the marginal category. That's OK. But it seems to me that if you're going to push HD video, you need the storage capacity to match it. And my overall point is that if the iPad is intended to be the next computing revolution, it needs to offer the storage capacity to get a lot of things done. Could any of you plop your entire photo, music, video, and eBook collections into an iPad and still have space leftover even with 128GBs? I couldn't. How many of you would want to pare down a 1TB hard drive down to 128GBs because, for some odd reason, that was now the maximum storage capacity any device offered? Maybe I'm still not making myself clear, but I think we should be far beyond 128GBs of storage by now.
- dschep 14y agoI guess I'm also kinda marginal too. I don't expect my main device, be it a desktop, laptop or tablet, to be where I store everything. It's way too subject to data loss. I can steam (from personal sources or services) most of the time, and if I need access while radio quiet, 8GB is more than enough to cache a few interesting things locally.
- mikecane 14y ago
- frogpelt 14y agoApple obviously knows how to squeeze every ounce of profit margin they can out of the consumer. But why does it cost the same amount to double the 16 GB model as it does to double the 64 GB model?
- rthomas6 14y agoProbably for the simple reason that their market research shows that that's what people are willing to pay for it.
- TillE 14y agoI'm pretty sure that first $100 upgrade from 16 to 32 is a huge profit maker. It only costs Apple a few bucks, and anyone who wants to seriously use their iPad has to do it because 16GB is just too small.
- sunkencity 14y agoI find 16GB satisfactory. If I would store tons of videos and audio I'd want more but I stream all the audio and video. (I agree that it's a huge profit maker for them though).
- r00fus 14y ago16GB is fine if all you're doing is using iTunes Match and/or Netflix and not too many big game apps, etc. Not for the power user or "homesteader" ie, I put most of my music/apps/movies on my 64GB model.
- tomelders 14y agoI suspect some of it will be profit, some of it will be engineering. I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of engineering from 16gb to 32gb is roughly similar to the cost of going from 64gb to 128gb. The components could be cheaper, the actual hardware for 64gb might be more versatile than the hardware for 16gb and so on.
- noarchy 14y agoThe increase in margins is huge for them. With a PC desktop, and with most laptops as well, you can simply upgrade the hard drive or ram yourself and save a ton of cash. But tablets have changed how easy it is to do this, and Apple is also soldering their laptop (at least, on the Air) hard drives and ram in place. So if you want an upgrade, you pay for it upfront, and you dig deeper into your pocket to do it.
- itsmeduncan 14y agoIt is interesting to see Apple release a bump up in specs outside of a staged presentation. Does this mean their product release cycle will become leaner and quicker to update instead of being on the January -> June -> October release cycle?
- neya 14y agoRIP Apple. Your products are no longer interesting...Sad to see such a great company fall to pieces. Apple's only strength was the desirability factor. And this desirability factor arose from the fact that they had really few product lines that were easy to remember - There was only ONE good iPhone and ONE iPad at any given point in time, so, people would easily remember those. Right now, what's the newest/best iPad out there? Is it the iPad 3? The iPad Mini?? The iPad 4?? (I was aware of the 4th version only a few days back). And what's the newest/best iPhone? The iPhone 4S? The iPhone 5?? The iPhone 5S?? When Steve was alive, the most recent product line from Apple would automatically mean that it was the best. However, that isn't the case anymore. Now, they just increment technical aspects (screen resolution, storage size..etc) of their products to fake desirability. This was the only difference between Apple's strategy and other companies like Sony/Samsung/HTC's strategy. Heck, even HTC is getting better, they are having fewer phones that make it easier to remember (The two latest and best phones from HTC are the Butterfly J and the One X+) If Apple is going to follow its competitors, destroying its only edge over the others (ie, desirability), I fail to see how they can sustain this way. In other words, they are digging their own grave. Just FYI - If you are wondering if I'm a fanboy, no I'm not. I lost all respect for them the day they sued Samsung.
- tjogin 14y agoNo wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
- ohwp 14y agoPosted this before: Apple is dead as in: http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
- jcromartie 14y agoIt's not like they are promoting this on their front page. It's just a spec bump.
- dbecker 14y agoCurrently owning both a macbook and a dell laptop, I assure you that there are differences besides the number of lines they carry. The same holds true if you look at tablets or phones instead of computers. The difference you describe isn't the "only" difference, and it's not even one of the more important differences.
- iuguy 14y agoWhat's the difference between the iPad 3 (retina) and this 4th generation they're talking about? Are they referring to an iPad Mini as 4th gen or are they saying the retina iPad (3rd gen) is 4th gen now?
- randall 14y agoThunderbolt. When the iPad Mini was announced, they announced the new iPad (regular) would have a Thunderbolt port, which put them at 4th gen.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- kapsel 14y agoYou mean lightning connector.
- klinquist 14y agoLightning, not thunderbolt.
- tiernano 14y agoApple call it a "lightning" connector, and I don't think its mechanicalally or electrically compatible with the Thunderbolt port... I think it even connects to bog standard USB 2.0
- lleims 14y agoYou mean "Lighting connector"?
- potatolicious 14y agoNo, the iPad Mini is just the iPad Mini. The 4th gen iPad was updated at the time the Mini came out to give it the same new dock connector and boosted specs, probably to prevent people from flooding to the cheaper option due to the perceived outdatedness of the larger iPad.
- cytzol 14y ago
- Revisor 14y agoWhat reason is there for the capacity not being 128, 256, 512GB?
- lemcoe9 14y agoBecause that's incredibly expensive to produce and hard to sell.
- sebbi 14y agoAt prices of 60 cents per GB in SSDs and Apple asking for $100 for 16, 32 or 64 additional GBs? $300 might buy you a 512 GB SSD ... and on an iPad it justs buys you 128 GB instead of 16 ... that is expensive, storage itself isn't that expensive anymore ;-)
- oups 14y agoAll of you are hackers here ? I'm new here and i would like to know what u guyz do around here
- edparry 14y ago$900 for a tablet. Damn. That's a lot of space, considering my movies/TV shows are on Netflix, and music on Spotify. Still, makes sense to offer it.
- rogerchucker 14y agoIt will be interesting to find out if most of the people buying the 128GB models will either be affluent assholes or those who do a shit ton of photo/video(/music?) editing on their iPads.