COUNTER-POINT: Why Apple Upgraded Its iPad 3 Unexpectedly - Not What You Think It Is

Orestis Papanastassiou recently made a few good points on why Apple unexpectedly upgraded its iPad 3 line, however, I've got a different theory in mind that I would like to share - something that is almost entirely different from Orestis' point. So his first reason was actually pretty simple: Apple wanted all of its portable devices to support the Lighting port. It made sense. However, his second point was unfortunately both skewed and flawed. Unlike what Orestis had said, that Apple needs the iPad to be up to par or better than the iPhone, Apple in reality don't need this to happen. People who want the iPhone will buy the iPhone. People who want the iPad will buy the iPad. Why? Because their screen sizes are radically different. Let's say I want to watch movies - do I really need to care if the device has lots of RAM or processing power? No. All I need is a good, big screen and a decent processor that doesn't lag when playing the movie. 

So now it boils down simply to: Why did Apple upgraded its iPad 3 unexpectedly?

The answer is much more simpler than what Orestis made it out to be - unification. Here's the situation. Apple already have the iPad mini ready for production - they're already sorted out the name, the marketing materials and others - they were good to go. On the other hand, they've already got an iPad in the market that they've just released months ago - the iPad 3. Apple realizes its predicament - it has two very different products under the same product line (iPad). Should they release the iPad mini now (so that they could release the iPad mini 2 in time next year) and release the updated version of the iPad 3 in March or should they combine both releases? If they do separate the events, it would be one of the very few times in Apple's history that they've held two separate events to announce two different products from the same product line. Doing so would create a fragmented line of products and releases. It would mess up the simplicity in product lines that Apple has tried so hard to keep all these years. The idea behind the product releases are now really simple: if we announce one Mac update, we will do so for all the others. If we release one iPod update, we will do so for the others. If we release one iPad update, we wlll do so for the others too - no matter how minor.

And for the record, I actually disagree with Orestis' viewpoint that Apple will release an update for the iPads on March. I think the new iPad 5 and the iPad mini 2 will both be announced on October next year. Why? Because a March launch would mean that Apple will have to update the iPad mini too - something that will likely hurt their bottomline given that they're selling so many of them right now.

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Update on Dec 22, 2012 at 1:02 PM by Michael Andrew

Let's respond to a few comments.

DavidTech:): It DOES have a bad effect on the product line - it makes everything more fragmented. If Apple does this, how different would they be compared to the Android manufacturers who release hundreds of devices every year? Nothing at all. Apple time each product announcement perfectly - and there's no way they would let this happen. Oh, and unless you're directly from Apple, I don't think you can tell me that I'm wrong. And neither can I tell you that you're wrong, because it's just opinions, after all. 

Steve: Thanks for the constructive feedback - appreciate it!

George Q: I'm not - it's just an opinion. Read the last line of that comment.

Why I Bought a 15" MacBook Pro

Many of you may have read the tweets but may not know the whole story. Last week, my 13" Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro suffered water damage. I was forced to replace it with a 15" Quad Core i7 MacBook Pro. Though the purchase was sudden, I am loving this machine. Here is the full explanation and my first impressions after a week with this computer.



Some of the main differences I've noticed is that the 15" screen can't be beat. Regardless of the larger screen size, this machine is still super portable and thinner than I was expecting. The speakers are also independent of the keyboard on the higher end 15" and 17" models so the sound quality is much better! I'm really appreciating the HD Facetime cam as well. Expect many more MacBook Pro videos in the near future.

Thanks for your continued support and I hope you are as excited as I am for my new project coming up!

Buy a Mac Today, Free Upgrade to OS X Lion

Apple has announced that if you buy any Mac product from either Apple or an authorised seller then you will be given a free upgrade to OS X Lion via the Mac app store. Here is Apples press release on the matter:

"The Mac OS X Lion Up-To-Date upgrade is available at no additional charge via the Mac App Store to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after June 6, 2011. Users must request their Up-To-Date upgrade within 30 days of purchase of their Mac computer. Customers who purchase a qualifying Mac between June 6, 2011 and the date when Lion is available in the Mac App Store will have 30 days from Lion’s official release date to make a request."

RAM and Upgrading

RAM, in my opinion, is an important factor when it comes to computers. I personally have the stock and default amount of RAM that came with my late 2008 Macbook which was at the time 2GB. When writing this post, not only am I providing you with information regarding memory but also asking if I should upgrade.

First of all, RAM, or random-access memory, is a type of data storage that allows programs to access certain data at any time. So every time you use a program, a certain amount of RAM is used up. The advantages of receiving data from RAM rather than, for example, a hardrive is that RAM is faster and easier to obtain whereas from a hardrive, it takes a while to both read and write on that data. Plus, RAM resets every time the computer is powered down.

Now to my question to the community: should I upgrade? First, some background. With writing articles for TekSocial aside, I am a web developer and designer. I mildly do graphic designer and mainly focus on developing and website design. Usually my free RAM space depletes to around 25MB in the span of a day. Program-wise, I mostly have open a text-editor, 2 web browsers, iTunes, Mail, and a local server.  These programs eat up my RAM like crazy and I'm pretty sure I don't need to restart my computer every day just to reset my RAM. All respectful questions are free to be written. Thanks!

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Power Mac G4 Upgrade Part One.

Hey Guys! This is my first post on thecreativeone.tv and I really hope that you enjoy reading my blog posts!

Recently I bought a Power Mac G4 Quicksilver, with 733Mhz G4 processor, 256mb RAM, No hard drive and the the crumby 32mb standard graphics card. From the moment i got the machine I was impressed with the design of the machine and even by today's standards compared to some PC's you see around today, the Power Mac is still a beautiful machine.

I really wanted to upgrade the machine to bring it back to date, to hopefully run some programs that i run on my Mac Pro and run as a media center and such.

To upgrade my Power Mac i bought a 120gb western digital hard drive, 1gb RAM from Crucial Ram and PCI usb hub. 

The parts went in the machine nicely and after a few hours work i was running 10.4.11 on the Power Mac and it was running pretty quick for today. But i had a few more problems, the machine was very loud, and the graphics card couldn't keep up when running YouTube videos etc, which is expected. Two things that would really bug me.

I went down to PC World (The name is really ironic to say i was going to be putting the parts in a Mac) and i bought three new silent fans, one that would replace the fan cooling the CPU, another to replace the big 120mm fan that was cooling the majority of the computer, and the last one that was blowing air out of the power supply unit.

I have on phrase to say, Mac's do not like to be ripped to pieces. It was a nightmare trying to get all of the fans out of the mac, and then replacing them with all new ones, but after a few hours and several scuffed knuckles, I had replaced every fan inside the Power Mac. 

All the pain was definitely worth it though as when the Power mac was all back together it was considerably quieter than it previously was. Next up was the graphics card.

Now for financial reasons, the cheapest way for me to upgrade the Power Mac's graphics card, was to buy a PC Graphics card and flash it for use with a Mac, easier said than done. The graphics card came, we popped it into an old PC i had laying around and booted up Windows XP.

We created an MS DOS CD, which is considerably hard to make than creating an MS DOS floppy disc and booted into MS DOS, to find out, to flash the graphics card we needed to use a floppy disc, which naturally, because floppy discs are nearly as old as me, I don't have a floppy disc drive or any floppy discs, so it was time to scavenge around.

Now luckily because a friend of mine, has old computers for testing and upgrading, he could find me an old floppy disc drive we could pop into the PC we was using to flash the graphics card, again because he'd never had a need for floppy discs, he didn't have any.

So more work had to be done, I had to go onto trusty eBay and buy some floppy discs, something I thought i'd never do, this morning, a packet of floppy discs landed on my door mat. Stay tuned for an update, and I hope you will enjoy my blog posts in time to come!

Sam

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