The iPad 2 has Arrived

I am usually a Google guy but I also enjoy playing with a lot of gadgets and to be honest the iPad is really cool. I was about to get one last year but I always think is better to wait for second generation gadgets because they learn from the market and they evolve for better and this is the case of the iPad.

Anyways, Today Steve Jobs announced a lot of things on the Mac Special Event. He started with some numbers:

• Over a 100 million iBooks downloaded in less than a year.
• Over 2500 publishers.
• 200 million accounts with credit cards and one click purchase on the apple store.
• They have paid out over 2 billion dollars to developers in apple store.
• 100 million iPhones shipped so far.
• 2001 de iPod, 2007 the iPhone and 2010 the iPad.
• 15 million iPads sold in 9 months 9.5 billion in revenues with over 90% market share.
• 65000 tablet optimized applications ( he even showed the honeycomb logo and just 100 apps, might be true right now ).

Pretty impressive numbers although every keynote I have seen so far, it does not matter if it comes from apple or android, has impressive numbers with their strengths of course so I am not really really surprised. It is just marketing for me, it helps though.

Some technical details are:

• A5 chip with dual core processor so 2x faster CPU and 9x faster in graphics.
• 2 cameras front and rear (Finally).
• Gyroscope.
• Same battery life, 10 hours working and over a month in standby. 
• 33% thinner than first iPad so 8.8 mm thick (thinner than ipad and iphone 4).
• Lighter, it went from 1.5 to 1.3 
• 2 colors black and white from day one.
• Works on AT&T and Verizon models.
• The same price as the first iPad.
• Start shipping in march 11 in USA and more countries 2 weeks after.
• HDMI mirrored video out put accessory  up to 1080p for 39$.
• Smart Covers with magnets grasp to auto-align it, automatically puts it to sleep and wakes up and comes in Polyurethane 39$ and leather 69$ each one in 5 colors. These are really cool.

Along with the hardware it had to come the software so they are releasing iOS 4.3 and some features that i like are:

• Comes with safari performance thanks to nitro javascript engine that is in the Mac 10.
• Better airplay integration with apple TV to stream movies, videos and photos.
• Personal hotspot, just for iPhone 4 though.
• It will only support iPad, iPhone GSM and iPod touch 3rd and 4th generations.
• iMovie, GarageBand the demo was amazing!!! this must ideal for musicians I love it. Both for 4.99$
• More applications to play with the 2 built in cameras like face time which by the way looks great on the iPad.

I can already see a lot of chart comparisons between the iPad 2, Xoom, HP Touch Pad and BlackBerry PlayBook or the iPad 2 versus  HoneyComb and it is normal the market is just starting and everyone wants to get some of it.

I still do not know if I am going to get a tablet or not. It seems like a really nice gadget that you just take it everywhere but still, I am a developer and I do not see myself doing development on these things. So these things are just for common use like reading books, check your email, or to waste sometime. It has its pros and cons but so far I am not really convinced about getting one maybe I will keep waiting.

For more information about the iPad you can check the official web site  or if you want, you can watch the complete event and the demos here.