The great thing about the Internet age is that you can publish whenever you like. My Thursday column, for example, hits newsprint on Thursday, but generally gets posted online the night before.
This week, I reviewed the new iPad, and the minute the column hit the Web last night, reader questions started coming in by e-mail. I thought that this week’s e-column might be a good opportunity to answer them.
The Times’s technology columnist, David Pogue, keeps you on top of the industry in his free, weekly e-mail newsletter.
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Here they are: Earliest Asked Questions about the New iPad.
Q: Your review didn’t say anything about the new quad-core processor! It’s twice as fast!
A: Well, yes and no.
Yes, I didn’t mention the new processor, because — well, what does “A5X processor” mean to the layman?
But no, the new iPad processor is not “quad-core.” Only the graphics-processing piece of it has four cores, which is necessary power to handle all those millions of new pixels.
In other words, the new iPad winds up being no faster than the old one. All the extra chip speed is necessary just to maintain the same speed as the old one, thanks to the enormous task of painting those 3.1 million pixels, 30 times a second.
Fortunately, “the same speed” is very, very fast indeed. The new iPad, like the old one, is solid, slick, smooth and stutter-free; it remains an absolute joy to use.
Q: Isn’t the pixel density of the iPad lower than that of the iPhone? So in what way is its screen a Retina display?
A: Correct. Apple uses the term Retina to describe the screens of both the iPad and the iPhone 4S.
The iPhone packs in 326 pixels per inch; the iPad manages only 264. So it’s true that the iPhone’s pixel density is higher than that of the new iPad.
Apple says that people hold the iPad farther from their faces than the phone, so the result is the same: You can’t discern individual pixels.
Now, that distance assertion isn’t always true (ask anyone over 40 who’s not wearing reading glasses), but it doesn’t matter. You really can’t see the pixels on the iPad screen.
Q: How’s the audio?
A: It’s still a mono speaker. But it’s a good, loud one.
Q: Does the new iPad have GPS?
A: Only the cellular models can figure out where they are. (That’s because they use triangulation from nearby cell towers to pinpoint their own location.)
Q: You complained in your review that the new iPad has speech recognition, but only for voice-typing, not for Siri. But what good would Siri do you if the iPad doesn’t have Clock, Weather, Stocks or Calculator?
A: You’re right. It’s darned weird that Apple doesn’t offer these handy starter apps on the iPad, even though they’re there on the iPhone. I don’t know what it was thinking.
Even so, Siri would have been superuseful for all the things it does on the iPhone 4S. It saves you many, many steps when you’re looking for an address, querying the Web, sending a text, checking your calendar, making an appointment and so on.
There’s some speculation that Apple will add the full Siri to the new iPad in some software update. I hope so. I’m a Siriholic.
Q: What did you mean, “the LTE flavor of 4G?” I thought LTE and 4G are the same thing.
A: Depends on whom you ask.
AT&T has a huge data network that it calls 4G, but it’s actually HSPA+, which is basically sped-up 3G. It’s not the same thing as LTE, which is newer and faster.
Verizon’s LTE network is much, much bigger than AT&T’s at this point: 196 Verizon cities, 28 for AT&T. So if you’re buying an iPad, check those coverage maps to know which version to buy.
Both versions work just fine overseas (where HSPA+ is more widespread than LTE), and both fall back to 3G in this country wherever LTE isn’t available.
Nobody ever said understanding the cell industry was easy.
Q: You mentioned that only the Verizon iPad offers tethering at this point, but you didn’t say how much it costs.
A: On cellphones, you have to pay $20 a month more to get tethering. (Tethering means acting as a glorified wireless Internet antenna for nearby laptops. So if you have a laptop, you can get onto your iPad’s superfast LTE connection with a Wi-Fi connection. During my review period with the iPad, I was traveling constantly, and this Personal Hotspot feature saved my bacon many, many times. It’s fantastic.)
So, to your question: Believe it or not, Verizon doesn’t charge anything extra to use tethering on the new iPad. You buy a certain amount of data a month ($20 for 1 GB, $30 for 2 GB, $80 for 10 GB). You can use it all up with the iPad alone, or you can share it with laptops and iPod Touches over Wi-Fi.
Which is exactly how it should work with phone plans, but that’s another rant.
Q: So the iPad has the iPhone 4’s camera now. Is there a flash?
A: Nope, no flash still. And it’s not exactly the iPhone 4’s camera. It’s really the iPhone 4S’s camera (improved light sensitivity, better color) but at 5 megapixels instead of 8.
Q: You didn’t mention apps.
A: I wish I’d had the room.
Apps are everything. Apps are the iPad’s strong suit. The app store offers 200,000 apps specifically designed for the iPad’s big screen plus 500,000 phone apps that also run on it (at lower resolution).
Android apps are plentiful and good on Android phones. But for some reason, they’re not gaining much traction on tablets. As Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, pointed out in his presentation of the new iPad, many important apps for Android tablets, like Twitter and Facebook, are basically just wider-windowed versions of the phone apps. They don’t have luxurious, carefully considered layouts — multiple columns, sliding panels and so on — as the iPad versions do.
And one more update: The new iPad is back-ordered three weeks already. It’s crazy popular.
And now you know why. Apple has ensured that the hardware is the best you can buy, and it goes with the best tablet software library. The real kicker, though, is the price: Nobody’s come up with a less expensive 10-inch tablet with the same features. You don’t pay a premium for Apple elegance.