Josh On Design

All of the rampant speculation about the new iPad amuses me. Not because I think the speculation is wrong, but just unnecessary. Apple is actually a very predictable company. They release and update their products according to very reliable patterns. Perhaps we just want to believe that something truly unexpected will happen, even when 99% of the time it doesn't. For example..

The iPhone 4s

Lots of people expected an iPhone 5, even though the iPhone 3g was followed by the 3gs. The simplest thing for Apple to do was follow the iPhone 4 with the 4s. Update the specs and add one big new feature: Siri. The form factor remained the same. The previous generation stayed around to be the entry level model. This is the same thing they did with the 3 and 3gs.

Apple also updates the iPod, iPhone, and iPad according to a one a year schedule. Very simple. Easy to predict. And it lets Apple leverage large economies of scale. It's much harder to get cheap components when you ship 20 devices a year instead of 3.

The iPad 3

When the first iPad was rumored I thought it would be a large iPod Touch rather than some touch enabled Mac. Why? Because it was the simplest thing to do. Give the iPod Touch a bigger screen, and boost the specs. Simple. Creating a touch enabled Mac would have been much harder and complex.

The iPad 2 was the same as the iPad 1 but with updated specs and one new feature: the cameras. The form factor was modestly changed but not much. A simple evolution. I expect the iPad 3 to be the exact same thing: updated specs and one core new hardware feature. This time it will probably be the screen that is updated, to a 2x resolution retina display. That will be it. No crazy new touch technology. No stylus or SD card slot. Just a new screen and updated specs. Apple really is quite predictable.

Perhaps we enjoy reading the speculation and crazy rumors because we really *hope* Apple will do something radical. The original iPhone launch is probably the only time reality lived up to the hype. The only time Apple genuinely surprised us. Most of the time Apple is actually pretty conservative.

Please send feedback and comments to my twitter account @joshmarinacci instead of on the blog. Thanks!