Yesterday we asked you what you wanted from the iPad 2, the second generation iPad that’s expected to burst forth form the bowels of Apple early next year. Your wishlist included USB ports, and a couple of voters with a sense of humour asked for an Android tablet. Here’s the five things that came top of the list of your wants for the iPad 2.
1. Retina Display
28 per cent of you put retina display on the top of your iPad 2 wishlist. Unfortunately, due to the power a 9.7 inch screen running retina levels of pixel density would demand, it’s highly unlikely that Apple will manage to put retina display on the iPad 2.
2. Expandable storage
22 per cent of you wanted expandable storage on the iPad 2. Currently the largest storage option on the iPad is 64GB. That’s around 100 feature films. For a heavy user, it’s not much. One solution is expandable storage, and that means you’d be able to transfer media between devices more easily, although the latter is not something Apple want you to be able to do. Expandable storage is unlikely, but there may be bigger storage options on the iPad 2.
3. Flash support
This is a certified pipe dream: Steve Jobs is not going back on his open letter hating Adobe, and installing Flash support on the iPad 2, but you still want it. 19 per cent of you said you wanted Flash support on the iPad, whether Jobs likes it or not.
4. Front facing camera
A front facing camera on the iPad would add FaceTime. Of all the features listed here this one is the one we’d put our money on here at Electricpig towers. Not putting FaceTime on the iPad would send FaceTime to an early grave, and we’re fully expecting an iPad 2 rocking up with a front facing camera for video chat.
5. Seven inch version
Joseph Tsai of the DigiTimes, reported from sources back in July that the iPad 2 won’t just come in the 9.7-inch size, but smaller 5.6 and 7 inch sizes too, to take on the “e-book reader market”. But in the last Apple earnings call, Steve Jobs had no love for seven inch tablets. He said: “We think the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA-Dead on Arrival.”
So, out of the five things you said you wanted most on the iPad 2, only two of them look possible, and two of the big no’s are down to the tastes of Steve Jobs. Bigger storage options and a front facing camera are highly likely, but retina display, a seven inch version, and Flash support look to be varying degrees of wishful thinking.
What do you want on the iPad 2 that isn’t in this list? Tell us in the comments!
