It’s March 16th., more than a year since the moment when the first generation iPad landed in Apple retail stores and pretty much in every other worthy retail chain store in US and later throughout the world; today, however, many have finally got their hands on iPad - the second generation. Naturally, there is a wish to compare both, make predictions for future models, and analyze how its development changes mobile apps landscape.

People who have been following tech. pundits' comments and reviews for iPad closely, remember that since the day one there were complaints that iPad didn’t have a camera, that it could be thinner and lighter, and even it's price - which ultimately was half of what was predicted.  It was not good enough for people who care so much about specifications and simply can not walk in shoes of a regular iPad user.

Fast forward... iPad 2 has a front and rear facing camera, it is significantly thinner and a bit lighter, it’s CPU is twice as fast as that of an iPad, and graphics are as much as 9 times faster, and despite these speed improvements its legendary 10 hours battery life hans’t been sacrificed. Guess what? - People who are obsessed with specs are yet again complaining, commenting that it is basically the same, there isn’t anything new and so forth.

But who said that iPad Revolution should occur once a year? Given that Apple has sold more than 17 million iPad 1st gen units speaks to the fact that lots of people were and still happy with the product as it was released last spring.  People who really needed a camera and felt that the device could be thinner and lighter and waited until this spring and at this very moment ordering iPad 2nd gen or staying somewhere in a line to an Apple retail store, counting people in front of them and visualizing the moment they finally grab it, are now satisfied, or at least should be satisfied.   Thus, if you got it right the first time around, which Apple obviously did with the iPad first gen, why would you like to change it radically a year later? People do love their car wheels to be round and won’t be happy with triangular or square ones, even though it might look cooler.

Perhaps there is only one thing that many people anticipated - the Retina Display - on a new iPad, and that didn’t happen. It didn't happen yet.  I believe the reason is quite obvious - it’s pricy to equip millions of iPads Apple is selling and will sell this year with 4 times more pixels density display, even though Apple does corner the LED display market. But I think it’s fare to speculate that Apple will double iPad display resolution next year to match iPhone 4 Retina Display. Apart from making iPad even more thinner and lighter, replacing iPad CPU with a faster one and increasing its RAM and flash memory capacity there isn’t much you can do with it's hardware to make even pundits owe! Although I don’t think Apple consider this a  necessity.

Enough about hardware, the real iPad advantage its software and the App Store.  Motorola, RIM, HTC do try and eventually will create hardware, which will create a healthy competition for iPad but 65,000+ apps for iPad is like a firewall, which I believe brings nightmares to engineers of those 3 companies I’ve just mentioned. Right now it’s too early to see an iPad effect on iOS app development and as a consequence on all people who use iPad apps at work and off work. One of the predictions which has all chances to come true is that we will see simply amazing iPad apps developed with much better graphic card built into second gen iPad.  I’m talking about complex games, apps that have HD video and 3D graphics. Watch the iTunes App Store closely - you will see an avalanche of such apps within next 2-3 months for sure. Even though there are so many iPad apps that have been developed up until now, I’m sure many ideas of apps had to be postponed due to hardware constraints of an iPad first gen. Apple gives a hint to developer community by releasing Mac OSX iMovie and GarageBand app versions for iOS - if we can do it you can do it too, show us what you’re capable of, it is a challenge that lots of companies will accept. An argument that iPad is for entertainment only has almost faded away and the second gen iPad is clearly meant to destroy this idea completely.

Have to go - it’s my turn in the queue for iPad 2 :-)

Artyom Diogtev - Head of Social Media