Gizmo Ground

How much can technology change in a year? Take a close look at the iPad 2, and you have your answer. It’s thinner, faster, and it costs the same. That’s progress.

When you have extended physical contact with a product, the way you feel about it is more important than the way you think. That’s where the iPad 2 excels, but there’s nothing magical about it – it’s well made, powerful, and gives you choices of where, when and how you’ll compute that you’ve never had before. Apple has made an already-good device even better.

My first impression when I picked up the iPad 2 was that it was impossibly thin. It’s 33% thinner than the iPad 1. How could a device with such a slim cross-section still feel so solid? Gone are the semi-sharp edges of the old model, replaced by curved angles that feel better in the hand. When you set it down, it lies flat, with no rocking like its predecessor. The downside? It’s harder to plug Apple’s universal connector into the slightly curved surface created with this new roundness.

Weight was my main complaint when I reviewed the original iPad last year. The iPad 2, at 1.33 lbs, feels a lot lighter than its older brother at 1.5 lbs.

Its front face changed for the better as well. Before, you could see a band of aluminum around the front edge when you looked at the iPad straight on. However, it looks like the front of the iPad 2 is almost all glass, with just a tiny band of metal visible on the outside of the glass.

Maybe you’ve seen the iPad 2 specs. But when you feel the speed difference between the iPad 2 and its predecessor, you realize that having a dual-core A5 processor under the hood makes a big difference. Besides its slimmer form factor and lighter weight, this is the juiciest part of the new iPad 2. Where things happened quickly before, now they happen instantly. There’s a noticeable difference, particularly in apps such as Need for Speed that formerly took a long time to launch.

The numbers agree. Running Geekbench 2 on the iPad results in an overall score of 746, compared with 447 for its predecessor. That’s a 66 percent speedup, and believe me, you can feel every bit of it. Bravo, Apple.

Much has been said about another new feature of the iPad 2, its front and rear facing cameras. The VGA-resolution front-facing camera is okay for videoconferencing. The much-maligned rear camera, with a mere 0.7 megapixels, is not much better but at least it can shoot and record video in 720p. Both seem to work well in low light, but they’re not good enough for picture taking, and why would you even want to with a tablet? That said, if people want to take pictures with iPads, at least there should be a couple of quality cameras on board, and they’ll have resolution to spare for even HD videoconferencing. The poor quality of the cameras must have been due to a space or cost consideration, something that might fix itself before the iPad 3 shows up.

The basic question for all computer buyers: What will you run on it? I can’t leave out the fact that Apple offers more than 65,000 apps specifically designed for the iPad. Many new iPad users tell me that there is too much choice. This is a good position to be in, as developers fall over themselves to create applications for any whim or desire. Buy an iPad, and you’re plugging into an entire ecosystem of software with surprising depth and breadth.

What’s missing? Given all its user-friendly technology, how hard could it be to bestow wireless synchronization onto the iPad 2?

If Apple insists that we synchronize all its electronics with its clunky iTunes application, the least the company could make it an effortless undertaking. The Achilles heel of all of Apple’s products, from iPhone to iPad 2, is iTunes. The first thing you must do with any new iOS product after removing it from its gorgeous packaging is load up this loathsome software. Although iTunes runs okay on Macs, on the PC it’s especially bloated — slow to launch, cumbersome, and stuffed with come-ons that benefit Apple a lot more than its customers, such as Ping and the “Genius” sales-enhancement tool. Its tedious Windows install routine feels the need to ask you twice if you want to install it, and has this sneaky way of nagging you to install Safari and MobileMe. Apple, you’re better than that.

Another slight disappointment is the iPad 2′s screen, the same one that I liked more when I first got the original iPad last year. Now, it’s a year later, and I’ve been spoiled by the super-high-rez screen of the iPhone 4. When I spot individual pixels, it seems like a throwback to old times. I know, Apple would’ve had to raise the price of the iPad if it had matched the pristine dot-pitch of the iPhone 4′s “retina display,” so maybe last year’s touchscreen will have to do.

Here’s where Apple has conjured up a cost-effective witch’s brew, choosing components for the iPad 2 that arejust good enough. That results in the lowest-priced iPad 2 (16GB Wi-Fi) costing just under $500 and the most expensive model with 3G and 64GB of storage costing $829. Even while keeping the price low, Apple made all the right choices, increasing the iPad 2′s processing and graphics speed, while keeping the 10-hour battery life constant.

The iPad 2 is a significantly improved version of a product that was already excellent. As it usually does, Apple figured out precisely which details needed the most attention, leaving out features that wouldn’t make as much difference. Beyond that, now Apple wields its buying clout — its ability to leverage economies of scale and make expensive items cheaper. That’s going to make this product hard to beat. Apple has topped itself. The difference between the iPad 1 and iPad 2 is not subtle. However, the factors that made the original the most popular consumer electronics device in history are amplified in this new version. Let’s call it the “wow” factor — which Apple has nailed once again.