Apple's iPad (AAPL) Makes Nice Leap Forward

There was a somewhat tempered outlook on the release of the iPad 2 by Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), and even though its release was highly anticipated, the unveiling was largely in line with expectations, and it did make a nice jump forward in quality, even it was was more incremental, with nothing exactly screaming at you.

While the announcement wasn’t a game-changer, I think we have become jaded to a degree when it comes to some of the incremental improvements to Apple products. In this case, the ability to increase speed dramatically and add two cameras and various other new bells and whistles to the operating system while decreasing the thickness of the device by one-third is pretty remarkable.

Much of the credit goes to its proprietary A5 chip produced by Apple’s “chip wizards,” as Jobs refers to his semiconductor engineers. These enhancements were achieved without decreasing battery life and increasing the price. As the WSJ and others have noted, Apple’s lower production cost, superior retail channel and aggressive pricing seems to be its biggest competitive advantage.

I held the iPad2 in one hand and my own personal 1.0 iPad in the other, and the difference in weight was certainly noticeable. Certainly, the version 1.0 black cases are also heavier than the new “smart covers” held by magnets.

Will it change your life? Hardly. But from an engineering standpoint, and you can ask any smartphone engineer about this, adding considerably more functionality while decreasing the overall real estate footprint is a very impressive accomplishment.

Apple closed Wednesday at $352.12, up $2.81, or 0.80 percent.





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