Apple Announces the iPad 2

New Product

Yesterday Apple announced the imminent arrival of the new iPad 2, scheduled to commence selling at 5.00pm on the 11th March in US Apple stores. A successor to the much hailed original iPad which, when released in April 2010, brought about a paradigm shift in the world of portable computing. Pad devices seem the de rigueur device at present, with seemingly almost every computer manufacturer and then some releasing iPad clones, albeit most running Google’s free and much heralded Android operating system.
It’s is with no doubt then, that the industry must have waited for yesterdays announcement with bated breath to see how far Apple has moved the goal posts. Well, if you listen hard, you can probably hear the Apple iPad competitors let out a huge sigh of relief, as the shift is not that far.

New Specifications

The new iPad is 33% thinner, 15% lighter, comes in a white version as well as the previous black, and has front and rear cameras for Apples FaceTime face to face video calling. Apart from being thinner, It’s the same dimensions however and features the same 9.7-inch LED display and bezel. It does feature a much faster, dual core A5 processor providing Apple say, 9 times faster graphics, and enhanced video processing but still allowing 10 hours battery time. Rather disappointingly it does not come with any increased RAM capacity, with the choice remaining at 16gb, 32gb and 64gb as before. Sadly their are no change to the ports either, still no USB connection or SD card slot. although it does appear the Screen Rotation lock button may be re-enabled after all the fuss when it’s functionality was changed to a mute switch as part of the iOS 4.2 software upgrade.  Apple plan to release a rather nifty Smart Cover which attaches magnetically, wakes up your iPad when opened and even folds back to make a stand; it does however, cost $39, so you can guess it will be near £39 for us Brits. The price of the iPad 2 in the US will remain the same as the original iPad so hopefully the same will hold true when the iPad 2 goes on sale within the UK.

For Photographers

If you’d thought the iPad has no use for the budding photographer, then you’d be wrong. It makes an ideal back-up device in the field and is an ideal RAW file viewer, which clearly put devices like the now defunct Epson P-4000 Multimedia storage view and all alike to some considerable shame. If you’re in any doubt of this please read Doug Chimney's excellent article on The iPad for Photographers here. Doug uses his on all his workshops.
There are already many good photography Apps for the iPad, such as the Photographers Ephemeris, Golden Hour, and several Depth of Field calculators, and some great eBooks from Craft&Vision. However, the vast majority of so-called photography Apps currently available for download , have to be said, tend to be on the gimmicky side. Apple had pre-announced that they would be developing a high-end photography App for the iPad 2 and with the much faster graphics processor on-board this does give significant scope now for developers. Sadly, all Apple announced yesterday was an enhanced version of the fun, comic App, Photo Booth, so hopefully that wasn’t it and we can look forward to seeing some high-end RAW file processors making their way onto the iPad 2 in the near future.

Upgrade or Not?

I love my iPad. It’s a terrific little device, and one I use more than ever for internet browsing and reading, as well as music, movies and videos. It’s great for travel especially if you spend as much time on long haul flights as I do. I have all my PDF camera manuals and many photography eBooks on mine. I also use it for business and note taking.
Will I upgrade. I doubt it. FaceTime may be a big thing for many, but has no appeal for me, and it remains to be seen how good the camera is. More processing power is always welcome, but until I see some Apps using that, then I think many may wait. What I really was hankering after didn’t happen, increased RAM options, and the ability to add memory via an SD or micro SD card. I guess I’ll just have to see what the iPad 3 will bring?

Online Resources

• Apple iPad 2 Technical Specifications
• Apple iPad 2 unveiled by Steve Jobs
• First looks video from Rory Cellan-Jones at the BBC

Back up Devices - The Drobo

I can't stress the importance of backing up your data and image files as in the past I've been guilty of not doing this on a regular enough basis, and I have almost paid the price. I went for years without any hard drive failures at all, and was lured into the false sense of security that these devices were almost infallible. However, in the last year I've had 4 hard drives fail, and these were not some cheap makes either. I've had 2 external hard drive system crater, a 320 GB LaCie drive and a Western Digital 1.0 TB MyBook. Recently I've had a relatively new Seagate Barracuda fail in my Desktop and I lost my whole system. The makers replaced this under warranty but it left me without my main PC for some time and a further several days re-installing all my software. On top of that a hard drive failed in a Toshiba Satellite notebook at work. All this has made me totally rethink my back up strategy and change my set up.
External hard drives seem relatively cheap these days and present a very attractive option for back up and storage, with 1.0 TB drives selling for as little as £80 here in the UK and $100 in the US,. Having 3 such devices had worked fine for me for quite some time. However the recent problems and having over a Terabyte of image files and growing, a major reassessment was due. I looked at various RAID arrays, NAS units and even Home servers as options, but all seemed overly complicated. I wanted something I could just plug in and my photo's would be protected, irrespective of drive problems. Then I found the Drobo.

Made by Data Robotics Inc., the Drobo is a sleek, black, metal housing (smaller than a shoebox), that holds up to 4 Sata hard drives that you can simply slide straight in by removing the magnetically held cover on the front. Not only does it look cool, you can mix and match drives and capacities and all your data is protected even if a hard drive fails. It even warns you if a drive is having problems and needs replacing. Run out of capacity; simply pull out a drive and add a larger one. When I first saw these I thought yes, that's exactly what I need, then I saw the price, over £500 in the UK and that was without any drives. Well some time has passed since then and Drobo version 2 is out which supports firewire 400/800 as well as USB 2.0. The good news is that they are easily available in the UK and prices have fallen significantly. There are still not cheap min you, but with the fall in HD prices and my recent problems I bit the bullet and order one.

I'm not going to give a review of the Drobo here; there are plenty of other sites you can google that present in-depth reviews and all the technical details. Suffice to say, I've been living with my Drobo for a few months now and it has performed flawlessly. It's so simple to set up, just turn on and add the drives. I have mine populated with a few Samsung Spinpoint 1.5TD Eco Green drives and 0.5 TB drive I rescued from the remains of 1.0 TB WD MyBook that failed. It comes with a simple but adequate back up program, and Drobo dashboard, a small footprint, memory resident program, that monitors the Drobo and your drive space. I have my Drobo configured as one single 16 TB drive (the maximum), which is what Windows Vista sees the drive as, although I don't have anywhere near 16 TB installed. Hence I can add more drives when I need more space. It's that simple.

I wonder why nobody has come up with a system like this before, it's simplicity itself. Now wouldn't it be great if all PC's had this built in. Just think, no more opening up the PC cases, installing additional drives, fiddling around with small screws and cables, formatting. You could just open a door and slide in another drive....now there's a thought.

If you a professional photographer, or have loads of images and/or data files, then this could be the device for you. There are much faster devices out there, but this is no slouch either. It certainly gets my recommendation.