The rumors were ramped and Apple confirmed what everyone was speculating: a new iPad and Apple TV. The only thing the rumor mill got wrong was the name of the third-generating iPad; rumor mill had iPad HD, Apple calls it the new iPad.
Besides the name dispute, the iPad refresh comes with a extremely better camera, new graphics engine on the same processor and 4G LTE.
Apple started the announcement ceremonies with a new version of Apple TV, complete with: full 1080p high-definition resolution, HD movies and TV shows in iTunes, HD versions of Netflix, Flickr and Vimeo, iCloud integration and the same $99 price as the current model. Notability missing from Apple TV is YouTube in HD; in fact, Google wasn’t even mentioned once during the keynote presentation.
The new version of Apple TV will be available on March 16.
While improvements to Apple TV are nice, the real announcement was for the third-generation iPad (Apple dubs it the “new” iPad). The announcement included a wide-range of elements in the iPad 3: from the surprised (4G LTE, new graphic processor) to the expected (updated camera and retina display) to the puzzled (same price as previous models) to the dissatisfied (no quad-core processor).
Apple also had several of its’ own apps updated (iMovie, iWorks, GarageBand) and introduced new ones (iPhotos).
The updated apps should be available now and the “new” iPad will be available on March 16.