The guts of the new iPad
The folks from iFixit were first in line in Melbourne, Australia to get one of the new iPads. And then they immediately took it apart. Here’s what it looks like, all broken down like a hog:
Amazingly, there’s almost nothing to it…it’s mostly battery and screen. My kids have toys that contain more components. Makes you realize that a not-insignificant part of Apple’s success is essentially 3-D puzzle solving with chips, batteries, screens, and antennas as the pieces. John Gruber calls it “a remarkable engineering accomplishment” on the part of Apple, noting:
Apple doesn’t make new devices which get worse battery life than the version they’re replacing, but they also don’t make new devices that are thicker and heavier. LTE networking — and, I strongly suspect, the retina display — consume more power than do the 3G networking and non-retina display of the iPad 2. A three-way tug-of-war: 4G/LTE networking, battery life, thinness/weight. Something had to give. Thinness and weight lost: the iPad 3 gets 4G/LTE, battery life remains unchanged, and to achieve both of these Apple included a physically bigger battery, which in turn results in a new iPad that is slightly thicker (0.6 mm) and heavier (roughly 0.1 pounds/50 grams, depending on the model).
50 grams and six-tenths of a millimeter are minor compromises, but compromises they are, and they betray Apple’s priorities: better to make the iPad slightly thicker and heavier than have battery life slightly suffer. And keep in mind that the new iPad 3 remains far thinner and lighter than the original iPad.
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