[/caption]One of the weirdest tech rumors/theories I can remember hearing recently (and prominently being publicized by Leo Laporte of TWiT of all people) is that the iPad 3 will come out in September or November of this year. First of all, it's not Apple's style, they usually change models once a year at most. There's another, possibly more important reason why this is highly unlikely.
It's become lost in the success of the iPhone's eventual success, but it started slow enough at first that 9 weeks after launch (at the time of the iPod Touch launch), they dropped the 4GB model and dropped the price of the 8GB model. The early adopters were outraged and Apple ended up refunding them the difference. At the time, many decried the early adopters who complained as whiners because...well, they're early adopters and you have to expect such things, even though a company like Apple dropping a price so much so soon was unprecedented. At any rate, it was a huge backlash and a close enough example that between that and Apple's usual product cycle, I can't see the 3rd generation iPad coming out for about a year.
Oh, but some people are saying that the iPad 2 is not enough of an upgrade. Really? They upgraded it to a dual core CPU, presumably at least doubled the RAM, and beefed up the GPU a lot. They included the expected cameras. They even put a fingerprint-resistant coating on the screen, which has gotten a surprisingly small amount of media coverage after all of the complaints about the original being a fingerprint magnet. It'll be my first tablet and I'm looking forward to picking it up.
