Citing an unconfirmed report in a Chinese newspaper, Digitimes has had the stone guff to whisper into our supple ears a list of five possible features the iPad 2 may or may not possess. The list is shakey at best, but sensible, and includes thinner glass, for mobility, a Retina display, video chat (meaning FaceTime (meaning cameras)), a 3-axis gyroscope, and – get this – a USB port.
On the whole, most of these features are a pretty good bet, I’d say. The only reason the iPad 1 doesn’t have a camera was so they could make money this time out, and a large-as-hell Retina display is also likely in the cards in the wake of the iPhone 4. But a USB port? As totally rad as that would be, that seems enormously out of character for Steve. I guess we’ll see. Connecting all manner of battery-draining devices to a tablet is for defs on my to do list.
From one generation of hardware to another, Apple is not known for wholesale changes, like adding a raft of new ports, huge increases in capacity, if any, and lots of new features in a software refresh, they just don’t do it, it’s glacial. Compare one version of iOS with the next and you would be hard pressed to see any difference, but compare one version with one 3 revs out and you will see a bigger difference.
I would expect a new iPad to have a rear-facing camera only, and it will only take pictures, not video. A software update 6-9 months later will add video function to the camera, and maybe next year a front-facing camera will be added, with only still-photo capability, and video to be added 8 months later. This is pretty much what they have done with the iPhone.