After the excitement of the iPhone 5S introduction, tomorrow is the iPad’s turn. The Apple event will take place at 6 pm London time and will major on iPads. Rumours say there will be a new full-size tablet which will be thinner and lighter than the current model. It could also benefit from a slightly smaller footprint because of the move to narrower bezels trialed in last year’s iPad mini. We can expect new colours, including gold which has proved to be a major attraction on the iPhone.
The mini is also due for a facelift and everone expects it will gain a retina screen. This will be a very welcome improvement, especially if it is combined with a boost in performance. I am also looking for 4G capabilities on all UK networks. At the moment the iPads will run 4G on EE but not on other networks such as Vodafone.
Another big improvement would be Touch ID. I absolutely love this instant-access feature on my new iPhone 5S and I have not experienced the hit-and-miss difficulties others have reported. So far the fingerprint system has worked well with only the occasional misfinger.
Outside the iPad sphere there will be news on OS X Mavericks with the very strong possibility that it will be made available either tomorrow or within a week or two. There should also be news on the availability of the new Mac Pro and, probably, some updates to the MacBook Pro range.
I am certainly in the market for a retina iPad mini but I will be disappointed if Touch ID is delayed. Once you get used to it on the iPhone it is increasinly frustrating to have to keep entering a passcode on the iPad. I will probably upgrade in any case because I need to be able to run Vodafone 4G. At the moment, although I have a dual-SIM contract with Vodafone, I am continuing with EE on the iPad. It would be good to be able to cancel EE and use the one Voda account over two devices, especially now I’ve taken up their offer of 8GB of data for the price of 4GB for the next twelve months.