Apple's iPad versions of its iLife and iWork apps will be up to five times as large as their predecessors due to the ultra-high resolution of the new iPad. Vietnamese site Tinhte has spent some time with the new iPad and made an interesting observation on app sizes:

"The applications developed by Apple have been upgraded to support the Retina Display. For example Keynote was previously only 115MB but its latest version is 327MB. Numbers is up from 109MB to 283MB, Pages moves from 95MB to 269MB, and iMovie from 70MB to 404MB." (Translated from Vietnamese)

While some of the apps have received additional features, it seems likely that the increase in size is mainly down to the huge graphics needed to fill the new iPad's 2048 x 1536 Retina Display. It's worth remembering that these are only download sizes, and once installed the apps may be even larger. Regular apps will likely receive a similar bump in size once developers update them with hi-def graphics. Along with iPhoto for iOS's ability to handle nineteen-megapixel images and the iPad's new five-megapixel camera, it seems like space will be at more of a premium than before, and the 16GB iPad in particular is looking short on local storage. As Apple doesn't fragment its releases, instead relying on unified apps, the bump in size will also hit owners of the iPad and iPad 2, as they'll have to store the unused Retina graphics. Evidence of this increase can be found in the latest Tweetbot update, which increases the app's size from 9.8MB to 25MB. Tinhte has also released a number of sample images taken with the new iPad's rear-facing camera, and they look up to scratch with those produced by the iPhone 4 — that's to say, much better than any tablet camera we've ever seen. We'll find out for ourselves in less than 48 hours (March 16th, 8AM, to be precise).

Let's be clear: the new iPad is in a class by itself, just as its predecessor was. As the latest product in a lineage of devices that defined this category, the iPad continues to stand head and shoulders above the competition. With the addition of the Retina display, LTE, more memory, and a more powerful CPU, Apple has absolutely held onto the iPad's market position as the dominant player and product to beat.

iTunes 1080p Content Comes Close to Blu-ray Quality, But Can't Quite Match
Wednesday March 14, 2012 9:45 am PDT by Eric Slivka
Last week, we took a look at the compression being employed by Apple with its new 1080p content on the iTunes Store, a feature that has allowed Apple to increase file sizes by only 15-25% compared to 720p even as the number of pixels have more than doubled. A number of commenters were interested in seeing how 1080p iTunes content compares to Blu-ray, and Ars Technica has now returned with a new analysis looking at the relative quality of those two sources.


Comparison of color and detail in iTunes 1080p (left) and Blu-ray (right) formats

The report offers a number of blown-up comparison shots, finding that the iTunes Store content generally compares fairly well to Blu-ray content, although it does struggle a bit more with bright highlights, scenes with high detail and noise levels, and dark gradients.

Comparison of dark gradient handling in iTunes 1080p (top) and Blu-ray (bottom)
(Brightness enhanced for clearer demonstration)

Apple's move to 1080p video content in the iTunes Store is part of a significant shift to higher-resolution offerings, pairing the new new content with movie support for iTunes in the Cloud and new 1080p hardware in the new iPad and Apple TV set to debut on Friday.

"AT&T’s LTE network in San Francisco was impressive." with 14.5Mbps/20.6Mbps download and upload rates.

We've just confirmed that although the new iPad has incredibly fast download and upload speeds over LTE, FaceTime video chat still won't work directly on the 4G network. As you can see in the positively vexing screenshot above, attempting to initiate a FaceTime call over LTE fails out with a message exhorting you to connect to a Wi-Fi network.

it's doubly frustrating as Verizon's LTE plans for the new iPad include Wi-Fi hotspot functionality at no extra cost. In other words, you could easily initiate a Wi-Fi hotspot from your new Verizon LTE iPad and use it to successfully make a FaceTime call from an iPhone — likely with little to no degradation in video quality as compared to a Wi-Fi connection, since LTE is so fast. More to the point, using the device as a Wi-Fi hotspot seems just as likely to rack up data as a FaceTime call, which has been estimated to use around 3MB per minute.