A few notes on the iPad 2, based on reading the tech specs thoroughly, and observing some videos frame-by-frame:
- The iPad 2 is much faster, and has much better graphics processing, than the original. Many apps won't benefit too much from the dual-core A5, though, until their developers redesign some aspect of their Apps.
- The iPad 2 will pass through Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound, using the Apple Digital AV Adapter.
- The iPad 2 likely has more RAM. I'm guessing a modest bump to 512 MB—waiting to hear more on this front, though. This will help when you're opening multiple windows in Safari, multitasking, etc.
- You can still only record one channel through the headphone/TRRS jack (see more: Microphone and line-level inputs on the iPad), and the Apogee Jam (featured in the iPad intro video—it's a guitar input for Mac/iOS devices) only supports one channel through the Dock :-(
- It seems Apple is using the accelerometer + gyro to sense how hard you hit drums and keys in the Garageband instruments interface (see iPad intro video). The screen can't detect pressure by itself (unless I'm missing something). This is a cool idea for devs to take and run with.
- The cameras on the iPad are the same cameras as those found on the iPod touch - maximum 1280x720 HD rear camera (720p), and maximum 640x480 VGA front camera (good enough for fun/facetime, definitely not as good as iPhone rear camera).
- iMovie and GarageBand will work, but not very well, on the original iPad (probably due to RAM/processor disadvantage).
Any other interesting tidbits or surprises I'm missing?