Analysts are confident that Apple’s price will go further than that, possibly making it the highest valued company in the history of the Market

Force = Mass x Acceleration

The new Retina Display will make text, photos, and pretty much everything look mega-fantastic when compared to your old iPad, your Samsung tablet, reality, and more. It packs more pixels than your fancy-pants flatscreen TV in your living room. I’ll hold off on further hyperbole until I actually see one in the wild and get a chance to use it.

Without getting too deep into tech specs, the new iPad is faster, so even non-tech savvy users would notice a speed bump from the revamped innards. The iPad’s new rear camera matches that of the iPhone 4′s 5 megapixel sensor. Those grainy photos you shot using your iPad 2 will now look MUCH better thanks to the new sensor, IR filter, autofocus and white balance, and face detection. You can also record video in 1080p with stabilization and noise reduction, but you will still look silly holding up a giant shiny piece of glass during your child’s school function or recital. Hey, Apple can’t fix everything…

One of the most intriguing moments of the announcement was the iPad’s new Voice Dictation feature, which will be wonderful for people like doctors, reporters, and teachers. Strangely enough they are not calling this feature Siri, but I can guarantee they’ve implemented the same amazing voice recognition technology they’ve got. I use this all the time with my iPhone 4S and think that it will continue to spoil me for years to come. The new iPad now supports 4G LTE. What does this mean to average users? Fast data connection (where supported). Okay. So you want me to get a bit technical? As Phil Schiller stated in the keynote “Now the new iPad supports HSPA+ for up to 21Mbps, and if you havenít heard about dual-carrier HSDPA for up to 42Mbps.” You got that? Good. Moving on.

Pricing starts at $499, which is refreshing to note that some of the rumors last week were speculating that it could be as much as $80 higher than the standard $499 introductory price. Get yours as wi-fi only, or compatible with AT&T and Verizon’s 3G and 4G LTE networks. Pre-orders begin today, with availability beginning on March 16. It’s interesting to note that along with all of these amazing improvements, Apple is still advertising the same 10 hours of battery life for wi-fi models. 4G only knocks your battery life down one hour.

Finally, I believe the real magic today, much like last year’s announcement, was in Apple’s software announcements. The real show stealer for me is iPhoto, one of my favorite apps for the Mac, is now available on the iPad for just $4.99. Coincidentally, right before today’s announcement, I ran into an old friend who tells me, “I can’t stand Apple. They make things too easy for everybody.” It’s quite the contrary, and this is why Apple is continuing to rack up win after win after win. Technology and its creative applications must be accessible to all. But more on that later…

So in a few hours, Tim Cook and Company will take the stage and demo some amazing features of the new iPad, yet some skeptics will be unfazed. That’s fine, as I don’t view these people as targets in need of converting to the Way of Apple. But ever since getting an iPad 2 and an iPhone 4S, I’ve enjoyed using these tools while thinking, “We live in the future, and it’s really cool!”

Regardless, with each and every announcement, Apple changes something, big or small, that adds value to the way I work productively and creatively, and that’s why I keep coming back.

In the meantime, Zhou Xiao Ying carves another aluminium Apple into the back of another iPad casing, lets her mind wander to her two sons and whether they can ever afford to live in the same city.

I pull out my own iPad to show her a few pictures of my kid and America and her eyes light up when she touches the screen to swipe another photo into view. She’s never seen a working iPad up close before.

“For all the people in America who buy one of these, what do you want them to know about you?” I ask.

“I want them to know me,” she says. “I want them to know we put a lot of effort in this product so when they use this please use it with care.”

Then she goes back to work.

A Trip to the iFactory

I love the irony that the facility housing iCloud will be solar powered. Does this mean it’s time to start blaming Siri outages on rainy days? “Siri, what’s the weather like in Maiden, North Carolina?”

It seems ironically unfortunate that my last post here was when Steve Jobs resigned on August 24, 2011, and sadly the time has come to properly eulogize a man respected by so many.

My own experience with Apple goes as far back as 1987, when my parents brought home a fully loaded Apple IIgs. As a kindergartener, my first experiences with computers involved mousing around in Apple Paint and slowly typing out letters to my grandparents using AppleWorks 1.0, then passing them off to an Apple ImageWriter that I liked to nod rhythmically with while it spit out dot matrix text and images. A few years later I used my first Macintosh at a friend’s house, remembering vividly being shown a bitmapped recreation of the famous silhouetted image of the band Queen, painstakingly drawn by my best friend’s older brother. “Wow,” I thought to myself, “this is something I have to have.” Steve Jobs was not on my radar until many years later.

Fast forward to 1995: my family had just purchased a new Power Macintosh 6400 and a modem. The Mac was by my side the first time I got online. I even remember late nights when I would sneak into my family’s home office while my parents slept and I would muffle the obnoxious modem with a pillow while it went through handshaking with the world. I spent hours surfing the net, mostly fascinated by the Mac itself as I learned how to break it, resurrect it, tweak it, and make it my own. These are some of my most cherished memories of my early teen years. But then things got better. Enter Steve Jobs.

The internet was abuzz that the man was back! But who was he? I took the time to learn about him creating the Macintosh in 1984, only to be fired and forced into exile years later. And now Steve’s new company, NeXT, was being purchased by Apple in hopes to save the company. By this point I was completely hooked, enamored by the company teetering on the edge of failure, and even more eager to learn more about the man tasked with saving it. And to think all it took was a tiny blue and bulbous machine known as the iMac.

Four iMacs later, two PowerBooks, and plus an uncountable number of iPods, I began to live Apple. I imagine I would frustrate my friends when we would get together as the majority of what I wanted to talk about were innovations spearheaded by Apple and most notably Steve Jobs. They flattered me, let me continue on, and I even convinced a handful of people to purchase their first Macs. It was always a joy to see them finally appreciate things on the same level, letting the technology step aside enough so that they could accomplish tasks as human beings, and not end up in a game of tug-of-war with the machine. This is the essence of Steve Jobs’ aim when he created the products he loved so much at Apple.

Today as an adult and most especially a father, I am grateful to Steve Jobs for his vision and desire to shape our world. I help our children with their homework using their iMac. My youngest son could operate an iPod Touch shy of his 2nd birthday and loves learning on my iPad. I continue to be amazed and grateful knowing that new friends and ideas are just the press of a button away, let alone waiting for us in the pockets of our pants. Thank you, Steve, for being such a brilliant visionary, as I am grateful to have walked the earth during the best years of your life. Our paths may have never crossed, but you’ve always felt like a friend. The world is an insanely great place because of your contributions and this brief essay is but a small tribute to your life and a thank you to your family. You will be missed.

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Soon, I think I should reflect on my favorite times of tinkering with the computer when I was in middle school. Come to think of it, before I had a job and a family, I used to have a lot of fun computing. Now it’s just something to get work done!