Apple wants the old iPads gone. If you don’t care about thinner/faster/cameras in the new iPad 2, Apple’s currently knocked £100 off of the price of every existing tablet on the UK Apple Store. This means prices range from £329 for the 16GB Wi-Fi model through to £579 for the 64GB Wi-Fi + 3G version.

Refurbs are also affected, meaning you can—at the time of writing—grab a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad for £289. Quite a bargain.

Or you could pre-order a Xoom for £599 from Carphone Warehouse, obv.

Over at The Guardian, Jemima Kiss thinks Apple at its iPad event yesterday wheeled out Steve Jobs to distract from the fact that the iPad 2 (thinner, lighter, two cameras, twice as fast, nine times better graphics, new creative apps) was a load of rubbish:

It’s not hard to read Steve Jobs’ surprise appearance at Wednesday’s iPad 2 unveiling as a mark of desperation. Is Apple so in need of a boost to its share price that it needed to haul Jobs out of medical leave?

Clearly, she’s right. After all, it’s pretty rare for Jobs to front an Apple event. NO, WAIT! And, yeah, mark of desperation—for anyone not expecting digital unicorns, the iPad 2 ticked all of the boxes. But Kiss wanted her horny horses.

But was his appearance designed to distract us from an underwhelming launch? His introduction seemed to try even harder than usual to build up Apple and to knock its rivals – from ebook and app download numbers to dismissing the competition’s attempts at tablets.

Because, gosh, Apple’s rivals haven’t been doing similar, and it’s not like the tech press would EVER report on bullshit spewed out from Apple’s competition regarding tablets. Quick tip: sometimes you have to fight back. Sometimes you can’t rise above. Apple was merely stating some pretty blunt facts about the current state of the market.

Anyway, UNICORNS!

What were we left with after that? A faster processor, a dual-core A5 chip, that will mean it can operate twice as fast and render graphics up to nine times faster.

Yeah, you tell them. No Retina! No USB! NO DAMN UNICORNS! Unremarkable, really, unless you care about performance and graphics, like anyone using creative apps such as the new iMovie and GarageBand for iPad that Apple revealed, and which Kiss seemed to not see, presumably because she was by that point smashing her keyboard with fury, yelling I WANTED A UNICORN, DAMMIT!

A less logical rear-facing camera – who’s going to use the iPad to shoot anything?

Man, if only Apple had demoed some kind of movie-editing software for iPad, like iMovie, and said it would be released on to the App Store alongside the iPad 2. Then that camera would have somehow made sense! What idiots those Apple guys are!

Those improvements could all have been made to the original iPad, though you can’t count a black and white version as an improvement. Lighter, thinner, maybe. Is there really much incentive to buy an iPad 2?

If you’re one of the people with an iPad, maybe not (although, on a rough count, about half the people I know who have an iPad want to upgrade to the iPad 2); but, Ms. Kiss, it might have escaped your attention that while Apple did quite well in selling iPads over the past nine months, it didn’t quite sell 6.7 billion of them. Therefore, there might just be a market that Apple can target with its new device. And thinner/newer/better is a stronger marketing tactic than ‘a year old’.

Steve Jobs’ appearance undermined Apple’s obligation to cultivate a new public face of Apple, apparently for the short-term benefit of a stock-price boost. Long term, that’s succeeded in keeping the succession the main story.

This is true, because at recent Apple events, Jobs has been furiously protective of his space, never showing that Apple’s a company that has many people working hard to make it a success. Stupidly, he never lets anyone else share the stage. Well, apart from Tim Cook. And Scott Forstall. Oh, and Phil Schiller. And Randy Ubillos. And Xander Soren. And Jon Ive. And Craig Federighi. And Bob Mansfield.

Apart from those guys, it’s always all about Steve ‘quick, distract everyone from the substandard updates’ Jobs, the sneaky territorial bastard.

Oh, David Goldman of CNN Money, haven’t you been listening? The iPad is actually doing quite well, grabbing 93 per cent of the market. While it’d be nice if the iPad 2 was unicorn-powered, all Apple really needs to do today is provide a nice upgrade that shoves in a bit of extra clout and some cameras. That alone will see the iPad 2 fly off the shelves, right?

GOLDMAN SAYS NO. In fact, Goldman says some very odd things:

The good and the bad news for Apple is that the year-old iPad still rates highly among even its newest rivals.

That’s good news, because Apple should again have the best-in-its-class tablet if the iPad 2 is as improved as the rumors say it will be.

But that’s also bad news: How much thinner, lighter, faster, better — and perhaps most importantly, cheaper — can the iPad get? Did Apple shoot itself in the foot by making its first generation tablet too good?

Yes, because the one thing people thought when they got an iPad was “man, if only this product was worse”. And iPad-owners thinking about an iPad 2 today are all complaining: “I would have upgraded, if only Apple had made the original iPad complete shit”.

The only people wishing Apple had made the original iPad worse are important figures working for Apple’s rivals.

But, luckily, there’s one way Apple can win this game, thinks Goldman:

Tim Cook, Phil Schiller or whichever Apple executive introduces the iPad 2 will need to offer some impressive specs, lest Apple fans walk away disappointed.

After all, it’s not like the competition tries to differentiate itself by wanking itself into a frenzy over spec lists, rather than, say, what you can actually do with your device. here’s hoping Goldman realises that, eh?

Rival tablets have front- and rear-facing cameras,

Phew!

[…] dual-core processors, four times as much RAM as the iPad, HDMI output and Adobe Flash support.

Oh.

And:

If that’s all Apple does, its fans will probably be unimpressed. Apple may need to have something “magical” up its sleeve, as Jobs likes to say, to wow its potential customers.

NO UNICORN? I’M LEAVING!

To be fair to Goldman (it’s sunny, so I’m in a good mood), he’s right on that last thing. Apple ‘fans’ typically have insane expectations, driven by the rumour mill. However, Apple doesn’t need a checklist of specs that somehow ‘better’ its rivals on paper—it simply needs to stay ahead where things really matter: usability, apps, quality.

Gary Marshall on TechRadar:

Make no mistake, the iPad 2 we see tomorrow will be a disappointment. But it won’t be a disappointment because it’s a bad device, or because it doesn’t take the iPad forward.

It will be a disappointment because it isn’t the entirely imaginary device the internet has been happily inventing for the last few months.

Apple watchers have been playing a game of “my dad’s bigger than your dad”, with iPads instead of dads. “My iPad 2 will have a retina display!” “Well, my iPad 2 will have an eight-core processor!” “That’s nothing! my iPad 2 will be made of carbon fibre and angel skin, and it will have an attachment that gets stones out of horses’ hooves!”

Since the Sunday Times claimed Jonathan Ive is about to quit Apple, the tech press has gone into OMG APPLE DOOMED mode again, and the Guardian’s Apple’s worst nightmare: Is Jonathan Ive to leave? headline sums things up pretty well.

To answer that particular question: no. Ive is a good designer who’s worked on some iconic products, but he’s not irreplaceable. There are other great, visionary designers in the world. The Guardian article also echoes a commonplace sentiment:

Surely Apple’s board, though they must be desperate to retain Ive, would find it in their interest to allow flexible working in this instance?

Suggestions that Ive should get ‘flexible working conditions’—when the report suggests he’s going to move back to the UK—are ludicrous. Industrial design for an industry giant isn’t something you can work remotely on. Ive can’t just check in now and again via Skype, fling over some ideas via email and pop over to Cupertino every month or so. A designer of his seniority needs to be there, available to see how things are progressing, leading teams, utterly in the mix.

The article also notes one of the most bonkers rumoured points of contention:

There was no hint in Apple’s recent annual meeting that Ive’s position was in doubt in any way, but also no suggestion that it might be Ive rather than current acting chief executive Tim Cook who might replace Jobs permanently.

Gosh, I wonder if that’s because Ive doesn’t have any experience at running an Apple-sized business, unlike, say, Tim Cook, who’s done the job ably already, and continues to do so?

Personally, I hope the Sunday Times is talking bollocks (and, frankly, it wouldn’t be the first time), because Apple with Ive is likely better than Apple without Ive. But if Ive did decide to leave, it wouldn’t be the end of Apple, and nor would it be a case of Apple somehow being unfair and inflexible regarding an employee’s demands.