iMore has a great chart, pitting the Galaxy Note 10.1 against the new iPad. Samsung lists seven comparative features and then finishes off with four extra things that the iPad doesn’t do. On closer inspection, though, here’s what the list boils down to:

• If apps are optimised for simultaneous viewing, you can view two apps side-by-side on the Galaxy Note
• If iPad owners don’t buy a stylus, they won’t be able to “write as you would with pen/pencil and paper” nor precisely write/draw/edit photos.
• *I wish I was using a PC sadface*

That sound you hear is loads of people who’ve just ordered the new iPad not giving a flying shit, instead looking forward to their new tablet that will have:

• A Retina display
• Loads of apps that are actually worth a damn
• A workflow entirely divorced from PCs

Hat tip: Ben Brooks.

Apple had a major iOS event yesterday, the first since Steve Jobs passed away. According to VentureBeat’s Jolie O’Dell, it showed a brand unravelling. And there was me going “oooh, new iPad”. What a fool I am, right, Jolie O’Dell?

While today’s Apple event unveiled a couple new improvements to an expected lineup of products, it also revealed a certain sloppiness that was absent from former, Steve Jobs-led launches.

A couple of new improvements, if you’re not being sloppy while writing about Apple being sloppy.

This wasn’t anything major, just a few minor but glaring inconsistencies: Tim Cook going for the “rumpled executive” look in an untucked shirt,

Tim! Don’t be yourself! Wear the same as Steve did, you you will unravel the brand! Aieee!

the ambiguous naming of the “new iPad,” (not iPad 3 or iPad HD),

That would never have happened under Steve Jobs. Well, apart from the iPod touch. And the Apple TV. And the iMac. And the MacBook. And a bunch of other Apple products. But ignoring all those, the brand is unravelling! Aieee!

the use of a truly horrible pun on a new product’s landing page,

Something that Apple would never have done under Steve Jobs and his watchful glare. Well, apart from calling the iPod touch the ‘funnest iPod ever’. And mangling grammar with ‘think different’. And myriad other awful puns that peppered Apple’s press releases and website since Steve Jobs returned to Apple in the 1990s.  But ignoring all those, the brand is unravelling! Aieee!

and finally, the tie-dyed Apple logo at the presentation’s conclusion.

Blue Dalmatian iMac. Flower Power iMac. Remember those? They were approved by—drumroll—Steve Jobs! That said, what was wrong with the logo? It was relevant for the event and also a nice nod to the striped one designed by Rob Janoff.These are not the kinds of things I normally care about. They have nothing to do with hardware and nothing to do with technology.

Apple’s ethos is about so much more than hardware and technology: It’s supposed to be, as this outsider sees it, about aspiration, dreams, desires, the future, even Utopia. In a word, it’s only 30 percent about the tech and 70 percent about the branding.

That’s right! Let’s ignore the technology, because that’s irrelevant. Let’s instead concentrate on Tim Cook’s shirt. Let’s ignore the details of what Apple unveiled (a spiffy new iPad, say) and suggest APPLE IS DOOMED because of… a colourful Apple logo.

I think today’s Apple event shows that perfectionism fraying a bit around the edges. The bad pun, the goofy logo, the weird product name — all of it pointed to a leadership that either didn’t understand or didn’t care about consistency in iconography.

All of it pointed to a leadership that was pretty much going for ‘business as usual’. There are things I see in Apple now that are different. For example, I was surprised to see Apple go with LTE when it’s fragmented and not available in many countries. But consistency in iconography? Really?

[…] nomenclature was consistent enough to become one of the most hotly speculated-about features of any launch. Would it be called the iPhone 2? The iTablet? The iPhone 5 or the 4S? The 4SG? Think about how little anyone cares about the name of HTC’s next smartphone or Google’s next bit of software, and you’ll see how important that one small detail of nomenclature was to Apple’s iconic position in the world of tech and consumer brands.

Think about the shitstorm that ensued when Apple went for iPhone 4S instead of iPhone 5. For half of the world’s tech pundits, it was like the world had ended. Ultimately, names do matter, but when you’re creating an iconic product, do version numbers matter any more? To suggest that Apple gave no thought to renaming its tablet ‘iPad’ is absurd, especially if it’s going to continue with an annual refresh. Imagine the product line continues a decade into the future—is ‘iPad 12’ going to look like a great thing, or would people just be saying “enough already”, like they do today with software upgrades?

Today’s event and the tiny but glaring inconsistencies bring up the impossible-to-answer question: Would Steve have green-lit that?

I think he would. But, more importantly, one of the things Steve Jobs reportedly told his team was that they should do what they think is right, not second-guess him. If Apple suddenly nose-dives because of a colourful logo or untucked shirt, fair enough. I’ll phone up Jolie O’Dell and ask for advice on lottery numbers. But here’s the thing: I don’t think it’s going to.

Summing up Apple’s event, the new iPad has:

• A Retina display (2048 x 1536)
• Cameras like the ones in the iPhone 4S (including 1080p video)
• Optional LTE (and worldwide 3G as back-up)
• Voice dictation
• Serious technical grunt to push all those high-res graphics
• The same price tag
• The same battery life

Apple has also:

• Released a new 1080p Apple TV for the same price as the old model
• Updated its iPad apps for the Retina display
• Released iPhoto for iPad, which looks really lovely
• Kept the iPad 2 for a low-end model

So, here’s what I predict idiots are going to mostly write about:

• The name (just ‘iPad’, with no version number)
• The slight increase in weight and thickness
• The lack of additional storage
• The LTE fragmentation
• The lack of a price drop
• The lack of a smaller model
• Features in one or two Android tablets that no-one really gives a crap about

If you’re in the idiot camp, please go and watch this before spewing your word vomit all over the internet. Thanks.

Note: I’m not saying here that the new iPad is perfect. I would have liked to have seen more storage, and I think until the iPad 2 vanishes, the new naming convention has the potential to confuse customers. However, the tech press has a habit of banging on about small negatives when it comes to Apple, sidelining the big positives. Personally, I think everyone else in the industry now has a massive challenge to compete with Apple’s revised iPad.

My predictions about the iPad 3/iPad HD event and subsequent coverage:

• The new iPad will, objectively, be a decent upgrade regardless of what Apple adds to it.
• Immediate coverage will be mostly subjective, based in part on what Apple ‘left out’, despite never giving any indication such things were going to be added anyway.
• Apple will be slammed in the press for not including features that were dreamed up by hacks misinterpreting a single invite and trying to get hits with IPAD 3 CONFIRMED TO WARP SCREEN JUST LIKE T1000 headlines.
• A few sensible people will note that the update looks “pretty good actually”.
• Said people will be slammed as Apple fan-boys.
• The tech press will spew out a vomit of articles, explaining that the new iPad will be a sales disaster and 2012 will now be the year of the Android tablet.
• The new iPad will not be a sales disaster.
• 2012 won’t be the year of the Android tablet.
• 2013 will then roll around and we can all repeat the same bullshit yet again. HURRAH!

In What the iPad 3 really needs: fewer stupid articles about the iPad 3, I report on a couple of iPad articles, one of which talks about competing tablets and argues their features should be welded to the iPad. In the comments, Oliver Mason argues:

While I fully agree with most of your article […] the one thing I disagree is the stylus issue: since I bought an Adonit stylus I can use the iPad to replace paper for just jotting down notes in a way that is not possible with one of the ten built-in ones. Maybe it’s been too long since I did finger painting as a kid. True, it is easy-to-lose, but for me it really made the iPad that little bit more useful. One of the few issues where I think Steve got it wrong.

I haven’t felt this myself when using the iPad, and that’s primarily because certain input devices (be they a finger, a mouse, a stylus, or a joypad) are better for certain tasks. I don’t often jot notes on my iPad, and, these days, consider that kind of writing increasingly a niche activity. What I think’s most important is to get the default right in terms of what the user assumes is required. To my mind, a tablet with a stylus is arguing that the stylus is the best way to interact with the device—something Samsung tried to hammer home in its Galaxy Note advert (TUAW). But in over-emphasising a single-touch pointing device, you run the risk of detracting from what makes modern tablets so appealing from an interaction standpoint: multitouch. Being able to more fully immerse yourself in dealing with content by manipulating it directly is leagues ahead of a layer of abstraction that a pointing device provides.

I don’t doubt that there are some cases where a stylus is beneficial, and there are loads of third-party options available for the iPad that people can add to their set-up if they feel the need. But I think Steve Jobs got this dead right: by default, just you and the device is the set-up that is most intuitive, usable and forward-thinking.