Will the iPad 3 underwhelm?

After months of frantic, feverish speculation, Apple will unveil its newest gadget on Wednesday — and critics worry it won't live up to the hype

Apple staff members cheer the first customer to purchase the iPad 2 last year: The iPad 3 is set to be unveiled in San Francisco on Wednesday.
(Image credit: sinister pictures /Demotix/Demotix/Corbis)

Apple wants to blow us all away with the iPad 3, says Roger Cheng at CNET. "But it probably won't." Whether it's called the iPad 3 or the iPad HD, most of the details surrounding the new tablet's best features will have leaked before the curtains are at last raised for an unveiling in San Francisco on Wednesday. Yes, the tablet will probably boast the high-definition "retina" display Apple has long been promising. Yes, it's likely to have an improved camera and a suped-up processor. But with affordable Androids flying off the shelves, and promising Windows 8 gadgets coming soon, Apple's new iPad might actually be met with disappointment from the techies who are constantly clamoring for something newer, better, and shinier. Will the iPad 3 underwhelm?

Don't expect to be wowed: A better screen and a few other improvements might be "enough to draw the Apple faithful and sell a ton of iPads," says Roger Cheng at CNET. But the much-hyped gadget could still "fall short versus some of the other devices in the market." Consider the $200 Kindle Fire and its impressive Silk browser, or the super-fast Asus Transformer Prime and its quad-core processor. The "gap between Apple and its rivals isn't as wide as most people think," and the relatively ho-hum iPad 3 isn't likely to turn that gap into a chasm.

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