iPad 3 almost exactly the same shape as iPad 2

Ringing the Apple PR team and asking about future products is about as effective as using a Ouija board to ask Steve Jobs himself. It's a pretty pointless exercise.

Fortunately, KitGuru does not have to be a master of the tea leaves in order to update you on the iPad 3.

Read on, true believer.

A chain is as strong as its weakest link. In the case of Apple, its wall of silence is as effective as the weakest link in its supply chain.

Because the hardware itself generates precious little profit for the poor buggers who sell it, the accessories market has grown out of all proportion. And, importantly for us, the accessories have to confirm to Apple's physical characteristics.

We've managed to make contact with a source close to one of the biggest Apple accessories manufacturers and, late Sunday night, discovered some interesting facts about the new iPad 3.

The source started by revealing that the physical shape of the iPad 2 and 3 are almost identical. OK. Then we were told that the new one will have an improved screen technology, which our source hinted would be HD – but would not actually confirm. The iPad 3 will taper at the edges, but the centre of the device will be deeper than the iPad 3 – in order to allow for the updated screen.

Then we learned something else, something that we had not asked about.

“To be honest”, our source said. “It's going to be much more like an iPad 2 Pro – rather than a completely new iPad 3”.

When we asked about pure horsepower, the conversation went in a different direction. The increase in processing power we all expect in the iPad 3, may well not yield obvious results, we were told. The existing iPad 2 is, largely, single tasking and – as such – you can't expect it to chunter along much quicker than it does. With Windows 8 likely to message heavily on the concept of multi-tasking, the additional power in the iPad 3 could well be used up just trying to swap tasks back and forth – adding some functionality, but not necessarily performance.

KitGuru says: As a single chip solution, moving from 1280 to 1920 would increase the number of pixels that need processing by more than 50%, and that work will need to happen somewhere. We don't expect existing iPad 2 covers etc to work with iPad 3, but it will be close. If the product hardly changes size/shape in 3 generations, then it just goes to prove that Apple nailed the form factor when the original launched 2 years ago. Clever buggers.

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