THE NEW IPAD
Well, that was fast. After only six months, Apple has replaced the third-generation iPad with a new fourth-gen tablet, which is pretty much what the third-gen model should have been in the first place.
The new unit looks just like the old one. It's the same size and the same weight—I put two next to each other and they were difficult to tell apart except for the new Lightning port on the fourth-gen iPad's bottom edge. The new iPad doesn't need a smaller docking port—in fact, you could argue for a larger plug that's better able to keep it in place in a dock —but Apple's switching all of its iOS devices over to Lightning right now.
The difference is inside, in performance. The third-gen iPad had the odd A5X chip, which boosted the device's GPU without accelerating its CPU at all over the iPad 2. The new iPad has an A6X, which appears to use the brand-new, Apple-designed processor found in Apple's iPhone 5.
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