While it’s still all technically rumour, we’re all fully expecting the iPad 3 to be announced in early March (of course, we were all expecting an iPhone 5 at the end of last year and got a 4S, so anything can happen).

At Tecmark, most of us are quite openly slaves to fanatics of Apple products and we’ll undoubtedly be like kids at Christmas by March 7th. We’ve put together our own ‘wish list’ of things we want to see from the forthcoming iPad 3:

Retina Display

Will we see this on the iPad 3?

We’re all pretty unanimous in wanting this one. It’s largely rumoured that we’ll get our way with this one, as covered on both Hexus.net and Macrumors. This seems like perhaps the most obvious upgrade from the iPad 2 to 3. iPhone 4 and 4S users have simply become accustomed to this and an iPad 3 being released without it would be incredibly disappointing.

It remains to be seen whether a retina display would inflate the existing pricing of the devices.

Camera Improvements

iphone camera icon

Again, we’re unanimous in this. If Apple will persuade any iPad 2 owners to upgrade to the iPad 3, there’ll need to be some notable improvements to the camera.

The 2 megapixel camera on the iPad 2 is often criticised and simply doesn’t cut it anymore in the fast moving tablet market. Apple is looking likely to respond with a superb 8 megapixel back camera on the forthcoming tablet.

Battery Life

With every new tablet or phone release, we’re loading up on improved graphics and processors and all of this puts more pressure on the battery. Yet we still all want improved battery life as well, which is, I suppose, one of the biggest challenges facing manufacturers as tablets get better and better. Rumours suggest a bigger battery on the forthcoming device, but it’s reasonable to assume that this is simply to accommodate a retina display and better processor without hindering battery life any further rather than to substantially improve the existing battery life.

Improved Processor

It’s highly unlikely that Apple will release a 3rd iPad without any processor improvements. Rumours are conflicting on this one. Some suggest we’ll be treated to a quad core processor, while others suggest that we’re actually going to get an A5X dual core processor. The latter would certainly be an upgrade on the existing iPad 2 processor, but would fall short of the quad core option.

Other Desired iPad 3 Features

Will the iPad 3 have Siri?

The above features were those that we were all fairly unanimous in wanting to see on the new tablet. There were a few other ‘requests’ as well:

  • Tecmark’s Joel Stein would like to see haptic feedback on the new iPad 3 touchscreen. We’ve not been able to find any rumours online that suggest we’ll be getting this. Sorry, Joel!
  • Scott Hague wants to see Kinect style motion sensors using the front facing camera and a ‘mini projector’ using the back camera in order to facilitate Kinect style gaming and control with screen projection onto a wall. Needless to say, he was the only one who mentioned that and there’s nothing to suggest that this will be the case.
  • Gareth Chadwick wants the iPad to be waterproof and ‘easier to stand up’ so he can watch films in the bath. Again, nothing suggests Gareth will be getting his way here!
  • I want to see Siri on the iPad 3. I genuinely like it on the iPhone 4S and do genuinely use it for setting alarms, timers, reminders and sending wordy emails. It seems natural this should be on the iPad 3.
  • Again, it’s only me who’s mentioned this one in the Tecmark office, but if I were to part with my cash for an iPad 3, already having a Macbook and an iPhone 4S, it would need to be lighter and thinner. However, if the rumours are to be believed, it looks like the opposite will be happening in order to accommodate the substantially improved back camera. PCmag.com covered this.
  • Jon Peplow’s suggestion for improving the iPad was one I’m absolutely positive we won’t be seeing: “Ship it with Android Icecream Sandwich OS installed.” Spot the non-Apple user!