Do it. Lovely piece of machinery. Fast, fluid, and so very pretty. I smile whenever I turn it on.
I like pretty pictures…
Yes, photos and videos are magnificent. I’ve got this one shot of mountain laurels that makes you wanna sniff the screen. Netflix looks fantastic, as do iTunes flicks and the high-def DVD rips that I stream from my Mac mini media server (Air Video rocks!).
The Retina display on the iPad makes any other computer screen look like Donkey Kong. But smarter folks have used smarter words to describe the experience, so I’ll leave it at: you just gotta see it.
The iPad announcement also included the release of iPhoto for iOS. I don’t know how much I’ll ever use the iPad cameras, but editing my images is a different story. This experienced Photoshopper has long dreamed of using more natural and intuitive strokes to make my photos sparkle. With iPhoto on the iPad, that dream is realized. Apple has brought professional-quality image processing to anyone with a finger. That’s big, big stuff.
…But the reading
Man, a 10-inch Retina display gives new meaning to the word “read.” Kindle books, Flipboard, Zite, and Instapaper are so very smooth. Or just go to a web article in Safari and hit the Reader button in the address bar…
I know some folks will get all steamed when I say that the iPad is better than a book, but there, I’ve said it. Thanks for everything, Gutenberg. iPad is the new book.
Do more, wait less
Apple didn’t put a much better processor in the 2012 iPad than the one in the iPad 2, but I traded up from a 1st-gen tablet, and the difference is dramatic.
The new device handles like a champ all the extra-big graphics that iPad app developers have pumped into their new versions. I have felt barriers to my productivity evaporate. And I start to understand how people like Harry McCracken have come to use the iPad as their main axe.
(Site note: Of the iPad owners I’ve talked to, there seems to be a unanimous, and annoyed, sensation that the first two iPads started to feel sluggish about two weeks before the new iPad was announced. I’d like to think that the benchmark nerds out there would have a good explanation for this, but I’ve seen nothing, and the complaints seem to have fallen off since iOS 5.1. Please contribute your own experiences to the comments.)
Dissipating the heat, with puns
Amazingly, Consumer Reports’ headline about the iPad hotting up managed to take some steam off the release. Apple took a lot of heat after that report, but reality quickly cooled the heels of the link-baiters, and the magazine seems to have warmed up to Apple’s new tablet.
The Marcus Report: After an Infinity Blade II marathon (which in no way delayed the writing of this review, the new iPad is noticeably warmer at one corner, where the processor is. The effect is slight, and doesn’t bother me in the least.
But do you really need it?
As I type this, my friend is sitting nearby, very happily surfing the net and watching videos on my original iPad. It did for a time feel a little mopey, but I don’t get that feeling any longer. Any iPad is an awesome iPad, and I think I’m gonna keep that one around for a while.
That said, if you enjoy your iPad 1, but don’t get a really fluid vibe from it, you’re gonna go ga-ga over an iPad (3 or whatever).
If you own an iPad 2, you’ll see all the difference in the new screen. And what a difference it is.
Current iPads go for $300 and up on Craigslist. Gazelle will give you an easy $320 for an iPad 2 32GB WiFi + 3G.
Steve Jobs said that conventional PCs will be trucks on the road, while tablets and app phones will be the passenger vehicles of the infobahn. The new iPad brings that clear-eyed vision into ever sharper focus.
jjmarcus tech solutions 
The new camera is a huge improvement. The iPad 2’s camera was unacceptable, ever for Facetime. Big, big improvement on the “new iPad”