It’s amazing to me that only now after Apple releases iPhoto for iOS do people see the iPad as a content creation device. It’s as if fantastic creation apps such as Bamboo Paper, Keynote, Brushes, OmniGraffle, and Korg’s iElectribe haven’t been on the iPad until now. In fact, Apple released Pages, Numbers, and Keynote alongside the original iPad and are the sort of apps people generally think of when they talk about productivity apps.

The new iPad and iPhoto have apparently killed the perception by some people that the iPad is a content consumption device. People that have in the past appeared willfully ignorant of what makes the iPad so popular for so many different uses and the pundits and analysts that come up with convoluted terms like “media tablet” to discuss the iPad and clones of it. Welcome to the future.

Retina Display

“The iPad is going to have its resolution doubled… It will be a revolutionary display.”

Ding! We have a winner. I get a star for this one. But, to be honest, a lot of people got this right. Pay attention to people that didn’t think this would happen and take whatever they say with lots of salt.

The name

“There are some rumors swirling about that Apple will name it the iPad HD. They won’t. In doing so, Apple would be under-playing their hand. The iPad has always been capable of displaying the 1280×720 variation of High Definition and HD video maxes out at 1920×1080. The Retina Display of the next iPad will pump out 2048×1536 pixels.”

Another winner. Not only did I call that it would not be named the iPad HD as many of the rumors were reporting and people were talking about on Twitter (I’m looking at you, Gizmodo) but I also telegraphed what Apple’s talking points would be during the event regarding the Retina Display iPad and HD. Apple had slides and video demonstrating how the iPad’s resolution is superior to 1080p HD.

hey people tweetin #ipad3 hashtags, start using #ipadhd DO IT!

— Gizmodo (@Gizmodo) March 7, 2012

A new app

“Along with an insanely high resolution display comes an app for organizing and editing photos and that means Aperture for the iPad. This puts me against John Gruber and agreeing with most of Gabe Glick’s points in a MacStories piece.”

OK, I got this one wrong. I thought the new app would be Aperture instead of iPhoto. Gruber was right. In retrospect, it makes sense that Apple would want to complete the iLife suite of apps on iOS by adding iPhoto to GarageBand and iMovie. I’d like to give myself half a star for knowing that Apple would release a new photo editing app, but that doesn’t seem right. No star!

LTE

“The Wall Street Journal published an article stating that the next iPad will have support for the faster LTE cellular networks. Their sources have been very good lately with respect to Apple. That combined with the timing on this one makes it a good bet.”

I got this one right too. I don’t think there is much too say about this one. But, it is a good sign that the next iPhone will have LTE. Notice how I didn’t call it the iPhone 5?

Messages

“To go along with Apple’s merging of iChat on the Mac with Messages from iOS, Apple will bring video conferencing from the Mac to the iPad.”

Totally wrong! Well, maybe this will be part of iOS 6.

iOS

“Like the original iPad, the next iPad will be released with a bespoke version of iOS that enables features that are unique to the iPad. Unique, at least, until Apple merges them with the rest of iOS later this year.”

It looks like I got this one wrong too. If so, Apple has improved their process for integrating changes specific to a new product into their main line of iOS. This is one that I am glad I got wrong.

It’s a given

“It’ll also have improved cameras front and back with the front facing camera being upgraded to FaceTime HD.”

Wow. I can’t believe I got part of this wrong. Apple put all of their effort into improving the rear camera which can now shoot 1080p video and 5 megapixel photos.

One last thing

“Oh, and they’ll continue selling the iPad 2 of the 16 GB variety starting at $349.”

Partially right. It’s actually $399 so all of the cheap tablets aren’t putting as much pressure on Apple as people think.

Siri

“I’m probably in the minority on this, but I hope that Apple doesn’t include Siri on the next iPad. That’s not because I don’t think it has a place on the iPad – I do. But, Siri is still in beta and appears to be overloaded at times. Including it on new iPads will be even more stress for Siri. Let’s wait until it’s ready before spreading it out to other Apple devices.”

I’m not going to grade myself on my other hopes because they were just that – and sadly weren’t fulfilled. But, I am going to give myself a bonus point for getting this right. Apple left Siri off of the new iPad for now since it is still in beta and they still have some issues to work out. Instead the new iPad will get a voice dictation key on the keyboard like the one the iPhone 4S has.

How did I do? Out of eight predictions, I got three right, and two half right. When you include bonus points for getting one of my hopes right, that is five stars.

Apple has added two new ways to organize your photos in iPhoto. The first way is by Faces! It uses face detection and recognition features to assist in tagging the right people to the right photos. When iPhoto finds a new face it doesn’t yet recognize, you tell iPhoto who it is and iPhoto applies that person’s name to (almost) all photos they appear in. It will have difficulties always detecting the faces due to different angles or obstructions, but this will probably be the fastest way you’ve ever tagged a photo. Once iPhoto recognizes your friends and family, you can select the Faces library to see everyone you know. You’ll be able to double-click on their face to see all of the photos that they appear in – similar to how you work with Events today.

They’ve also provided organization by Places in addition to Faces and the existing Events. This uses GPS that is built into some cameras (i.e. iPhone) to automatically tag them with a location. You can set the location for photos by typing its name, entering an address, or dropping a pin on a map if your camera doesn’t support GPS. Then you can view your photos by location by selecting the Places library. This will provide you with two ways to look at your photos. You can either see pins on a map representing where your photos were taken or you can look at them using a column browser (similar to the Browser in iTunes with Genre, Artist, Album columns).

iPhoto also integrates with Facebook and Flickr now without the need for third-party plug-ins. As a bonus, if people on Facebook add names to the faces in your photos, that information is sent back to iPhoto. You can now out-source your photo library organization work to your friends!

Photo editing has been improved as well. A new slider has been added to the Adjust panel called Definition that tries to improve clarify and bring out detail. They’ve added the ability to change the saturation of your photos without affecting skin tones. The Retouch brush can now detect edges so that they aren’t blurred when you’re retouching a spot near them. And, finally, Apple has tweaked red-eye removal in iPhoto once again. This time they’re using their new face detection features so it only requires one click (hopefully it also does a better job of it).

Slideshows in iPhoto have also been upgraded with support for themes, using face detection to position photos and keep faces on screen, and support for syncing them to your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. Hopefully those devices will also be updated to support these new iPhoto Slideshows features, otherwise that means the slideshows will probably be unnecessarily large movie files once they’re exported to iTunes.

Apple has made a guided tour video available for iPhoto ’09.