Latest iPad 3 Rumors

Despite seeing the words "confirmed" a few times, there's one thing we can count on: Apple won't confirm anything until the official announcement. But at this stage, there are a few good guesses.

The iPad 3 will have a better resolution display. This one goes in the all-but-confirmed category. The iPad 3 will not have a Retina Display, which is a display that has 300 pixels per inch (PPI). The current thought is the display will have a resolution of 2048x1536, which comes in shy of that 300 PPI mark, but you can count on some overzealous media outlets still going ahead with reports of a Retina Display.

The iPad 3 will support Siri. If there is one feature we can count on more than an improved display, it is that the iPad 3 will feature the same voice recognition that iPhone 4S users enjoy.

The iPad 3 will have a quad-core processor. Nothing about the iPad 3 is a sure bet, but we do know at the very least it will have a speed boost in both the processor and in the graphical department. Going to a quad-core processor makes sense.

The iPad 3 will support 4G LTE. This one goes more into the "I hope" category. The same rumor made the rounds with the iPhone 4S, but ultimately, it didn't turn out to be true. The same guesswork behind the iPhone 4S rumors is behind the iPad 3 rumors of 4G support. They very well could turn out to be true, but it wouldn't be a surprise to see this one come up false.

The iPad 3 will have an 8MB camera. The rumor of an 8MP camera is one of the more recent rumors, and it does make sense that Apple would upgrade the rather sad dual-cameras introduced with the iPad 2. Will it be an 8MP camera? Perhaps. The iPad isn't used as a camera nearly as often as the iPhone, but better camera support is always a plus.

The iPad 3 will really be the iPad 2S. This rumor is a side effect of the iPhone 5 turning out to be an iPhone 4S. But would people really have felt happier if the iPhone 4S had been called an iPhone 5 instead? Apple could have chosen any name for it, but the features would have remained the same.

And ever since Microsoft Word jumped from version 2 up to version 6 in order to look better sitting next to WordPerfect 6.0 on store shelves, version numbers have been as much of a marketing gimmick as anything. Heck, EA Sports uses Madden 2012 as the name for the Madden based on the 2011 season. It's all about marketing these days.

Apple will come out with an iPad Mini. Not so much an iPad 3 rumor as it is a persistent rumor that we'll see make the rounds throughout much of the year, one thing that is a good bet is that an iPad Mini announcement won't come in March. If Apple does come out with a smaller iPad this year, we'll probably see an announcement in the third or fourth quarter.