The New iPad: It’s in the Apps

7:46 p.m. | Updated Claried description of iPad camera and GarageBand software.

SAN FRANCISCO — At one of Apple’s trademark press events here,  Tim Cook, the chief executive, took to the stage to unveil this year’s iPad — and a few other surprises.

I’m calling it “this year’s iPad” because it has no other distinguishing name. Apple says the name is not “iPad 3,” even though the previous model was called the iPad 2. And it’s not “iPad HD,” even though its new retina screen has higher resolution than a high-definition TV screen.

I played with it a little Wednesday and I will be doing an extensive review later. For now, here are a few first impressions.

In addition to the retina display, it has:
• a faster processor chip
• a better camera (a five-megapixel)
• 1080p hi-definition video recording (with stabilization)
• voice dictation (speak-to-type — not, however, the whole Siri voice-command feature)
• Personal Hotspot (pay your carrier an extra monthly fee; the iPad broadcasts its Internet signal to nearby laptops and other gadgets over Wi-Fi, wherever you are, even in a car)
• 4G LTE, which means super-high Internet speeds in cities where Verizon Wireless and AT&T have installed 4G networks.

The prices, storage and battery life are identical to the previous iPads’. Which is impressive — 4G is famous as a battery hog. That’s why this new iPad is a tiny bit thicker and heavier than the last one; it needs a beefier battery.

That wasn’t the only news during the unveiling. Apple also revealed that its $100 Apple TV would get a minor upgrade on March 16. It will be able to play movies in 1080p high definition, and it will have a new icon-based software design.

Oh — and movies you buy from Apple’s online store are now available in an online iCloud locker, available for viewing on any Apple gadget, just as music and TV shows are.

To me, though, the most interesting developments were the new apps that Apple has developed for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

GarageBand, for example, has been blessed with several new music-making features. One of them lets up to four people play different instruments simultaneously. Somehow, their four touchscreen devices stay synchronized over Wi-Fi, and they make a master, perfectly synced four-track recording, ready for mixing, editing (there’s a new note-by-note editing mode) and posting online.

My favorite, if Apple’s demo was any indication, will be iPhoto for iOS. (Like GarageBand, it’s a $5 download. GarageBand is a free upgrade if you bought an earlier iOS version..)

In some ways, it goes beyond iPhoto for the Mac, in that its editing tools can do more than affect an entire photo in one swoop. It offers brushes that let you dab with your fingers to brighten, darken, saturate, desaturate or otherwise enhance individual parts of a photo. That’s something you can do in Photoshop, but it’s never been possible in iPhoto. Multitouch is used cleverly; for example, with two fingers you can rotate a photo, zoom in and out, adjust the shadowy “vignette” framing, and so on.

Another new feature (also unavailable on the “real” iPhoto) lets you double-tap a photo — to auto-select all photos with very similar composition. It’s a fast way to select all the shots of, say, a family grouping in the same pose, in readiness for figuring out which one is the keeper. Somehow the software analyzes what’s actually in the photos and figures out which ones you shot of the same subject.

Those are just iceberg tips of what Apple showed in these new apps, but the message seems clear. Yes, the new iPad’s hardware keeps Apple ahead of its tablet rivals — there’s no other tablet, yet, with anything like these specs — but it’s the software that really makes the iPad shine. It’s those 200,000 apps written just for its larger screen — and these new Apple apps that seem intended to make multitouch creativity faster and more fun.