New iPads: What's on your wish list

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — With smartphone sales up and tablet sales down, Apple will try to re-energize its iPad tablets this week with a refresh of the line.

Ahead of an Apple press event coming up on Thursday, we wondered — what could Apple do to get folks seriously hyped on iPads again?

To find out, we stopped by a tech start-up here and a co-working space filled with over 100 tech workers to pose the question.

"Bring the price down a bit, and have sufficient battery life," said Alicia Anne Witman, who does customer support for Washio, the app that picks up and delivers dry cleaning.

The iPad starts at $299 for the smaller, Mini version.

Her boss, Washio CEO Jordan Metzner, wants to see the Touch ID fingerprint sensor first seen on the iPhone come to the iPad. It was introduced in 2013 as a way to eliminate typing in passwords over and over.

"That would be really cool," he says. In conjunction with Apple's new mobile payment system, set to launch soon, "the iPad could be used with Apple Pay, and with Touch ID you could register for apps and websites."

Unlike smartphones which tend to get upgraded every two years, folks hold onto their iPads (first introduced in 2010). We spoke with Matt McCall, a partner with tech healthcare company Amida Tech, who still has his first generation iPad purchased in 2010.

What would it take for him to upgrade?

"Go waterproof," he said. "I'm always worried about spilling something on it."

Carl Martin, the community curator at the Next Space Venice co-working space, says he's hoping for "more processing power" and a higher-resolution screen on the new model. "As content creators, we always need more power," he said.

And Kevin Lee, who works at Washio, said he hopes to see a bigger model, say 12 or 13 inches.

"The iPad is too small for me," he says. "A 12-inch tablet would be almost the size of a laptop, and worth buying and leaving the laptop at home."

The introduction of a new iPad isn't the same sort of media event as it is when new iPhones come out, but it's still a big deal for both consumers and tech companies.

"The iPhone is interesting, because everyone has a phone," says Metzner. "For us, understanding if there's new technology that could have a massive impact on our business, then yeah, we're listening closely to those speeches to see if there's something we could use in our business immediately. "

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