I’m sure the rumor is hours away from being shot down but we still have to deal with it. Even with a “onslaught” of Windows 8 tablets Apple will never have to release iPads or iPhones twice a year. Never.

But I’d like to address more specifically reports of Quad Core processors and Final Cut Pro for iPad. Despite my dislike of Final Cut Pro X it is clear it is much more touch friendly. Buttons are bigger and there are alternatives to the drag-and-drop heavy way FCP 7 did things (although still present). Why does this matter? After a while, dragging across a tablet is far more annoying than dragging across a mousepad. Touch surfaces don’t really do drags nicely. They do touches and gestures (swipes). Why is a drag not a swipe? When you swipe something, the UI really only needs to calculate a general direction and am imprecise distance and it figures out which swipe you meant. Dragging operations have a specific start and end. This is OK for imprecise actions such as rearrange app icons into discrete locations, but it’s not as good for placing things onto a timeline or dropping transitions into the tiny region between clips. It is worth pointing out though that Final Cut Pro X doesn’t fit on 1024 x 768…

While Quad Core chips seem obvious and inevitable, I wouldn’t be too surprised if Apple held off on it for some devices while still making a new processor (like using a dual core i7 despite quads being available) for the iPod touch and maybe even the iPhone 5. If this new quad core chip has better performance per watt, Apple could instead of keeping the power drain the same and getting more performance keep the performance the same and noticeably increase battery life, perhaps to negate LTE power drains. iPads on the other hand, deserve as much CPU as they can reasonably wield.

What may be true about the iPad 4 speculation is that the iPad 3 will be an iPad “2s”. Same case, quad core processor, retina display, Siri, no new hardware features. It’s already been said the the iPad 3 will be compatible with existing smart covers. Considering how gross my green smart cover got in its first 6 months (causing me to buy the grey one the day it came out) I don’t really care about buying new cases.