A rede­f­i­n­i­tion of Pro by Ken Segall:

In the world of Apple, a Pro prod­uct used to mean “designed for high-end pro­fes­sion­als with needs far beyond those of mor­tal men.” Now it sim­ply means “the high-performance model.”

Apple is delib­er­ately refo­cus­ing on the mil­lions who are not pro­fes­sion­als but want high-performance models.

Neil Hughes at AppleInsider:

If Apple does release a new iPad this year, it will be a high-end model with a greater pixel den­sity dis­play rather than an entirely new third-generation model, accord­ing to a new report.

FBR Capital Markets ana­lyst Craig Berger called an over­seas com­pany involved in Apple’s sup­ply chain and heard there could be an “iPad 2 Plus” later this year. The res­o­lu­tion would be in the 250 to 300 range.

To be branded Retina Display the iPad’s dis­play only needs 263 ppi. The def­i­n­i­tion of Retina Display depends on only one thing: when do the pix­els dis­ap­pear? At 18 inches, which is the aver­age usage dis­tance of the iPad, 263-ppi pix­els dis­ap­pear. So the res­o­lu­tion range given to Berger sounds right to me. For an in-depth look into a 263-ppi 9.7-inch IPS LCD Retina Display read iPad & Retina Display and iPad 2.0 Gets Retina Display?.

This new high-end model will be called iPad Pro, not iPad 2 Plus. Why? Well, first Apple isn’t Samsung. The com­pany doesn’t add pre­fixes and suf­fixes except for ‘i’ and ‘Pro’.* This next iPad looks to be a higher-performance model than the cur­rent iPad 2 and by that very def­i­n­i­tion it falls neatly into the Pro cat­e­gory. In iPad Pro I go into a few more rea­sons why I think the next iPad will be called iPad Pro.

* What I want to write, and what I end up writ­ing are too often com­pletely dif­fer­ent. After John Gruber linked to this post, I received emails point­ing out the fact that Apple uses many other suf­fixes. Of course, they were right, and I was wrong.