It’s funny — the iPad has traditionally been the first device to feature a new processor for Apple. After the original iPad was introduced with the custom Apple A4 1GHz CPU, the iPhone 4 featured the same chip just a few months later. Logic would dictate that the same happening for the iPhone 5 (or whatever name Apple chooses for the next-generation iPhone) since Apple is a creature of habit. What’s so amazing is that Apple hasn’t even needed the fastest chips on the market to guarantee a silky smooth, memorable tablet experience for its users. The original iPad performed incredibly well. The new iPad 2, however, just screams. Any slowdowns in entering menus, or launching apps, or waiting for a Web page to render have been completely eliminated. This is incredibly important, because the experience Apple promises, and delivers, is an instant love affair with its iOS devices; something that to this day, no other manufacturer can come close to matching. Not by a mile.

In terms of the latest version of iOS, version 4.3, there’s not too, too much new to report. Safari has been given a new rendering engine to serve up Web pages even faster than before, Apple has introduced iTunes Home Sharing support where you can share you home iTunes library wirelessly to your iPad and other iOS devices, and new AirPlay support for other parts of iOS and third-party developer support have been added. While these are great enhancements, they’re not anything close to what I believe we’ll be seeing in iOS 5, and that’s going to be another area the iPad 2 is going to shine. Multitouch gestures, improved notifications and much more — the next chapter in Apple’s post-PC era.

While most games haven’t yet been updated to take advantage of the new graphics performance support in iPad 2, a few have. Infinity Blade and Real Racing 2 HD are two examples, and boy do they look and perform amazingly well. Infinity Blade has even more intricate graphic elements like detail, shading and depth, and Real Racing 2 HD is just ridiculous now — they both seem to be at 60 FPS and nothing less. We’re going to see a whole new crop of games pop up that can take advantage fo the iPad 2′s new graphic processing power, and it’s going to be a good time.