Apple's original iPad had been on the market for less than a year when the rumor cycle for its successor began in earnest — a testament both to the tech media's appetite for speculation and to Apple's extraordinary position as an object of sustained public fascination.

The early 2011 whisper campaign around the iPad 2 centered on a few key specifications: a thinner, lighter profile that would address the original's slightly awkward bulk; cameras front and rear (the first iPad had shipped without any camera, a decision that had mystified many users); and a faster processor.

"Louder" as a descriptor was partly literal — better speakers — and partly metaphorical: a device that would arrive with more fanfare, more competition from Android tablet manufacturers who had spent 2010 scrambling to respond to the iPad's market creation, and more at stake for Apple in demonstrating that it could iterate quickly on a product category it had invented.

The original iPad had defied the skeptics who called it an oversized iPod Touch. It sold 15 million units in its first year, creating a new market and redefining portable computing in the process. The iPad 2's challenge was different: to deepen adoption, attract users who had waited for the inevitable first revision, and establish the iPad as a platform rather than a novelty.

What Apple would actually deliver in March 2011 validated most of the rumors: thinner, lighter, dual cameras, faster chip, and enough refinement to justify the upgrade for first-generation owners while attracting the significant pool of prospective buyers who had deliberately waited.