“Our sources have indicated that the iPad 3 will be very modestly thicker, a difference so small that it literally requires calipers to measure.”

Calipers or not, if true that’s the first real sign of the benefits of getting Jobs and his idiosyncrasies away from these products. The obsession with thinness, for which I have yet in all these years yet to hear anyone online or in the real world proclaim was an issue in their product choice, has hampered the entire iPod/iOS product lines from the first time Jobs was able to take the stage and brag about how much thinner they’d made a product compared to the already thin enough pre-existing model.

Admittedly the iPad is less subject to the battery issues of its smaller cousins (although maybe not if it gets the rumored retina treatment), but here’s hoping the report of a thicker chassis is true and the policy of engineering for function over form becomes a trend in all this year’s i-products.

Isn’t the iphone 4s slightly thicker than the 4? I don’t think Steve’s passing has anything to do with it.

The comment was slightly tongue in cheek, but both the iPhone 4 and 4S have a depth of 9.3 mm so no points for you

Code Monkey I completely disagree. My main reason for buying the iPad 2 was its thickness… or lack thereof. It’s so much nicer to use; especially over time as the iPad gets heavy.
I’m involved in a government rollout of iPads and iPhones. We are trailing the original iPad at the moment. One of the most common questions we have from users is “can we get the iPad 2 as the iPad 1 is so much heavier/thicker”.

I’m with Moses.  I upgraded involuntarily from the iPad to the iPad2, as my first-generation model was stolen.  I was surprised to discover that what had seemed like a marginal improvement in thinness made a huge difference in usability, at least from my perspective. 

That doesn’t mean I won’t love the iPad 3, as it sounds like the difference is much less than the difference between the first two generations, and it presumably will be offset by other headline features.  But, for me, Apple’s obsession with thinness has led to better products.