Apple Tablet aka iPad Revealed At Apple Event

Jan 27, 2010

Steve Jobs just announced the Apple iPad at the Apple Event! Here is what I gathered from listening to live stream of audio from the event and following the live blogs.

Apple iPad Features

• Glossy black surface around the high resolution (?) screen
• Mac OS X like dock
• Huge virtual keypad just like the iPhone
• iPhone like icons on home screen
• View photos just like in iPhone with gestures and flicks, slideshow with music
• Advanced places and slideshow like in iPhoto
• Mail app has a nice dropdown (next iPhone OS feature?)
• Nice iTunes expansive interface
• Calendar looks amazing in iPad – looks like a physical organizer
• YouTube plays HD videos
• Run the apps in small screen or “pixel double” in full screen
• All the iPhone apps run as-is but developers can make use of with the new SDK coming out today
• Gameloft showed a demo of Nova – new interactions with multi touch like drawing a square around enemies to shoot them all
• New York Times looks just like the paper version – play movies just like the website
• Brushes app has nice pop up menus and nicely makes use of the bigger screen real estate
• EA’s demos’ Need for Speed looks great – somewhere in between a laptop and iPhone look with full touch experience
• New Kindle killer app – iBooks – eBook reader app. New iBook Store – like a bookshelf where you can buy eBooks. Download right to iPad.

  

• iBook Store – 5 pig partners – Penguin, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, MacMillan, Hachette
• Apple uses the open ePub ebook format – import your own eBooks to iPad?
• iWork for iPad – just $9.99 for iPad
• Syncs with iTunes just like iPhone over USB
• Some models to come with 3G – US for $14.99 for a paltry 250MB of data (what?), unlimited for $29.99 – from AT&T. Free use of AT&T WiFi hotspots – No contract
• Uses new GSM microSIMs to use it internationally
• $499 for 16GB without 3G; $599 for 32GB, $699 for 64GB and $130 more for 3G
• Gets a Keyboard Dock – will it work with iPhone too?

No word on Notifications, Multitasking, Camera, video conferencing abilities, etc.

iPad Tech Specs

• Weighs just 1.5 pounds – half an inch thick
• 9.7” high resolution LED IPS display – with ‘great angle of view’ (IPS is in-plane switching)
• 1 GHz Apple A4 processor chip
• Maps – Google Maps still
• 16 – 64 GB flash solid state storage
• 802.11n WiFi
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, 30-pin connector, speaker, microphone
• Accelerometer & Compass
• 10 hours of battery life

No pricing at the moment. Will update the post shortly.