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Apple Media Event: Come the iPad

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Folks, the Apple media event has begun, the cool cats at Macworld are on hand to cover it and here we go in a play by play:

– Jobs has appeared on stage, has cited that Apple is current the number one mobile device maker in the world and has stated that the “Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it.”

– Jobs is now citing 1991 and the first PowerBooks, is theorizing that there might be a better category between a notebook and a smartphone.

– They’ve caught a glimpse of the thing. There’s apparently a Home button, a MacBook-like aluminum bezel and a glass screen. Users are apparently able to personalize their home screen as they’d like it.

Hang tight, they’ve got an initial picture:
sjobswipad

– The name has just been revealed: It’s the iPad.

– Jobs is apparently sending an e-mail with an Apple Mail-esque client and typing on the screen as he would with a standard QWERTY keyboard. The device is on his lap.

– Jobs is looking through photos and is able to grab data from a nearby Mac or PC as well as turn the tablet to portrait or landscape mode as well as pinch, scrub and flick through pictures.

– Ok, there’s an iPod interface that looks a lot like the album view in iTunes meshed with Cover Flow on the iPhone.

– The interface apparently contains floating panes and windows.

– Jobs is now surfing through high definition YouTube videos of a surfing dog. Behold the nesting instinct!

– Right the iPad is apparently half an inch thick, weighs only 1.5 pounds and is both thinner and lighter than any netbook on the market. The device features a 9.7″ IPS display that allows for terrific angles of view. There’s a full capacitive multi-touch screen, a 1GHz Apple A4 chip and either 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes of solid state flash memory onboard.

– The chip is by PA Semi.

– Other specs: The iPad features 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1, an accelerometer and compass, speaker microphone, standard 30-pin connector and apparently 10 hours of battery life. The unit also sports a full month of standby life and the user can set it down, walk away for a month and it’ll still have a charge when they come back.

– The iPad is arsenic free, BFR-free, mercury-free, PCV-free and recyclable.

– The iPad apparently runs almost every iPhone/iPod touch app unmodified right out of the box.

– Ok, Jobs is now using Facebook and there’s an option to run apps at different resolutions.

– Video looks great on the iPad and Jobs is playing an unmodified snowboarding game.

– Apple is apparently undergoing a huge effort to get App Store apps to this device.

– Oh, cool, they’re releasing an updated iPhone SDK to offer development support for the iPad. The new SDK will be released today on Apple’s web site.

– The new SDK will feature an iPad simulator to allow iPad apps to run on your Mac as you write them.

– Right, the mighty Gameloft, which has over 60 games and 55 million downloads is now showing off its Nova shooter.

– A representative from the New York Times is demoing the paper’s web site on the iPad. It apparently looks great… and with any luck, this will save journalism as we know it.

– Because a picture’s worth a thousand words:
streetviewmap

– Ok, the reading experience looks good and users can change the number of columns, resize text easily and view embedded videos.

– A Brushes app allows users to edit images, all the while tapping to bring up palettes, brushes and tools. Pinching allows the users to zoom in up to 32x and the app will be available at product launch.

– Electronic Arts is up and showing off Need for Speed for the iPad. The company has apparently built a cool version in just a few days.

– Hmm, the iPad is being reported as speedy. Not a bad thing.

– Chad Evans from Major League Baseball is showing off the At Bat app. With this, users can navigate league scoreboards, check player profiles and receive live data from the MLB.com web site.

– Hang on, they’re bringing out an Apple app: an e-book reader.

– Right, it’s called iBook, the interface contains a bookshelf of books and a new iBook Store will be available through iTunes and allow you to purchase titles from publishers including Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon and Shuster, Macmillan and Hachette Book Group.

– Prices for the books vary between US$7.99 and US$14.99, you tap to read, tap anywhere to flip the pages forward or backward, drag a page to slowly turn said page and tap to access the Table of Contents.

– Book fonts can be changed on the fly. All right, that’s cool.

– Books will be published via the EPUB format, which is open and compatible to what’s out there.

– Phil Schiller has now emerged to describe the new version of iWork.

– A completely new version of Keynote has been designed for the iPad. The application runs in the iPad’s horizontal mode and users can tap buttons to create presentations, open templates, etc.

– Users can tap and hold an icon to slide it around the screen. Photos can be resized via pinching and other effects are applied with finger-based gestures.

– For animations in Keynote, tap the animation mode and slide your finger around to access animation techniques.

– The new version of Pages allows you to open a document via tapping. Then, tap anywhere to open a keyboard. A new Page Navigator tool allows you to hold a finger on the right of a document to bring up a loupe icon that allows you to skim through the pages. Menus and sub-menus can be accessed via tapping.

– Over in the Numbers app, a new tab interface allows a single document to hold an assortment of spreadsheets. Columns can be rearranged by tapping and dragging and data automatically updates itself.

– Ok, this is interesting. Apple is going to charge US$9.99 for each of the new iWork applications. Users can purchase them from the App Store with little hassle.

– The iPad: It connects to projectors!!!

– Steve Jobs has just returned to the stage and the iPad syns with your Mac or PC via iTunes. Users can sync photos, music, movies, TV shows, contacts, calendars, booksmarks and applications. Backups are synced back and the app creates files to restore from.

– Each iPad features Wi-Fi but additional models will have 3G access built in as well. iPad owners will be ablt to access AT&T plans, the first offering 250 megabytes of data for US$14.99 per month. An unlimited data plan will be available for US$29.99 per month. Users will be able to access AT&T’s hotspots for free around the U.S.

– Users can go to the store, activate the plan on the iPad and there’s no contract. Users will be able to to pre-pay in advance.

– Apple hopes to have international plans in place by Jule or July and all iPad 3G models are unlocked and use new GSM micro Sim units.

– You’re going to like this: The iPad starts at US$499.

– US$499 gets you the base model with 16GB onboard, US$599 gets you the 32GB model and US$699 gets you the 64GB model. The 3G models retail for US$130 extra to include the radio units and are available at US$629, US$729 and US$829.

– The iPad will be available worldwide in 60 days and the 3G units will be available in 90 days.

– There’s a docking device that includes a keyboard. Slide your iPad into it, the dock will charge it and you can type as much as you want. The third accessory seems to be a case which doubles as a typing stand.

– Ok, that seems to be about it and there’s something cool on the horizon. As always, let us know what you think in the comments.

8 replies on “Apple Media Event: Come the iPad”

I am hoping to get and apple ipad when it comes out in april. but im stuck on a contract with Verizon is there any way out of having to get service with at&t and no have to get rid of the contract with Verizon. i saw on one website that there was gonna be a prepaid plan, is that true? Or would you even recommend the ipad?

colopure cleanse

Is the Apple Ipad going to come out with more memory than 64 GB?
64 GB isn’t a lot for a computer. I was thinking about getting an Ipad, but it is only 64 GB and my computer now has 160 GB. I was wondering if they are going to extend the capacity to at least 120 GB?
Advanced Acai

This looks great, but is there any way to secure this device physically when you leave it unattended? There doesn’t appear to be any Kensington lock slot.

it’s going to do well no matter what. it’s Apple and they rarely miss and haven’t in a long time.

i think it’s cool and it pretty amazing if you take it all in – from the screen to its abilities to the battery life (very impressive). i want one.

yes i want one but would NEED one if it could run iLife. i’m surprised they chose to launch it with a reworked version of iWorks and not iLife.

but i think we’re missing the segment they are trying to create/meet/re-create here. it’s not a phone. it’s not a laptop. like jobs said it’s in between. and there’s a need there. there’s a need to do all the non-phone stuff an iphone can do but on a larger display. there’s a need to do all the non-sit-at-your-desk, waiting-for-your-laptop-to-boot things a laptop can do but without the weight, dedicated keyboard and full os.

but as usual this is not a one and done product. there will be software updates/upgrades and in a year an iPad 2. with those we may see some of the features we think it needs included like iLife, video camera, etc.

don’t forget that a lot of what we love about the iPhone was not included in the first version. maybe like it they want to get it right first for the iPad before including it.

Wow – a lot of negative comments on the web boards: Disappointment with the width of that black bezel, the weight of the thing if you’re holding it for a long time (reading), that the only way to type on it will be to lay it flat on a table (resulting in odd view angles), that it doesn’t really replace any device (macbook/iphone).

…but the funniest comment so far:
‘How does it feel to put it to your ear and pretend you’re on a phone call’?
😉

Seems like a huge omission is a camera/video to allow the ipad to operate video conferencing. I wonder why this was left off? Oh well, ipad 2.

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