Today Apple announced what they called “Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price”. Steve Job’s calls it iPad.Now I was not there everything I herd was from the stream that TWIT did from inside the show. Just so you know.
A lot of people have said that the iPad runs iPhone OS. This made me think that its just a big iPod Touch, and well that's what it is but it looks so much better then that. It kind of takes the iPod Touch witch I have always said was the Apple netbook. Now the iPad is not a netbook, its not a smart book, its a pad. For Steve a pad is in between a smart phone and a computer. They did not want this to be seen as the Apple netbook. Steve basically he said netbooks are junk.
There it is the iPad. The iPad lets you brows the web, do e-mail, look at your photos, and allot of the things that the iPod Touch lets you do. The iPad enhances what the Touch dose by really using the screen real state. The screen is 9.7” it supposable gets 10 hours of battery life and a month of stand by battery life. It also has 802.11 N WIFI and Bluetooth 2.1.
Since the pad runs iPhone OS it works with all the apps in the app store right out of the box and up scales the app to work full size on the pad. There will also be apps made just for the pad as well when it comes out. The New York Times has an app for it and so dose EA Games will also have games ready for it when it comes out.
Also since it runs iPhone OS there is iPod functionality and Video witch looks grate on the pad. The big app for the iPad is really is going to be iBook the e-book reader app. When you open it you will see something just like a real book shelf with all the books you have bought. How will you get all these books you might ask, well from the built in book store of course. Yes there will be an iTunes book store ware you can get all your books for the iPad.
When the iPad comes out Apple is also porting there office suit iWork over to the pad. You will be able to get Keynote, Pages, and Number on the pad. You will be able to work on you documents on the go. The apps will cost $9.99 each. (If I used iWork I would want that.)
The pad will sync with iTunes via USB just like the iPhone or any of the iPods (Mac or PC). The iPad will have 3G in some models and WIFI only models. The WIFI only ones will be available in 60 day’s the WIF+3G will be out in 90 days. At this point you must be asking how much will it cost. I for one thought it would be any ware form $700-$999 I was wrong the iPad will start at $499 for 16GB and WIFI only and the 3G one will start at $629 for 16GB plus the 3G. In the US the 3G will be form AT&T $14 a month for 250 MB of data, of you can pay $29.99 a month for unlimited data. You also get free WIFI at any place that is a AT&T hot spot.
Now of course there are things you can get with the iPad like a cover that turns into a stand so you can watch movies or TV shows. The really cool thing they showed off was a keyboard dock for the pad, so wile it is charging you can pound out an e-mail or something with with a real keyboard.
Over all I do think the iPad announcement lived up to its hype. I do think this pad will change the way we consume media from now on. Though I could be wrong this will not be out for another 60 days and then we will see. I do expect we will see lines forming in front of Apple stores days before it comes out it will be like the iPhone release all over. Maybe even worse. I for one can not wait. You can go to the iPad site and look at more info on it if you like.