A few minutes ago Steve Jobs took to the stage and announced the iPad Apple Tablet. Much of what was in our article Last month (What will the Apple Tablet mean for the smart home) is in the new device as expected.
Jobs has said the iPad needs to be better at a host of things (like email, browsing, video etc) than Laptops, Smart Phones and NetBooks to be a viable device class.
Multitasking wasn't mentioned at all during the presentation.
Read on for the specs photos and videos as they emerge…
- Price from – $499 (16GB) $599 (32GB) $699 (64GB) – We guess that translates to a UK starter price of around £410
- Plus $130 for 3G option if you want it (so top price $839 for 64GB with 3G)
- Shipping World Wide in 60 days
- Capacitive multi touch screen
- 0.5 inch thick
- 1.5 lbs
- 9.7 inch LED-backlit, IPS display
- Up to 10 hour battery life
- 16 – 64GB of flash storage
- 1GHz Apple A4 CPU
- 802.11n Wifi
- 3G Cellular – (US AT&T – 250mb / month $14.99 or Unlimited Data for $29.99)
- Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR – Works with Apple Bluetooth keyboard!
- June – July for International (read UK) deals to come together
- 'Almost all' existing iPhone apps will run on iPad – full screen too with Pixel doubled mode
- Apps can be written to take advantabe of native res too
- Speaker. Mic, Headphones, Accelerometer, Compass, 30 Pin connector
- Updated iPhone SDK released today to include iPad
- Accessory 1 – Keyboard / charger / dock available
- Accessory 2 – Hard Case
- Accessory 3 – Regular dock
- Seems to be aluminum unibody case
- No camera front or rear??
- Looks like still no Flash in Safari
- 'Camera Connector kit' will be available
New 'iBooks' app for eBook reading on the iPad.
- 5 of 'largest publishers in the world' on board
- download eBooks straight to ther device from iTunes book store
- On top of books there will be Newspapers and Magazines
New Version of iWork 2010 developed for the iPad – a year in the making
- Complete new version of Keynote for the iPad – $9.99 from Apps Store
- Complete new version of Pages for the iPad – $9.99 from Apps Store
- Complete new version of Number for the iPad – $9.99 from Apps Store
- Taking advantage of Multitouch for navigation
So – what do you think? Leave us a comment below with your thoughts.
Looks to be well-judged, to me – not overstretching the technology, but still pushing the frontiers. SDK news seems to confirm no multi-tasking, but external display seems to be supported, ditto mounting files to a Mac … might be a v.good device to have about the house, kitchen, lounge, by the bed … for news & (what used to be) printed media, plus HA !
its an iPhone, only bigger
aye -larger iPhone or iPod-touch, depending on versions … but it seems it’s also better on speed & battery, it’s unlocked, and the size counts for a lot, in my book anyway, opening up real uses that weren’t really viable before, in printed media, videos, office tasks, a host of apps, including HA … bet it’ll be big about the house in much the same way iPhones are big out & about, while still leaving a place for the iPod-touch … who knows, it might be slow to catch on (like the iPod-touch was), but ‘seems pretty useful to me …
Wait for the automation apps from the likes of Creston and Lutron to appear, I bet they can’t wait to get their hands on one…
… wall mounted docks anyone?!
Bring it on!
Grant you said it that’s exactly what I thought its just a bigger IPhone / ipod touch.
having just watched the full presentation – ISTM it’ll do all that 80% of people ever want – so that’s quite a lot of desktops & laptops it could supplant, in home & workplace, and with a cost-saving, too, especially for the latter, when everything’s factored-in, even with apps & docks & interface cables included …
Yes, it’s a bigger iPod touch…
It’s clearly too large to use as a portable phone, but the spec is good, and (based on previous experiences with Apple products) it’s likely to work well.
The resolution of 1024×768 isn’t great if you’re thinking of migrating “desktop apps”, but experience with Netbooks as interfaces suggests that there will be some nice stuff.
And this is basically the same API as the iPhone/iPod touch (with some extensions for a (non-touch) external disply.)
So, how about multi-touch “drag out fingers” to bring up a light, and “bring them back together” to down as your starter for ten.
A little iPad app that did that, talking to (say) Homeseer or Harmony as the back-end would be an obvious option. (No idea whether the SDK allows the creation of UDP packets for a native xAP / xPL thing), but that wouldn’t be far behind.
And… a native Sonos control app that did what the current Sonos iPod control app does, but used the higher res fully, rather than scaled pixel-wise is another obvious thing of goodness.
(Though, if anyone REALLY wants to make me happy, they could announce that they’ve created a front-end for the Linn DS that works as the Sonos iPod one does.)