Apple today introduced iPad, a revolutionary device for browsing the web, reading and sending email, enjoying photos, watching videos, listening to music, playing games, reading e-books and much more.
iPad’s responsive high-resolution Multi-Touch display lets users physically interact with applications and content. iPad is just 0.5 inches thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds– thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook. iPad includes 12 new innovative apps designed especially for the iPad, and will run almost all of the over 140,000 apps in the App Store.
iPad will be available in late March starting at the breakthrough price of just US$499.
Watch Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveil the revolutionary new iPad.
See the video-on-demand event, in your choice of “Low,””Medium,” or “High” quality, exclusively via QuickTime and MPEG-4, here.
watching it now
I’m waiting for the iTunes Video Podcast so that I can watch it on my WideScreen TV in my AV room!
I’m only a few minutes into watching, but it is interesting that Steve Jobs highlighted an Apple product (PowerBook 100 from 1991) that originated when he was not at Apple.
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Steve is looking and sounding more like his old self again. His presentation skills are amazingly effective, as usual. I love how he makes the case for why a “tablet” is a new category of device (and why a “netbook” is not it).
Good to see Woz up on the screen for a slide. Back to the presentation…
The Lebanese family line is obviously a cover for Steve’s extraterrestrial lineage.
I watched the video and now must have in iPad! I don’t care if it’s lacking a webcam at this moment cuz I am now hopelessly entranced and reaching for my wallet! The games and books sold me. Bigger screen really is the price here! I now get it!
Webcam? I don’t know. How many of you use webcams on a daily basis? Maybe for an occasional chat with family members but for everyone else- nobody videoconferences. It’s embarrassing. And I don’t see myself walking around taking pictures with a tablet. My only wish is multitasking but I see that as a feature that has to be added on at some point.
Wow! RDF in full effect. That was awesome, and the iPad looks awesome. iWork for the iPad will be the template for what (non-gaming) third-party developers can do, in terms of interface conventions. If they need to do something with the multi-touch GUI, probably for 90% of what is needed, they can just look at how it was done in the three iWork apps and copy it. The new SDK will probably make it easy to copy it too. I particularly like Numbers; it makes the iPad into the ultimate portable “graphing” calculator (scientific, business, etc.).
Apple is so far ahead of any competitor, when it comes to these touch-enable mobile devices, it’s not even fair… Whatever “tablet” device the competition introduces for the rest of this long year (with Windows 7 or Android) will just be embarrassing; they might as well shelve them now and focus on laptops and desktops.
We all realize of course that when they want new sales spikes they will up the memory across the board and release models with a camera (or two) and a GPS receiver, all of which uses tech that is presently available and to a large extent implemented in the iPhone.
As a potential customer I want it all ASAP (including 4g connectivity, I have access to the world’s first commercial 4g net at my workplace here in Stockholm), but as a shareholder I understand the strategy of stepwise updates to smooth out and maximize revenue over time.
I’m sorry, I’m an Apple evangelist, but this keynote was incredibly dull, and the first that i have ever switched off.
The iPad seems like a very cool product, if a little niche (Expectant backlash…) but Steve spent quite a bit of time just looking at web pages, extolling the virtues of ‘just click on the story you wanna see and there it is…” no….really?
The trouble is here, the features are all on the iPhone already, the OS is familiar, and theres no real new technology (Bar the A4) so there wasn’t a lot to ‘WOW’ with.
I found it a bit embarrassing when he was looking through all these web pages ho-humming to himself, and all these ‘flash-not-displayed’ blocks were showing…!!
Still, looks very well done, and i thinking of ways i can justify one, and i think theres definitely a slot for it, but lack of camera, USB ports or SD card slot (And thus the need to dock to your mac to add non-purchased content) really bugs me.
MDN word ‘Reading’ as in i’d like to be reading a book on that thing…..
Needs more power to support osx apps..being ‘trapped’ in the iphone app ecosystem is fine for the iphone but this was supposed to be that ‘bridge’ device between laptop & iphone–but it’s just a big iphone. Neat little toy but limited. To make this device MATTER give it true OSX power to run mobile GarageBand, Logic, CS4-5, FinalCutStudio etc. Put that new intel mobile chip in that sucker & let it rip– The A4 is not going to cut it.
Needs multitasking support..the is ridiculous on SO many levels that it’s not even worth expounding on..
Needs another carrier other than ATT (eg Verizon)–this is a major FAIL. Everyone simply does not have good coverage w/ ATT. Get this done AAPL..
just so’s you know
Most of us complaining about multi-tasking, web cam, desktop-grade OS and other stuff just don’t seem to get the purpose of this device.
We will need to re-convene here six months from now, when first few million of these devices find their way to consumers.
There are tens (more likely, hundreds) of millions of people out there who use their laptops for web surfing, e-mailing, iPhoto (or equivalent) and occasional Word/Excel/Powerpoint tweak (writing resumés, cover letters, etc.). In fact, web surfing (Facebook/Myspace/LinkedIn, Yahoo Mail/G-mail/Hotmail, Amazon/eBay/buy.com, some news sites) represent the vast majority of home surfing. An average consumer does pretty much EXACTLY what Steve did yesterday — sit in an armchair with a laptop in their lap and surf.
No other computing device so far has made it as simple, as intuitive and as convenient to do this as does this one.
AppStore and SDK have only been teasers for developers. Apple has amassed an army of enthusiastic developers who are now fluent and proficient in the UI paradigm and totally ready to rapidly deploy their stuff for this platform. This is just amazing. By the time this thing goes on sale, I’m sure tens of thousands of Apps will be modified to take full advantage of the iPad and will be updated out there. Out of 140k apps out there that will be fully compatible, but still only blown-up iPhone apps, I’m sure a good 30% will have been re-done in new screen resolution, with new UI tricks.
There never was a computing device in history that had introduced new platform and that had anywhere near as many applications for it ready on the first day of sale. Steve totally figured out how to just side-step the catch-22 issue of any new platform (to be popular, it needs software, but for developers to create software, they want a popular platform).
Steve is correct. This is a revolutionary concept of unprecedented magnitude.
Now everyone should watch that iTunes Podcast of the event.
Downloading the podcast now. It’s 1.05GB.