How Apple’s iPad changes everything

“Chipmaker Nvidia is helping invent a slew of cool technologies that hold the potential to change the way we work and play. The company, which makes processors that enhance images and boost the brawn of computers and phones, is pushing 3-D entertainment into homes and high-def video onto handsets. But the gadget Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is most excited about? Touchscreen tablets such as Apple’s forthcoming iPad,” Michael V. Copeland reports for Fortune. “‘We have found our most personal computer,’ declares Huang, who notes that Nvidia is working on 50 different tablets. ‘This is big, and it’s going to change the computer industry.'”

“Not all of Huang’s peers share his unbridled enthusiasm for tablets in general, and for Apple’s version in particular,” Copeland reports. “If the iPad, which will retail for as little as $499, is a success, it could indeed change the computing industry, but not necessarily to the liking of some of its biggest players.”

Copeland reports, “Among those anxiously awaiting the March launch of Apple’s tablet: hardware makers such as HP and Dell, which have been betting that consumers would embrace netbooks, those scaled-down laptop computers; e-reader makers such as Amazon and Sony, whose devices compete with the iPad and Apple’s new iBooks, the publishing equivalent of iTunes; and Microsoft and Google, whose operating systems compete with the iPhone OS that powers the iPad. Even Apple ally Intel has reason to worry: The iPad features a microprocessor, the A4, that Apple designed and is having manufactured to its specifications.”

Much more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “JES42” and “iWill” for the heads up.]