Steve Jobs just announced the Apple iPad at the Apple Event! Here is what I gathered from listening to live stream of audio from the event and following the live blogs.
Apple iPad Features
- Glossy black surface around the high resolution (?) screen
- Mac OS X like dock
- Huge virtual keypad just like the iPhone
- iPhone like icons on home screen
- View photos just like in iPhone with gestures and flicks, slideshow with music
- Advanced places and slideshow like in iPhoto
- Mail app has a nice dropdown (next iPhone OS feature?)
- Nice iTunes expansive interface
- Calendar looks amazing in iPad – looks like a physical organizer
- YouTube plays HD videos
- Run the apps in small screen or “pixel double” in full screen
- All the iPhone apps run as-is but developers can make use of with the new SDK coming out today
- Gameloft showed a demo of Nova – new interactions with multi touch like drawing a square around enemies to shoot them all
- New York Times looks just like the paper version – play movies just like the website
- Brushes app has nice pop up menus and nicely makes use of the bigger screen real estate
- EA’s demos’ Need for Speed looks great – somewhere in between a laptop and iPhone look with full touch experience
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New Kindle killer app – iBooks – eBook reader app. New iBook Store – like a bookshelf where you can buy eBooks. Download right to iPad.
- iBook Store – 5 pig partners – Penguin, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, MacMillan, Hachette
- Apple uses the open ePub ebook format – import your own eBooks to iPad?
- iWork for iPad – just $9.99 for iPad
- Syncs with iTunes just like iPhone over USB
- Some models to come with 3G – US for $14.99 for a paltry 250MB of data (what?), unlimited for $29.99 – from AT&T. Free use of AT&T WiFi hotspots – No contract
- Uses new GSM microSIMs to use it internationally
- $499 for 16GB without 3G; $599 for 32GB, $699 for 64GB and $130 more for 3G
- Gets a Keyboard Dock – will it work with iPhone too?
No word on Notifications, Multitasking, Camera, video conferencing abilities, etc.
iPad Tech Specs
- Weighs just 1.5 pounds – half an inch thick
- 9.7” high resolution LED IPS display – with ‘great angle of view’ (IPS is in-plane switching)
- 1 GHz Apple A4 processor chip
- Maps – Google Maps still
- 16 – 64 GB flash solid state storage
- 802.11n WiFi
- Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, 30-pin connector, speaker, microphone
- Accelerometer & Compass
- 10 hours of battery life
No pricing at the moment. Will update the post shortly.
