Today put all the rumors to bed. Today was Apple’s press conference, announcing the Apple tablet called the iPad. The iPad is Apple’s new bridge between smartphone & laptops. The iPad has a 9.7 inch touchscreen, weighs in at 1.5 lbs, about 1/2 inch thick, comes in 16/32/64GB flash storage, has 1GHz Apple A4 processor, 10hr battery life, about a month standby battery life, Wi-Fi a/b/n support, Bluetooth 2.1, has a standard iPod connector, a speaker, a microphone, accelerometer, and compass.
The iPad can run all iPhone apps as is. The software is more Mac-like rather than iPhone-like. It is also managed by iTunes like other Apple products. For those who may prefer a physical keyboard over the on-screen keyboard, it can be docked with a real keyboard. The iPad supports a customized iWork app which will cost $9.99 per app. It also has an iBook reader software which supports their very own iBook Store where titles start around $12.99 per book (that’s gonna hurt Amazon’s Kindle). iPad gaming looks great as you can play against other multiplayer style via Wi-Fi.
The iPad comes with 2 data plans: 250MB per month for $14.99 and unlimited data for $29.99 thru AT&T. No contract required and you can activate your data plan thru the iPad. Wi-Fi only iPad starts at $499 for 16GB, $599 FOR 32GB, and $699 for 64GB. The Wi-Fi+3G iPad starts at $649 for 16GB, $729 for 32GB, and $829 for 64GB. The Wi-Fi only version ships in 60 days while the Wi-Fi+3G version ships in 90 days.
Everything looks very nice for the iPod Touch on steroids. Unfortunately there currently no Flash support within the browser but that can change before it official releases. Also there no cameras built-in but that’s not a big deal for me at all. The Flash thing is a bigger issue for me but not a deal breaker.
