With anticipation in overdrive and hash tags #iSlate and #Apple trending on Twitter finally at 10am Pacific Time today (27th Feb) Steve Jobs took centre stage.
"We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary new product.”
Before Steve gets to the main event, he gives a few updates, which are pretty impressive:
"A few weeks ago we sold our 250 millionth iPod.”
"We have 284 retail stores, it’s amazing.”
“We have over 140k apps in the app store. And a few weeks ago we announced users have downloaded 3 billion applications.”
"Apple is a mobile devices company"
"Apple is the number one mobile devices company in the world! Bigger than Nokia (by revenue)"
Onto the main event. "The last time there was this much excitement about a tablet it had
some commandments written on it" - Wall Street Journal
Everyone has a Smartphone and/or a laptop, is there room for a 3rd category device in the middle?
iPad - “Let me show it to you now.”
Image from gdgt.com
"It’s so much more intimate than a laptop, and it’s so much more capable than a smartphone.”
Everything looks amazing on the iPad: Web browsing, email, pictures, video, HD YouTube, Apps, and the list goes on.
Onto some high level tech specs:
9.7-inch IPS display
0.5-inches thin
Weighs just 1.5 pounds
1GHz custom chip called the A4
16, 32, or 64GB of flash storage
Wireless: 802.11n, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Battery life - 10 hours!
Accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, dock connector
Accessories: Got a great keyboard dock!
Applications
It can support existing iTunes store apps, and an SDK is already available for developing iPad specific apps. A small group of developers were given two weeks (prior to this announcement) to create some basic apps for the iPad and given the short time frame these demo apps already hint at amazing things to come!
Ok so let's talk pricing - This really blew me away!
Well under the $1k price point even for the top of the range version, this is very impressive.
Lastly availability
Wi-Fi models shipping in late March
Wi-Fi & 3g models shipping in April
A game changer, yes definately...
For for details of the iPad visit:
http://www.apple.com/ipad/
Apple's official iPad Introduction Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jXvDzj_y84
For a full minute by minute review of the press conference with pictures visit:
http://live.gdgt.com/2010/01/27/live-apple-come-see-our-latest-creation-tablet-event-coverage/
For some video footage of the press conference have a look at the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb7xv6uY8BQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poaUbmdUcCY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eVCFXxgn2M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_zI21XEo0Q
