Apple Announces the iPad Tablet!

After much speculation, plenty of Apple Tablet rumors, and copious concept designs such as Apple Tablet Mount and ideas that it may be similar to the Microsoft Courier Tablet, Apple officially announced in their Keynote speech the arrival of their new iPad!

iPad PR release

Today, we find out the the Apple iPad looks like a much bigger iPod touch. Tilting the screen from Portrait to landscape allows the display to react and rotate accordingly, much like video and images on the iPhone and iPod touch. The iPad bridges the gap between the iPhone and netbooks. Nicely, you can quickly preview a photo to see if it’s the one you want, and a favorite of mine is you can search by for photos by face! With the larger screen, searching through music is a lot similar to doing so on an Apple Mac, and the App store truly benefits from the larger screen. Apple boast that the iPad is a great way to enjoy music, surf the net, and a dream to type on and it really looks to be so. Although Apple haven’t yet confirmed support for flash, they do supports youtube and youtube HD with a pleasant UI for navigating. Enter the market at $499, the iPad is going to cause a storm!

The iPad is 0.5 inches think and weighs just 1.5 pounds. It also has a gorgeous 9.7” IPS display and as we expected, it comes with Apple’s multi-touch interface. Equipped with WiFi, the iPad boasts capabilities of 802.11n allowing super-fast connectivity, accompanied by Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Depending on your preference, the iPad comes with the option of having 3G! As expected, Apple have opted for a custom chip to power the iPad which they have named it the Apple A4 and runs currently at 1Ghz. The iPad comes with 16-64GB Flash storage plus, as I watched the keynote speech, one amazing thing that stood out to me and really sells this tablet is the 10 hour battery life, or 1 month in standby!

iPad demonstrations Keynotes

Outstandingly, the new iPad already has a rich array of applications as it is 100% backwards compatible with iPhone apps and even comes with an accelerometer & compass. Plus, with a larger screen, vendors are creating innovative touch screen controls which will no doubt spark a new generation of gaming, but it doesn’t stop there. Apple also demonstrated iWorks which really demonstrates how this tablet could be used in an executive environment.

Via: Ubergizmo Live and Apple