Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad today. Positioned between a smartphone and a laptop, the tablet does many of the same things as the iPhone, but on a bigger, more easily viewed screen.
Prices are $499 (for a 16GB model), $599 (32GB) and $699 (64GB); models with 3G connectivity will cost $130 more. Jobs said the iPad will start shipping the end of March.
Demonstrating the iPad at an event in San Francisco, Jobs showed how it could be used for e-mail and Web browsing, viewing photos, managing calendars and contacts, listening to music, viewing video, and more. Senior Vice President Phil Schiller showed off a new version of iWork, specifically designed for the iPad.
The iPad is a half-inch thick, weighs 1.5 pounds, and has a 9.7-inch LCD screen. It’s run by a custom-made 1GHz CPU, and comes with 16, 32, or 64GB of flash storage. Jobs claimed the iPad will get up to 10 hours of battery life. There will also be a keyboard dock.
For connectivity, it has 3G, 802.11n, WiFi, and Bluetooth 2.1; it syncs to a Mac via USB. To feed that 3G connection, Jobs also announced two new cellular data plans from AT&T to go along with the iPad: $14.99 a month for 250MB of data, $29.99 a month for unlimited data; both are prepaid, neither requires a contract.
In addition to the built-in Apple apps, the iPad will also run third-party software. Senior Vice President Scott Forstall said that the tablet will run most existing iPhone apps unmodified, right out of the box. Those apps can run at their existing size in a black box or can be doubled to run in full-screen mode.
Apple is also making a software development kit available to developers, to help create apps specifically for the new device. To demonstrate what vendors could do with those tools, Forstall introduced representatives from Gameloft, Electronic Arts, the New York Times, and MLB.com to show off iPad apps they’d already built.
Jobs also introduced a new app, called iBooks, to manage e-books on the iPad. While crediting Amazon for its pioneering efforts with the Kindle, he announced that Apple was opening its own e-book store for the iPad. He said that Penguin, Harper-Collins, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and other publishers were already signed up to supply titles. Those titles will use the ePub format—an open e-book standard.
