[tweetmeme]The wait is over folks. Apple demoed the much talked about and media-hyped tablet today. It’s called the iPad. Apart from the name—which we’ll get accustomed to pretty soon—it’s a smoking hot and sexy gadget from Cupertino labs. Flaunting a 9.7-inch LED-backlit multi-touch display with IPS technology, the iPad houses a 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed processor to zip through various tasks. Just 0.5-inch thick and 1.5 pounds light, it’s designed to blow you away. Check out the full technical specifications here.
Apple was smart enough to tap the App Store madness by making all the existing apps compatible with the iPad. The iPad UI is a good deal similar to iPhone but native apps have been enhanced to adapt to the larger screen in a much better way. Apple also took the wraps off its iBookStore that can be used to purchase books for the built in iBook app pushing iPad directly in competition with the Amazon Kindle. Oh, and there’s a really slick touch optimized version of iWork too!
The iPad sports 10 hours of battery life, that should get you through a whole day with ease. iPad comes in two variants—WiFi and WiFi+3G—with the storage capacity starting from 16GB and going all the way up to 64GB. Apple nailed the pricing with the 16GB WiFi-only model starting at $499. 3G models cost $129 more than non-WiFi ones for similar storage capacity. A 16GB bump in capacity means a $100 jump in price. Expect iPad to fly off the shelves when it launches late-March. Don’t forget to catch the magical iPad video.
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I am oh so buying the $500 wifi only iPad but one thing I really do not understand is why Apple deliberately under-powers its gadgets. I honestly think 1GHz is way under powered to run iWork, iLife even if these suites are specially crafted for iPad.
But, who cares ? I am buying this sexy baby anyway!
Honestly, saying 1GHz is underpowered would have been true if the software was coming from a 3rd party who had no idea what the hardware was or how it worked. Here, we have Apple building the hardware and software together that just works. They’re not running any other iWork version, it’s a version that’s specifically made for the tablet. It’s one that’s specifically optimized for the tablet with a specific UI. Same’s the case with the OS.
Look at the Nexus One. That too has a 1GHz processor compared to the 3GS, but the OS is much more chopper than what we experience on the iPhone.