It’s official: Steve Jobs has just revealed the much anticipated Apple Tablet. Its name: the Apple iPad.On stage just moments ago, Apple’s founder and CEO held up the device to the thunderous applause of the audience. The rumors surrounding it have been the talk of the town for months, but now Apple has put them to rest. This device is real.
Steve Jobs and his team have just begun to dive into the details of the iPad. We will be constantly updating this story with new information: keep refreshing to see our latest updates and photos of the device.
Live Updates: The Details on the Apple iPad
- Before introducing the Tablet, Steve went through some computing history, talking about when they first shipped Powerbooks (1991), reinventing the smartphone market with the iPhone, and more.
- He spoke specifically about creating a “third category of device” — one between the phone and the laptop. Steve rails into netbooks, specifically over their low-quality displays and “junk” software.
- It can be held in any direction you want. It looks like a giant iPod.
- It has a virtual keyboard. “A dream to type on,” according to Steve.
- It has Google Maps, and of course is web-enabled. It’s lightning fast.
- YouTube can be watched in HD. The Demo of Star Trek was pretty impressive, but it’s not widescreen, though.
- You slide to unlock
- The music player looks like a new version of iTunes.
- Take a look at this picture of the New York Times website:
- Now Steve is playing with photos. You can flick through albums. With a Mac, you can get events, places, and faces via iPhoto.
- On the bottom is a photo scrubber bar with a lot of nifty settings. It has built-in slideshows, music, and transitions. This looks slick.
- Keyboard:
- The demo continues. Now Steve is exploring iTunes. Works just like you’d expect it to: as a giant iTunes player.
- Here’s the iTunes player:
- Calendar apps currently being demoed. This thing really looks useful. Seriously:
- Okay, now we’re getting into the meat of this thing. Now we’re seeing the TV and movies playing on the iPad. It’s crystal clear. He just played a piece of Up from Pixar. Since Steve was CEO of Pixar until Disney acquired them, that’s no surprise.
- Random thought from our staff: “Do you even need a computer if you have this?
SPECS
- SPECS: 9.7 inch IPS display, 0.5 inches thin, 1.5 pounds in weight.
- MEMORY SIZE: 16, 32, or 64 GB solid state hard drives
- CHIP: 1 GHz Apple A4 chip. It looks like they went in-house to build this thing.
- Wi-Fi: 802.11n
- BATTERY LIFE: 10 hours
- Includes Speaker, Microphone, 30-pin connector, Accelerometer, and compass
Software and Apps
- Scott Forstall, SVP of iPhone software, is on stage now
- The iPad runs iPhone apps. They are now demoing Facebook’s app.
- As we expected, gaming is a major component. They’re demoing a game, Snowcross. The apps are surprisingly clear.
- The new SDK for developers is out today.
- They provided a few developers access to the iPad to make games, but only about two weeks worth of time. Now they’re displaying a game called “Nova.” It doesn’t run perfectly, but you know, a few weeks isn’t much time to build a game.
- NYT is on stage, displaying their new tabletized NYT interface.
