Apple iPad announced

[rob]

It's essentially a large multi-touch iPhone. It runs with the iPhone SDK, so it will run all the iPhone apps natively, plus, (and I'm reading between what Steve Jobs said and didn't say:) unfortunately, whatever Apple decides to sell you through the app store. You also can't make phone calls from it, so it's more of an iTouch than an iPhone.

International versions (WiFi only) 60 days from now.

Screen: 9.7" diagonal multi-touch. As big as two paperback pages side by side when in landscape mode.

WiFi only models: (available 60 days from now)

16 GB: USD 499
32 GB; $599
64 GB: $699

3G + WiFi models: (via AT&T: $15/mo for 250MB/mo data, or $30/mo "unlimited" data, which of course doesn't mean unlimited).
(available 90 days from now in US, no news about international availability)

16 GB: $629
32 GB: $729
64 GB: $829

Note that these prices are for AT&T only. Looks like there will be lots more frustration ahead for AT&T iPad users, with users blaming AT&T's network, and AT&T blaming Apple. However, the 3G SIM chip is unlocked, meaning you can use it with any carrier supporting a GSM network. That unfortunately rules out Verizon, which uses CDMA.

Battery life: supposedly 10 hours playing video continuously.

eBook reader: iBooks. Has deals with various publishers (iBookstore). Supports ePub format. No news on PDF, but I would assume it's supported, I can't imagine why it wouldn't be. No news on whether Blio (Ray Kurzweil's reader) will be available on the iPad. My guess is not, since the Apple app store tends to reject applications that duplicate Apple's own functionality.


I'd get this thing in an instant if they supported 3rd party apps. But if it seems that this is just a bigger iTouch with an ebook reader app... no thanks.

--Rob

[benjamin]

Well, bigger iPhone that can't make phone calls.

It's a "multimedia" netbook tablet that can't run regular software or play DVD's, and ebooks will be backlit with a purported 10 hour battery life... sounds terrible. At $500 they're gonna sell a bajillion of them.

[Misty]

Third-party apps would be important to me, too. I miss when Apple Computer still made, well, computers instead of appliances. I love Macs, but I'm wary of computers that control what software I can use. I guess I'm old-fashioned in technology now though, given that computer-appliances seem to be the direction things are headed.

(No surprise there, mind you - I use my laserdisc player as often as my Blu-ray player, and my HDTV has both a Dreamcast and PS3 hooked up. I guess it's pretty predictable I sometimes have one foot in the technological past as an archivist.)

Benjamin: Yes, I can see the backlight being a real problem for ebooks. I can't see DVDs being that big a deal, though. Physical media is getting to be a thing of the past, and taking the DVD drive out of a "computer" is pretty analogous to taking the floppy drive out of the iMac. Given that Apple hasn't adopted Blu-ray on their computers, and is dropping the DVD altogether on devices like this and the Macbook Air, it's not too unreasonable to read this as a prediction on their part.

[daniel_reetz]

One thing that really surprised me is that they used an IPS LCD panel. That's a good thing in a big way -- IPS panels have the widest color gamut and the best accuracy by far. The iPhone and all Apple laptops have horrible, low color resolution TN panels with the brightness and gamma jacked way up. They trick your eye into seeing more colors than the panel supports with temporal dithering.

An IPS panel would really be a huge improvement. They almost never show up in devices like this.

On another note, I'm rather concerned about this thing and the effect it will have on the ebook market and ebook futures. I'm worried that the "markets" created by these things, GBS, and others are going to erode our fair use format shifting rights.

[daniel_reetz]

Apple bugs the hell out of me, actually. For many years Apple had cache with artists, designers, writers, and creative types because their machines were supposedly "better for graphics". But the fact of the matter is that these machines are all consumption and little creation. It really bugs me that the dominant mode of computing, in our time, is pay=>consume=>repeat. It's all force-feeding, because the creative side of these things just languishes. No front-facing camera? No awesome outputs? No, just a slick machine with a virtual credit card slot.

Nothing but a painting application, great. Is there anywhere to upload the paintings? Ugh.

[daniel_reetz]

Somebody else said it better than I could.

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/01/2 ... losed-mac/

[Misty]

I haven't read the official announcement yet (still at work), so it's nice to see you mentioning the higher quality IPS screens. I wasn't expecting that for something in the price range of the iPhone.

I think you're conflating the iPhone approach with the primary product during the time Apple was advertised that way, Dan. The Mac was all about the hardware being unobtrusive to maximize the user's access to software, which was an open environment. Especially around the time of Mac OS X (when Apple ditched their crummy old OS for a BSD/NeXT Step hybrid), Apple was shifting more to open standards. It's a sharp distinction from the iPhone/iPad model, which I agree is really disappointingly about consumption rather than creativity by controlling what the user can or can't do with their device. (I don't want to say "computer", because they're closed appliances like a game console.)

[daniel_reetz]

Yeah, you're right.

This comment on Metafilter summed things up pretty succinctly.

[dbmoura]

I've read some predictions of Delloite http://www.deloitte.com/tmtpredictions were they comment on the war on devices-services-providers
Of course we can be disappointed seeing the iPad being such a closed machine. Seeing now other devices and its solution attached (kindle, nook, sony etc), we ca see the worse in near future. But any development or field can be challenged from outside, even the youth in garages of San Francisco developed what we start to see as home PCs.
I agree that we need input devices as we discuss in these foruns and so do the industries. I am just saying that what we do is very important to sustain many ways of better solutions.

[benjamin]

I guess I should have broadened my critique, which really stems from Dan's point. It's not really about drives, it's about who controls what data goes into the machine. That said, this is all just one more step in the trend towards "cloud computing" (anyone else remember when terms like "application service provider" or "thin computing" were getting tossed around?); so the silver lining is that there's still space for random individuals to provide spaces for creation and interaction outside the app model, we just have to do it at the web layer. I'm eager to watch what happens with projects like Chrome OS, particularly now that cheap broadband Internet bandwidth is approaching low-end hard drive speed.

But then, those thoughts would move this conversation out of the "hardware" thread. I do like the idea of multitouch- if I had the skills I'd totally be working on the future of pro DJ/live performance controls.