Apple iPad has been released. Apple iPad offers a new way to experience web, email, photos and videos. It comes with lots of built-in apps on iPad were designed from the ground up to take advantage of the large, Multi-Touch screen.

Watch Steve Jobs keynote for Apple iPad

Apple iPad Features
A large, high-resolution LED-backlit, IPS display. An incredibly responsive Multi-Touch screen. And an amazingly powerful, Apple-designed chip. All in a design that’s thin and light enough to take anywhere. iPad isn’t just the best device of its kind. It’s a whole new kind of device.

LED-backlit, IPS Display
The high-resolution, 9.7 inch LED-backlit, IPS display on iPad is remarkably crisp and vivid. Which makes it perfect for web browsing, watching movies, or showing off photos. It’s also been designed to work in any orientation — portrait or landscape. And because it uses a display technology called IPS (in-plane switching), it has a wide, 178° viewing angle. So you can hold it almost any way you want, and still get a brilliant picture, with excellent color and contrast.

Multi-Touch
The Multi-Touch screen on the iPad uses the same revolutionary technology that’s in an iPhone. But for iPad, the technology has been completely reengineered for the larger surface, to make it extremely precise and responsive. So when you’re zooming in on a map, flicking through your photos, or deleting an email, iPad responds with incredible accuracy. And it does just what you want it to.

Thin and light
One of the first things you’ll notice about the iPad is how thin and light it is. The screen is 9.7 inches, measured diagonally. So overall, it’s slightly smaller than a magazine. And at just 1.5 lbs and 0.5 inches thin,1 it’s easy to carry and use anywhere. There’s also a slight curve to the back. Which makes it easy to pick up and comfortable to hold.

10 hours battery life
Up to 10 hours battery life. To maximize battery life, Apple engineers took the same lithium polymer battery technology they developed for our notebook computers and applied it to the iPad. As a result, you can use iPad for up to 10 hours while surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching videos, or listening to music.2

Wireless
With built-in 802.11n, iPad can take advantage of the fastest Wi-Fi networks. And it’ll automatically locate available Wi-Fi networks, which you can easily join with a few simple taps. iPad also comes with Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR, which lets you connect to devices like wireless headphones or the Apple Wireless Keyboard.

3G
iPad will also be available in a 3G model, with super-fast data speeds up to 7.2 Mbps.3 So if you’re traveling, or you happen to be somewhere that doesn’t have a Wi-Fi network, you can still get a fast connection for surfing the web, downloading email, or getting directions.

Performance
The A4 chip inside iPad was custom-designed by Apple engineers to be extremely powerful, and yet extremely power efficient. So the performance is unlike anything you’ve ever seen on a touch-based device. Which makes iPad fantastic for everything from productivity apps to games. But at the same time, the A4 chip is so power efficient that it helps iPad get up to 10 hours of battery life on a single charge. And iPad is available with a choice of 16, 32 or 64GB flash storage.4 Which gives you lots of room for your photos, movies, music, apps, and more.

30-pin connector. Built-in speaker. Connectivity
The 30-pin dock connector on the bottom of the iPad allows you to dock and charge it. It also lets you connect to iPad accessories like the Camera Connection Kit or the Keyboard Dock.

Audio
The powerful, built-in speaker produces a full, rich sound. Which makes watching a movie or listening to music even more enjoyable. It also comes with a headphone jack and a built-in microphone.

Accessories
There are lots of great accessories that have been specifically designed for iPad. The Keyboard Dock, for instance, is a dock with a full-size keyboard. There’s also a standalone Dock. And because iPad has built-in Bluetooth 2.1, it’ll work with an Apple Wireless Keyboard, too. There’s also a Camera Connection Kit that lets you import photos from a camera or SD card. There’s even an iPad Case that not only protects it, it also allows you to use iPad in various positions, to make it easy to type, look at photos, or watch movies. And through a range of accessories, iPad can output to TVs, projectors and displays.

Apple iPad built-in Apps

Safari
The large Multi-Touch screen on iPad lets you see web pages as they were meant to be seen — one whole page at a time. With vibrant color and sharp text. So whether you’re looking at a page in portrait or landscape, you can see everything at a size that’s actually readable. And with iPad, navigating through the web has never been easier, or more intuitive. Because you use the most natural pointing device there is: your finger. You can scroll through a page just by flicking your finger up or down on the screen. Or pinch to zoom in or out on a photo. There’s also a thumbnail view that shows all your open pages in a grid, to let you quickly move from one page to the next.

Mail
See and touch your email in ways you never could before. In landscape, you get a split-screen view, showing both an opened email and the messages in your Inbox. To see the opened email by itself, you just turn iPad to portrait, and the email automatically rotates and fills the screen. No matter which orientation you use, you can scroll through your mail, compose a new email using the large, on-screen keyboard, or delete messages, with nothing more than a tap and a flick. If someone emails you a photo, you can see it right in the message. You can also save the photos in an email directly to the built-in Photos app. And iPad will work with all the popular email providers, including MobileMe, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, and AOL.

Photos
With its crisp, vibrant display, and its unique software features, iPad is an extraordinary way to enjoy and share your photos. For example, the new Photos app displays the photos in an album as though they were in a stack. Just tap or pinch to open the stack, and the whole album opens up. Then you can flip through your pictures, zoom in or out, or watch a slideshow. You can even use your iPad as a beautiful digital photo frame while your iPad is docked or charging. And there are lots of ways to import photos: you can sync them from your computer, download them from an email, or import them directly from your camera using the Apple Camera Connection Kit.

Video
The large, high-resolution screen makes iPad perfect for watching any kind of video: from HD movies and TV shows, to podcasts and music videos. You can also easily move between wide-screen and full-screen with a double-tap. And because it’s essentially one big screen, with no buttons or anything to distract you, the picture fills your line of sight. So you feel completely immersed in what you’re watching.

YouTube
The YouTube app organizes videos so they’re really easy to see and navigate. To watch one, you just tap it. When you’re watching in landscape, the video will automatically play in full screen. And with its high-resolution display, the latest YouTube HD videos will look amazing on iPad.

iPod
With the iPod app, all your music is literally at your fingertips. You can browse by album, song, artist, or genre, with a simple flick. To play a song, just tap it, and the now playing screen will show the album art at full size. Then you can listen to your music with either the powerful built-in speaker, or with wired or Bluetooth wireless headphones.

iTunes
Just tap on the iTunes Store icon, and you can browse and buy music, TV shows, podcasts — or buy and rent movies — wirelessly, right from your iPad. There are thousands of movies and TV shows (in both standard and high definition), along with thousands of podcasts, and millions of songs to choose from. You can even preview songs before you buy them. And you can sync iPad with the content you already have in your iTunes library on your Mac or PC.

App Store
iPad will run almost 140,000 apps from the App Store. Everything from games to business apps, and more. And new apps that have been designed just for iPad are highlighted, so you can easily find the ones that take full advantage of its features. Just tap the App Store icon on the screen and you’ll be able to browse, buy, and download apps wirelessly, right to the iPad.

iBooks
The iBooks app is a great, new way to read and buy books.1 Just download the app for free from the App Store, and you’ll be able to buy everything from classics to bestsellers from the built-in iBookstore. Once you’ve bought a book, it’s displayed on your Bookshelf. To read it, all you have to do is tap on it and it opens up. The high-resolution, LED-backlit screen displays everything in sharp, rich, color, so it’s very easy to read, even in low light.

Maps
See more of the world with high-resolution Satellite and Street View images. You can even see topography with the new Terrain view. You can also search for a nearby business type (for example, “Restaurant”) and then tap on that business to see the route and directions from your current location.

Notes
With its expansive display and large, on-screen keyboard, iPad makes jotting down notes easy. In landscape mode, you get not only a note-taking page but a list of all your notes. It even circles the current note in red. So you can see where you are at a glance.

Calendar
iPad makes it easy to keep on schedule by displaying Day, Week, Month or List views of your calendar. That way, you can see an overview of a whole month, or the details of a single day. iPad will even show multiple calendars at once, so you can manage work and family calendars at the same time.

Contacts
The Contacts app on iPad makes finding names, numbers and other important information quicker and easier than ever before. A new view lets you see both your complete contact list, and a single contact, simultaneously. Need directions? Just tap on an address inside a contact and it’ll open Maps.

Home Screen
The Home Screen gives you one-tap access to everything on iPad. You can also customize your Home Screen by adding your favorite apps and websites, or using your own photos for the background. And you can move apps around to arrange them in any order you want.

Spotlight Search
Spotlight Search allows you to search across iPad, and all of its built-in apps. Including Mail, Contacts, Calendar, iPod, and Notes. It’ll even search apps you’ve downloaded from the App Store. So no matter what you’re looking for, it’s never more than a few taps away.

Apple iPad Technical Specifications
Dimensions

• Height: 9.56 inches (242.8 mm)
• Width: 7.47 inches (189.7 mm)
• Depth: 0.5 inch (13.4 mm)
• Weight: 1.5 pounds (.68 kg) Wi-Fi model; 1.6 pounds (.73 kg) Wi-Fi + 3G model

Display

• 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology
• 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi)
• Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating
• Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously

Capacity

• 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash drive

Processor
1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip
Sensors

• Accelerometer
• Ambient light sensor

Battery and Power

• Built-in 25Whr rechargeable lithium-polymer battery
• Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music
• Charging via power adapter or USB to computer system

Input and Output

• Dock connector
• 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack
• Built-in speakers
• Microphone
• SIM card tray (Wi-Fi + 3G model only)

Apple iPad SDK
Start developing the next generation of innovative applications for iPad with iPhone SDK 3.2 beta. iPhone Developer Program members can download iPhone SDK 3.2 beta today.
iPad Simulator: The iPad Simulator lets you build and run your iPad application on your Mac, allowing you to lay out your user interface for the larger screen size, test your app’s memory usage, and shorten the debug cycle in the design process.
iPad Programming Guide: iPad provides new opportunities to create Multi-Touch iPhone OS applications on a larger display than ever. The iPad Programming Guide introduces new features available for iPad and how to implement those features in your applications.
iPad Human Interface Guidelines esign an incredible user interface and user experience for your iPad application by following the iPad Human Interface Guidelines. Learn how to effectively use the new views and controls available to you to deliver unforgettable applications to your customers.
iPad Sample Code: Get started developing innovative universal applications for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch by downloading iPad sample code. Each sample code project is buildable and provides an example of how to accomplish a task for a specific technology.
Preparing Universal Applications: Developers can now start planning for universal applications, allowing them to take full advantage of the technologies found on iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch with a single binary.

Apple iPad Reactions:
Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk says “The iPad offers a step forward for music fans and recorded-music companies in the form of support for the iTunes LP format — a deluxe, extras-laden package that previously played only on desktops and laptops running iTunes.”
Bob Lefsetz says “I’m not convinced I need one! The iPad is almost like a computer without software. Why do I need one again? There’s no MacPaint, like on the original Macintosh. There’s nothing revolutionary. I give Apple credit for building it, but I’ve got to give them credit for building the Cube too.”
The Free Software Foundation’s Holmes Wilson said in a statement that “This is a huge step backward in the history of computing. If the first personal computers required permission from the manufacturer for each new program or new feature, the history of computing would be as dismally totalitarian as the milieu in Apple’s famous superbowl ad.”
Billboard’s Antony Bruno says “It’s fair to say that the newly-unveiled, over-hyped and much-anticipated iPad tablet computer will not be the mobile music business game-changer that previous Apple offerings were, like the iPhone and the App Store. That’s not to say it will have no impact; it will have more of an incremental, trickle-down effect on existing business models rather than enabling new ones.”
ProToolerBlog’s Stiff says “I’d like to say that I see great potential here, but it’s all up to the app developers. I recently did an interview with Jordan Rudess who, besides his work with Dream Theater, is an avid iPhone and multi-touch endorser. He sees a very bright future for music when it comes to multi-touch and it’s very hard not to feel that passion.”
CDM’s Peter Kirn has a scathing reaction to the iPad introduction, saying “I think the new, mobile Apple is doing immense harm to the computing legacy the company has forged. We could have had a Mac tablet today. Instead, we have a giant iPhone – and that’s a decision that has some serious repercussions.”
Audio Cookbook’s John Keston says “I see the iPad as a very pretty, but bulky iPod Touch / Kindle great for Facebook, movies, and e-books, but not something that’s likely to become a significant platform for music or sound design.”
SoundDownUnder’s Damian says “The iPad will be able to be used for virtual keyboards/synths, virtual drum kits, virtual tactile response interface and even a virtual mixer (maybe in conjunction with being connected to a PowerMac/ Macbook etc)… it will also be intersting to see if some of the big music software companies embrace this product as a control surface for their proprietry software.”

More info and videos: Apple Inc.

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Tags: ipad, iphone, iphone os, tablet, touch screen

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 9:36 am and is filed under Apple, Hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.