Apple Latest Creation - iPad

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Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco

Apple have finally unveiled their latest, outstanding gadget, the iPad today at Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco! What do you expect the iPad looks like? And what cool features it have? Feel to get one? Yah! We think like you too! So many people out there already familiar with this new gadget because we all have used iPhone or iPod Touch already! But how much it cost? When will it shipped? All answer is announce in here! Read more for more interesting event pictures and open up the iPad mysterious mask now!

Steve: "Let's go back to 1991, when we first shipped our Powerbooks. The first with a TFT screen, the first with palm rests, and had an integrated pointing device. Just a few years ago in 2007 we reinvented the phone... and a few years later we got the iPhone 3GS."

Steve: "SO all of us use laptops and smartphones... the question has arisen; is there room for something in the middle. We've wondered for years as well -- in order to create that category, they have to be far better at doing some key tasks... better than the laptop, better than the smartphone."

Steve: "What kind of tasks? Browsing the web. Doing email. Enjoying and sharing pics. Watching videos. Enjoying music. Playing games. Reading ebooks."

Steve: "Now some people thought that was a netbook -- the problem is that netbooks aren't better than anything!" Big cheers! Ha!

Steve: "We think we've got something that is better. And we call it the iPad."

looks like the leak!

"Way better than a laptop, way better then a phone. You can turn it any way you want. To see the whole page is phenomenal."

"Phenomenal for mail." Wow, new drop downs in the mail interface... and a large onscreen QWERTY!

"We have the iTunes store built right in. YouTube, and YouTube in HD."

Slide to unlock screen just like the iPhone. "This is the lock screen -- icons fly in. Let's go right to the web..." Apple.com -- Bookmarks drop down from a bunch of contextual menus up top.

No flash here... the missing plugin icon is on screen.

Nice email display -- message list in a column on the left, full message on the right.

"Now if I want to send a message, I hit compose -- up pops this gorgeous keyboard." Steve is typing, it looks very responsive.

"It just all works. And of course videos... we've got movies, TV shows, music videos."

"Let's go back to the hardware." .5 inches thin, 1.5 pounds -- 9.7 inch IPS display, Full capacitive multitouch

"It's powered by our own silicon. The 1GHz Apple A4 chip. It screams."

"What is the battery life like? We've been able to achieve 10 hours of battery life. I can take a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo and watch video the whole time. And it has over a month of standby time."

"Now, let's go back to software. We've seen some great built in apps. Let's talk about third party. Let's talk about the app store." Scott Forstall is out!

"Let's start with Facebook. It just works." He's showing off the non-pixel doubled version, a small app in the middle of the screen. It's kind of silly looking. A lone app in the center of a black screen. The scaled up app looks silly as well, especially in Facebook.

Games look amazing. He's playing an OpenGLS title right now and it looks super smooth.

"So all of the iPhone apps will run on this. In fact when you buy it, download all the apps you have right onto the iPad. Now if the developer spends some time modifying their app, they can take full advantage of this display."

"We're exciting about possibilities on this. So we invited some developers two weeks ago to see what they could create. We want to show you what they came up with. First, Gameloft." Mark Hickey from Gameloft is up.

Showing off their FPS Nova. "I can slide the d-pad on the screen..." You can set up your own controls. New gestures for interacting with games. This isn't anything breathtaking just yet -- fairly standard graphics (though nice), nothing new in terms of interaction.

"So Steve showed you the Times website, it's beautiful. Why did we come out here to develop a new app for the iPad? Our iPhone app has been downloaded 3m times. We wanted to create something special for the iPad."

"We think we've captured the essence of reading the newspaper. A superior experience in a native application." Wow, the layout is just like a standard paper, and again we've got those dropdown context menus. You can resize text with a pinch.

Embedded video inside of articles that can be played.

Need for Speed Shift on screen. Looks pretty good. "Building for the iPad is a little different -- it's kind of like holding an HD display up to your face. It's really cool."

Chad Evans from MLB.com -- "We were excited to build something for the iPad. We had to create a whole new experience for this display."

"Isn't that awesome? These guys only had two weeks. So we've seen some really great apps. Let me show you another... one of our apps. That's an ebook reader. Now Amazon has done a great job of pioneering this... we're going to stand on their shoulders for this. Our new app is called iBooks."

"It has a bookshelf. In addition there's a button which is the store -- we've created the new iBook Store. You can download right onto your iPad."

Five big partners... Penguin, Macmillion, Simon & Shuster... and more.

The store is very similar to iTunes. Same modal pop-overs. Pricing doesn't look too bad. The book page display is nice. You can turn pages slowly -- really slick looking page animation.

"You can change the font... whatever you want. And that is iBooks."

iWork looks really robust. Far more than an iPhone app. Lots of options, lots of ways to work with your data.

New tool: Page Navigator. It's a bit like the magnification loop and lets you jump through pages. Automatic image outlines -- just drag your image and text reformats.

A data entry keyboard just for entering info into a spreadsheet. There are a number of different keyboard for specific tasks, also a date and time keyboard.

And the iWork demo is done. "So what are we going to charge for applications like this? We're gong to charge just $9.99 each." He means $10 for Pages, $10 for Keynote... etc.

"Isn't it great?" Some slight hesitation. "A few other things. I'd like to talk for a minute about iTunes. The iPad syncs over USB just like an iPhone or iPod."

"Now I'd like to talk about wireless networking. Every iPad has WiFi... but we're also going to have models with 3G."

"We have a breakthrough deal with AT&T." Wow. Some serious sharp intakes of breath here.

"And just like we were able to meet or exceed our tech goals, we have met our cost goals... iPad pricing starts at $499."

"So $499 for 16GB of iPad. That's our base model. 32GB is $599, 64GB is $799. 3G models cost an extra $130. $629, 729, and 829 with 3G."

"We've got some really great accessories. First one is a dock. You know the slideshow I showed you? When it's in the dock you have a great picture frame. We have another dock that's interesting... the keyboard dock." What!?

Steve: "The iPad is the most advanced piece of tech that I've ever worked on at Apple."

"We think we've got the goods. We think we've done it. Another thing we're excited about is that there's already 75m people who know how to use this because of how many iPhones and iPod touches we've shipped."

"We've always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts -- we want to make the best tech, but have them be intuitive. It's the combination of these two things that have let us make the iPad."

source[engadget]