At the Yerba Buena Center of Arts in San Francisco, Apple has unveiled its heavily anticipated tablet - iPad. With 9.7-inch capacitive IPS technology based display panel, the new iPad runs iPhone OS 3.2 operating system. Checking emails, browsing web, watching HD movies and photos, reading eBooks, playing games and many more tasks can be performed on the iPad. Apple will offer iPad in two variants - WiFi only and WiFi+3G with three different internal memory capacities ranging from16GB, 32GB and 64GB.
The price of the WiFi only iPad starts $499 (Rs. 24,000 approx.) while the WiFi+3G version is priced $130 (Rs. 6,200 approx.) extra and starts at $629 (Rs. 30,200 approx.). Apple iPad would be available in late March for all countries but the international pricing would be announced later in June. The WiFi+3G iPad models would be available by late April.
WiFi - 16GB for $499, 32GB for $599 and 64GB for $699
WiFi+3G - 16GB for $629, 32GB for $729 and 64GB for $829
The new Apple iPad is 0.5 inches think and weighs just less than a kilo, this tablet features 12 multi-touch designed specifically for it. This iPad is based on iPhone OS 3.2 and will run over 140,000 apps listed in the App Store. The best part is that every app is supported to work in portrait as well as landscape mode. The 9.7-inch IPS technology displays clear, consistent and crisp images with 1024x768 pixel resolution support.
The capacitive screen's touchscreen support is touted to be amazingly responsive to the multi-touch gestures and is accurate. This screen will come with finger-print resistant oleophobic coating just like in iPhones and iPod Touch devices.
Featuring the new iPhone OS 3.2 operating system, Apple has also debuted iBookstore that will include books by independent and major publishers. For reading eBooks from the iBookstore, Apple brings special iBook app to browse, buy and read them. Apart from that, users can also access iTunes Store with a revamped user interface to browse, buy and download music, podcasts, videocasts, videos and TV shows.
The iWork productivity suite with multi-touch support also debuts on the iPad. One can find Pages App for documents, Keynote App for presentations and Numbers App for Presentation from App Store for $10 each. Web browsing is made flamboyant by Safari browser.
It promises battery life of up to 10 hours. This iPad is also connectable to a Projector with small USB data cable with 30-pin connection support.
Apple offers iPad in two flavours for data connectivity - WiFi only and WiFi+3G. Apart from that, the iPad will also support Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR technology. The iPad also features accelerometer useful for gaming and other applications.
Just like iPhone and iPod Touch, the iPad features standard 30-pin connector which can be used to connect it to a Mac or PC for data transfer as well as charging. Built-in mic, speakers and 3.5mm audio jack to hook in any pair of headphones are a few other features which are included.
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