Steve Jobs and gang pulled the cover off the Apple tablet named…iPad! Ta-Dah! We’ll get used to the name, even with the MAD TV skit being replayed over and over again.

What really dazzles is what we got – the price alone was worth the wait: starting at $499! for the 16GB version. Here’s more specs: 32GB is $599 and 64GB is $699; All Wi-Fi versions. With 3G, add $130 to each model. $629 $729 and $829. AT&T 3G can be purchased with no contract and can be canceled any time, $14.99 for min. use, $29.99 for unlimited. Battery life is 10 hours, not sure if that is Apple hours or not. The other surprise: A Keyboard Dock ($69) with a normal keyboard grafted on to the front of a plastic dock. Vertical or horizontal settings.

Most people immediately point out that there’s no camera – ah-ha…there’s a accessory for that! For $27 there’s a camera attachment. As with the iPhone and iPod, accessories will be streaming in by March for certain.

For the software: You have a brand new version of iWork, all touch compatible, each one for $4.99 each. The biggest thing people have been waiting for is the book, newspaper, magazine publishing arm of the iTunes store. That’s called iBook – where you can buy anything you can buy for your Kindle and more. The Maps application is amazing, though we’ll have to see the video of the keynote to really speak on that.

Overall – We have turned a corner – we’ve now approached the Star Trek era – the mouse will be eventually phased out. Th iPad literally is a new product category, and changes the way we use computers. More to come soon…Oh and our last thing? We keep hearing people that seeing it online, or in the keynote doesn’t do it justice, it must be touched…must hold it in your hands to get the magical aspects of it.

Posted by admin on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 2:02 pm.