Rob Pegoraro

Steve Jobs holds up the new iPad. (AFP Photo)

It's the iPad: Will Apple's Tablet Change the World?

For months, the same questions have been bouncing around the computer industry: What will the Apple tablet do? Will it redefine the laptop? Can it reinvent the publishing industry? Could it even — gasp! — save print media?

On Wednesday morning in San Francisco, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs made his latest bid for gadget immortality. A crowd of journalists, analysts and invited guests packed an auditorium here to see the thin, bespectacled Apple co-founder unveil the iPad, an 8-by-10-inch, wireless-enabled slab of metal, plastic and glass.

Due to ship in late March, the iPad looks like either a big iPhone or a MacBook Air laptop that’s been severed from its keyboard half. But it’s aimed to bridge the gap between those devices.

“Everybody uses a laptop and/or a smartphone,” Jobs said as he started the 90-minute presentation at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (surely no coincidence, given Apple’s focus of on creative beauty as well as functionality). “The question has arisen lately: Is there room for a third category of device in the middle?”

That middle ground has been more of a burial ground for such past ventures as tablet PCs running Microsoft Windows software and “palmtop” computers with miniaturized keyboards. Cheap, lightweight netbooks have sold well, but compromise usability for size.

The iPad starts at $499, hundreds of dollars less than what analysts and other Apple observers had expected (although the most flashy model will sell for $829), and it could fill that hole in the market if it lives up to an introductory pitch heavy on words like “magical” and “revolutionary.”

It offers full color, Web and multimedia capabilities for just $10 more than Amazon.com’s top-of-the-line Kindle DX that presents digital reading material in black-and-white.

Part Web browser, part media player, part e-book reader, the iPad is only half an inch thick but, at a pound and a half, a little too hefty for walking-around use. A high-resolution, touch-sensitive color display fills its front and accepts text entry through a virtual keyboard. Inside, it runs an upgraded version of the iPhone’s software and a processor developed in-house by Apple instead of its usual supplier Intel. It comes with 16, 32, or 64 gigabytes of flash memory.

The iPad (some spectators raised an eyebrow or two at the way the name evoked feminine-hygiene products) will include Wi-Fi wireless networking. Some models, starting at $629 and due around the end of April, will also connect to 3G mobile broadband from AT&T — which, in a departure from standard industry practice, will be sold on a no-contract basis at prices topping out at $29.99 a month for unlimited data usage.

Apple said the battery will power 10 hours of use, with standby time of a month.

The iPad runs almost all programs written for the iPhone, Jobs said — though when enlarged to fill a prototype iPad’s screen, those applications’ text and images often looked blurry or fuzzy. But Apple means for this device to be much more than an overinflated iPhone.

Its most fascinating aspect may be its electronic-book program, iBooks, that seems targeted squarely at Amazon and its Kindle e-book readers. “We’re going to stand on their shoulders,” Jobs predicted.

The iBooks store won’t come near the inventory of the Kindle’s library, but the iPad’s screen offers a level of detail impossible on the e-ink screens of other e-readers. A copy of “True Compass” by the late Senator Ted Kennedy opened on a prototype iPad that looked strikingly like the paper edition, with no wait to turn an onscreen page.

That same sharp, clear screen also opens possibilities for print-media publishers. The New York Times is working on an iPad program for subscribers and demonstrated an early version of this software during the keynote. The Washington Post is also exploring that option.

The iPad can also run games and productivity software, including a version of Apple’s iWork suite of word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications.

The iPad has a picture frame mode for presenting slide shows of stored photos and an optional charging stand to sit upright on a desktop. It has Google Maps coupled with geo-location software to pinpoint where users are and direct them to where they want to go. Screen images flip between portrait and landscape modes depending on how an iPad is held.

There are some hefty drawbacks, especially if you are one of the many who expected miracles from the iPad: there’s no camera, so no video chat; memory space is limited — 64 GB may be a lot for an iPod, but movies and such will eat that quickly; and no SD or multi-card reader means that’s all the storage you get. Meanwhile, the iPod dock connection restricts easy connection of USB devices.

Although it also appears no more customizable than the iPhone, mobile game applications for the iPhone also work on the iPad, and developers are adapting software to take advantage of the extra screen “real estate.”

“We think there will be a whole other Gold Rush for developers as they go to develop apps for the iPad,” Jobs said. In fact, Apple is counting on outside developers to join it in creating software for the iPad.

Jobs noted how two earlier Apple offerings have, in effect, served as covert training programs for the iPad and its software. The iPhone has taught tens of millions of users how to use a multi-touch interface, while the iTunes Store has made people comfortable with buying music, movies and software in an Apple-run market.

But analysts expressed doubt about how many iPhone users would be sold on adding an iPad to their gadget inventory. “My take is that Apple reinvented the netbook,” NPD Group’s Stephen Baker said. “It’s not a new category; it’s a companion to other devices.”

Roger Kay, principal analyst at research firm Endpoint Technologies Associates, credited Apple for a “pretty astounding” price with its starter model. “The public reaction is still kind of uncertain,” Kay added. “We’re still scratching our heads.”

The Washington Post, with additional reporting from AFP and NY Times

Bad, Rad or Just iPad? Snap Judgments From the Tech Experts

“It may be suddenly fashionable to say so, but the new Apple iPad tablet won’t kill the Kindle from Amazon. Here are three reasons: 1. The iPad’s backlit screen, higher price and more limited battery all make it a poorer choice for curling up with a novel.
2. Amazon will continue to improve on the Kindle (I count a whopping 46 new job postings on the design division’s board in the last two months alone).
3. The Kindle store will continue to thrive as Amazon will likely undercut Apple on e-book prices.”
NY Times tech blogger Brad Stone

“I expected to be delighted with some not-so-obvious features that would make me crave the device. I was underwhelmed. It’s basically a laptop without a physical keyboard that runs iPhone apps. That makes it an interesting product but hardly one that will change the world. I’m not saying the iPad will fail — there may indeed be a market for the device, but it’s not a game changer.” Huffington Post tech blogger Larry Magid

“The thing is beautiful and fast. Really fast. If you’ll excuse my hyperbole, it felt like I was holding the future. But is it a must-have? That’s a complicated question. The quick and dirty answer is: for many people, right now, no. Unlike the iPhone, which filled an already well-established need (cellular telephone usage), there is no existing need the iPad fills.”
TechCrunch blogger MG Siegler

“All the naysayers can feel free to eat their hats. Today Apple finally revealed the device we’ve all been whispering about for a good year or more. The Sasquatch of gadgets is real.”
CrunchGear blogger Devin Coldewey

Your View

See Result