Introducing the New Apple iPad

Thr rumour mill was going crazy leading up to this introduction of the newest piece of Apple technology – The name of it, what it would do, how much it would cost, whether or not it could bring about world peace.

Well maybe not the last one, the name though was a big debate, most people’s money were on iSlate after Apple registered the domain name islate.com, but in the end the name turned out to be the iPad – which wasn’t one that was being put around and one that has raised a few eye browse. It does fit nicely with iPod, just the change of one letter, but as some lady on American daytime TV said, it kind of sounds like an essential feminine product to be used once a month!

So what is it? Essentially it is a “tablet PC”, which other companies have launched previously, the tablet PC is designed to be held in one, with a touchscreen and act as truly portable computer – imagine a laptop computer small enough to hold in one hand without the need for a keyboard. The Apple iPad is less than 10 inches tall and 7.5 inches wide and it weighs just 1.5 pounds (1.6 for the heavier Wi-Fi + 3G model), it has a 9.7 inches (diagonal) screen and you should be able to perform almost all the tasks you do at home on your laptop (ignoring memory restrictions) and a little more.

What can it do? Where to begin, essentially it will able to all that an iPhone does, so it will be able to act as an iPod, connect you to the Internet, email and all the other online stuff, It will be a video player and a photo viewer and with screen being larger than any previous handheld device like this, it will make using it far less clumsy and clearer.

But like the iPhone it will be the app store that will truly define this new piece of technology, it currently let you customise your iPhone to suit your need and app store for the iPad will be no different.

The other big thing that iPad will offer is an e-book reader, just like the kindle from amazon or one of the Sony e-book readers, the ipad will have there own iBook app and  just like itunes let you buy music straight to your ipod you will be able to buy books from the built-in iBookstore.

It looks like there will be two versions the wifi version and the 3G version, which means the 3G version will probably be sold with a monthly subscription package to one of the mobile phone networks. There will also be a choice of storage capacity 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB.

It’s still not on sale, but the starting price in the US is set to be $499, so that will be for the 16GB wifi version. UK release date could be any time, if it’s anything like the iPhone, then we will be lucky to see it in time for Christmas.

Watch the official Apple introduction to the iPad