Apple Announces The iPad

Posted in Apple, Mobile, Technology on Jan 27th, 2010 | Comments

Today, Apple’s CEO and Co-Founder, Steve Jobs, took the stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA to announce the product that everyone has been waiting for – the Apple Tablet.  Er, the iPad (Yes, that is the official name).  This device was perhaps the most anxiously awaited-for device in all of modern consumer electronics.  The Wall Street Journal said this past week, “The last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it.”  After the event, however, equally as many people left awe-struck as highly disappointed.  What is it and what does it do?  Is there anything super special about it?  Are there any shortcomings?  What are the tech specs?  Read on to find out.

What is it and what does it do?

The iPad is, in the words of Apple, “Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.”  They claim it is, “The best way to experience the web, email, photos, and video.  Hands down.”  Ok, minus all the marketing, it’s essentially a giant, beautiful iPod Touch (or iPhone if you buy the 3G model – more on that in a minute).  They’re looking to fill the gap/market between the phone (mobile) and laptop/desktop (computer).

It includes many of the same applications that are included by default on the iPod Touch/iPhone including Safari, Mail, Photos, YouTube, iPod, iTunes, App Store, Maps, Notes, Contacts, and Calendar.  Two apps that were made specifically for this device include iBooks and Videos.  All of applications, however, got a major UI overhaul and look like much larger, advanced, grown-up versions of their little siblings on the iPod Touch/iPhone.

The tablet isn’t meant to be your main machine.  It’s meant to be something to use to enjoy your content when you’re out and about, or just relaxing on the living sofa.

Is there anything really special about this device?

The Apple iPad. Image courtesy Apple.com

This device has the ability, if executed correctly, to revolutionize several industries.  The main industry it will hopefully impact in a positive way is the publishing industry.  The print business is hurting so terribly right now that they’re essentially begging for anything to come to their rescue.  The iPad could be it.  The iBooks application on the iPad essentially takes the same functionality as the Amazon Kindle or Barnes and Noble Nook and makes it 10x as pretty looking and versatile.  Also, because this device includes the App Store, and special apps will be made for the size of the iPad, each individual newspaper, for example, can create an app for the device.  The New York Times showed off its application for the iPad today, and it looked awesome.  It’s essentially like reading the paper.

It’s also very versatile.  It can do a lot of things in an excellent form factor.  There’s many times I’d like to use an app on my iPhone in a bigger, more powerful context, but do not feel like taking out my MacBook Pro.  This bridges the gap.

Does the device have any shortcomings?

In my opinion, yes.  There are many, in fact.  There’s almost more shortcomings than identifiable positives.  However, as I said above, the possibilities are endless.  Here’s my list of shortcomings:

  • The UI/OS is just a giant version of the iPhone/iPod Touch OS.  The home screen looks silly with such small application icons and the lock screen looks absolutely ridiculous.  Also, for those hoping for some sort of filesystem or structure that is available to the user to store and create documents, you’re out of luck.  On top of that, there is no multitasking (yet – unless iPhone 4.0 ships before this device and this functionality is included), and for a tablet, that’s a huge disappointment.  That means you can’t IM and e-mail, or IM and surf the web at the same time. This makes me wonder if Apple is trying to stretch the iPhone OS too far?  Perhaps a brand new, hybrid OS X / iPhone, OS would have been better?
  • No Cameras.  None.  This means no video conferencing and no picture taking.
  • No HDMI/HD Video Out – Apple is touting the gorgeous screen and the fast CPU to be able to play HD video.  Why not allow users to connect this to an HDTV?
  • No Flash – I can understand this on the iPhone, but this is part computer.  Suck it up, Apple.  People still need Flash.  HTML 5 hasn’t been widely enough adopted yet.
  • Adapters – There’s no USB port on this device.  Apple is selling two adapters for it, one being a USB adapter for cameras, and another being an SD card reader.
  • The name iPad.   Slate would have been much better.  Hell, anything would have been better than iPad.
  • No Handwriting Recognition – This was my biggest letdown.  PC tablets running Windows for years have supported this, and OS X has excellent pen/stylus recognition software called Inkwell already built into the core of the OS.  Why not port that over to this device and allow people like me, students, or artists, to draw on this with something else but our fingers?  Sure, third parties will make input devices, but are you really going to trust a third party company to write a handwriting recognition algorithm and notepad app to go with it?  No.  This is a huge letdown.

Technical Specs/Models

The iPad has a 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology that runs at a 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi).

There are two distinct model types: One with 3G cellular data provided by AT&T, and one with WiFi only.  The one with cellular data allows you to purchase data without a contract.  You can pay either 15 dollars a month for 250 megabytes of data (think e-mail only, or limited web browsing online), or unlimited data for 30 dollars a month.  Again, there’s no contract and you can cancel at any time.  The activation takes place right on the device.

Both models include WiFi (a/b/g/n) and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology.

The processor inside is a 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip.  The reviews so far say this chip is blazing fast.

It has a built-in 25Whr rechargeable lithium-polymer battery that provides up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music.  Standby time is over a month!!

Finally, for pricing, here’s Apple’s official chart:

Your thoughts?

I’d love to hear them in the comments below.  Also, if you have any questions about the device, I’ll try my best to answer them.  Be sure to check out http://www.apple.com/ipad

  • First. Your write up was really good.

    I think of the iPad as a Nintendo DS but with better graphics, internet device that lets me run the iPhone apps that I love, and an ebook reader. As the eBook market grows Apple has raised the bar between ebook reader makers. They have the success of iTunes that they will easily become the dominant brand in the ebook reader market.

    I am not an apple fanboy. So, I am not going to run out and get it in 60 days. But, it will grow on me since I was already looking at an ebook reader.

    What apple has done is forced people to feel that current ebook readers are outdated since they use black and gray screens. They have No ability to surf the internet or enjoy a video podcast.

    I suspect when the iPad 3.0 comes out. That will be the time I will get one. Becuase it took 3 upgrades for the iPhone to get MMS, Copy, and Paste.

    The two features that would get me to go out and buy one now would be a front facing camera and the abilty to add the iPad to my iPhone as a headset.

    Picture your self sitting on your couch and reading a book. You decide to call someone via skype and now you can via your wifi connection. Then you decide to call your mom. You initiate a call via bluetooth to your phone and use the iPad as a speaker phone or with the headphones.

    #my2cents

    But, I do find it interesting that the iPad will come unlock as Steve briefly mentioned.
  • A few comments and thoughts on the shortcomings you listed:

    1) Camera(s):

    Let's think about this logically for a moment. Look around you and find a ~10 inch rectangular object and hold it up in front of your face, pretending it has a camera. This is completely the wrong form factor for taking photos, it's way too large to be a comfortable camera to use, you'd look ridiculous doing it (see http://bit.ly/9iS0sl for an example).

    The iPad is something you'd need to carry around in a bag of some sorts as it's simply too big to put in a pocket. If you're carrying around a bag then there's absolutely no reason not to take a normal, compact, lightweight and cheaper digital camera too, there's plenty of room in that bag you're carrying. That camera will take orders of magnitude higher quality pictures, won't make you look like an arse while using it. You also most likely have a phone with you in your pocket that'll take the same crappy quality photos that the mythical camera in the iPad would have taken.

    And a front facing camera for video conferencing? Again... wrong form factor. If you're holding this thing in the air or not resting it on a surface then there's a good chance you'll be moving around all over the place, especially if you're trying to do something else at the same time. You know how annoying shaky-cam and wobbly video is to watch? Very.

    So, you sit down and put the iPad on a table, the shaking has stopped but now the camera is pointing a the ceiling; are you planning to stand over it, looking straight down, much like trying to see your reflection in a lake? No, of course not.

    So, instead you prop it up in your lap. A quick refresher... light travels in straight lines, so... unless you have the camera perpendicular to your face, the person at the other end of the video conference will either be enjoying a close up of your stomach, chest, or, again, the ceiling over your head.

    You'd have to sit perfectly still to avoid both camera shake and to keep it pointed where you wanted. Way to ruin the easy, casual 'it just works' vision of communications technology like iChat.

    2) HDMI Out:

    Again, think about it. You'd have your iPad next to your TV, plugged in, and you're sat back on your sofa some distance away. What happens when you want to change what's playing? That's right. You have to get up and walk over to it, change the thing you wanted to change then go and sit back down again. Just like TVs before remote controls were invented. Sounds like a good idea to me.

    3) Flash:

    OK, so lets put a browser plugin that routinely crashes and takes up tons of CPU cycles onto a mobile device; say goodbye to anywhere near 10 hours of battery life and to a responsive web browser.

    The reason Apple likes H.264 video--either as a standalone file or embedded in a webpage using HTML5's video tag--is that there are dedicated hardware components designed to decode and play H.264 content, vastly improving battery life and freeing up the CPU for other tasks. Yes, Flash offers some hardware acceleration on Windows but Adobe isn't making any major efforts to port it over to the Mac version, I doubt they'd bother to do so with the iPhone OS version.

    Then there's the political aspect to it, Gruber suggested recently (http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_f...) that one of the reasons there's no Flash in iPhone OS is because Apple wants complete access to all source code for this OS so they can do whatever they want with it, whether that's optimisation or porting to a new platform, making it work on custom silicon, or any number of other reasons.

    What's Flash used for online? Four things come to mind:

    - Video: Youtube, Vimeo, Flickr and other sites are all providing H.264 versions of their content to people already, therefore Flash isn't needed. Sites that don't offer it currently will probably soon start to when their users as why they can't see their video.

    - Games: Yes, Flash's absence does become apparent and possibly painful.

    - Website UI elements or whole sites: In the huge huge majority of cases anyone who builds a 100% Flash website with no comparable HTML version deserves to shot in the face. And as for a website relying on Flash for a critical and essential UI element such as their navigation bar...

    - Ads: Yeah...

    4) Handwriting Recognition:

    Hasn't almost every implementation of machine handwriting recognition sucked? There's a keyboard on this thing. It'll be WAY faster to use than writing something by hand. Try it. As for sketching and drawing... get yourself one of those $30 capacitive styluses and an app from the App Store.
  • Alex, thank you for your excellent criticism of mine. Let me follow up by saying a few things, though:

    1.) Camera - Of course I only meant front-facing. Trying to take a picture with this device, like you, said, would look ridiculous. But, let's consider Apple's marketing video for a second: http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/4862/screens...

    Does that not look like the perfect poise for video conferencing?

    After seeing the camera call in the SDK yesterday, it makes me wonder if we will indeed see a camera on this device before it ships. Adding features after the announcement - sort of like with the iPhone back in 2007.

    2.) HDMI Out - The have an iPod AV cable, right? And actually, Phil Schiller said yesterday that you'll be able to connect keynote to a projector, which means some form of video out is in the works. Whether or not that's HD out, we will have to wait and see.

    3.) Flash - I get that Flash is horrible. I hate flash myself. That's not my complaint. My complaint is Apple limiting customer choice and experience solely because of its hatred towards the plugin. Not necessarily a bad thing, of course, to push standards, but in the meantime, customers have been begging for Flash support. The iPhone and iPod Touch probably can't handle it, but I doubt the A4 would have any issues running Flash, sandboxed, for a reasonable amount of time. Give your customers what they want and what they ask for. Don't make them change their workflow or limit their experience.

    4.) Handwriting Recognition - I've used several tablets from companies like Lenovo, and I must say, the handwriting recognition has always bee quite *good*. Not quite bad. And when you're in the classroom, I don't know about you, but I certainly don't type my notes. It takes far too long to correct typos, and organizational structure is easier to accomplish by hand. If Apple's marketing this as an eReader, and especially for students with the textbook offerings, why on earth can I not take notes on top of my book? This also brings me to my multitasking complaint. I can't have the Notes app, or a third party note taking app open at the same time as my book? Scenario - Professor says take out your book. You click. Now the professor tells you to read and take notes on pages 40-45. You now have to close the book before you can begin taking notes. That's not practical. Hopefully iPhone OS 4.0 will bring multi-tasking to this device.

    Also, finally, the marketing for this thing is absolutely absurd. In the video Jonny Ive says, "When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works..." Really, Jonny? Seems pretty simple to me. Rather than make a hybrid iPhone/Mac OS X OS you decided to just take iPhone OS and blow it up on a large device. Nothing too difficult to understand there. Also, "Our most advanced technology in a magical device at an unbelievable price" is marketing talk for "It's hard to believe it took us this long to inflate our iPod Touch and raise the price."

    Do I like it? Yes. Do I think it could do so much more? Yes. Do I think Steve bashing netbooks and then offering a device as a replacement that does less than half of what a netbook can do was a poor decision on his part? Yes.
  • Roger Kingsland
    For an iPod Touch with a bigger screen, I'm disappointed by the price.
  • What would you have liked it to be? Just out of curiosity. I'm actually rather pleased with the price points.
  • Wow nicely summed up post there.

    I agree the OS looks really weird. The Tiny icons just don't look right at all, and if anything it just shows itself as a big iPhone as a result.

    Flash is no big deal, the App Store sorts that out (mostly), and along with HTML 5 showing up there may be little need.

    No USB is a shame, but I'm not entirely sure there'd be a great deal of use for it. SD cards, USB drives yes. Anything else? Probably not.

    I'm pretty sure if Apple could get handwriting recognition to work, they would have done. I usually find it to be rather poor anyway; perhaps in future (once they iron out the issues, we know what Apple is like, it's gotta be perfect else its a no-go).

    I'm not fussed on the name, I reckon it'll grow over time.

    Just my two pennies.
  • Hah, I don't think anyone likes the name besides Steve.

    "Hey you, wanna see/touch my pad?"
    "EWW! What?!?"

    Then 10 minutes later the cops show up, haha.

     Slate,  Tablet, iCanvas, or  Canvas would have been ideal I think.
  • I think at this point Flash is no longer a reason to complain. It's quickly being phased out by HTML 5 and other standards. It'd also kill battery life like crazy.

    Since Flash is so frowned upon, I think web site developers and designers should get with the times and find more standard alternatives, or at least fallbacks.
  • The issue, I think though, is that so many companies still overly use Flash, and by not at least supporting it in a limited fashion, Apple is choosing to limit customer experience. Take Hyundai's new website, for example. It's entirely Flash. Clover's website is entirely flash, etc. It's still used too often to be ruled out completely.
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