Apple iPad starts at $499 and other tidbits

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, with his usual overdose of hyperbole, unveiled the much anticipated iPad tablet style computer today, pricing for which starts at under $500 and tops out at $829 -- more affordable than the $800-$1,000 price range predicted earlier.

“We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary product,”Jobs said at the beginning of his presentation at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Apple, as you know, didn't invent the MP3 player, but it reinvented it with the iPod; it didn't invent the smartphone, but reinvented it with the iPhone; and it didn't invent the tablet computer, but has reinvented it, the company says, with the iPad.

While I wasn't at the launch event, following the multiple live blogs and Tweets from those at the event made it feel like being there. Here's a video demo of iPad on Apple's Web site. And here are a couple of important highlights about the device:

The iPad is a slim, light tablet computer, which looks just like an iPhone, only bigger. Other manufacturers, such as HP, have already sold tablet-style computers but mostly they did it by taking a traditional notebook computer and designing the screen so it could swivel around and fold flat against the keyboard. At only a half-inch thick and only 1.6 pounds, the iPad should be lighter and easier to use than previous tablets for those who want to hold the iPad in one hand, walk around and type or otherwise manipulate the device with the other.

Apple introduced a number of new features on the iPad, including its e-reader, making the device a competitive threat to Amazon's Kindle and other eBook readers from Sony and Barnes & Noble. During his demo, Jobs opened the iBook store, an online marketplace for buying books to read on your iPad similar to its iTunes store for buying music and videos and the App Store for buying software applications. The iBook user interface is typically Apple elegant, designed to look like a bookshelf with photos of the book covers arranged on it like at a bookstore. Jobs paid homage to Amazon, whose Kindle created the eReader product category, saying, "We are going to stand on their shoulders and go a bit farther,” according to live blog coverage of the event on the New York Times Web site.

The iPad links to the Internet via wi-fi and AT&T's 3G wireless network. During the months-long buildup to today's launch, there had been speculation that Apple might strike a deal with Verizon Wireless to finally support an Apple product, but apparently not. The AT&T data plans are relatively reasonable: a 250 MB data plan costs only $14.99 a month, and an unlimited data plan costs $29.99 a month. In a surprising twist, no contract with AT&T is required.

Many of the same applications iPhone users buy from the App Store will also work on the iPad. Steve Forstall, an Apple senior vice president for software told the San Francisco audience iPhone apps can run on iPad "virtually unmodified," a weasel word if there ever was one.

Pricing is as follows, according to a release on Apple's Web site: A wi-fi-only iPad goes for $499 (with 16GB of memory), $599 (32GB) or $699 (64MB); an iPad that also runs on a 3G wireless network goes for $629 (16GB), $729 (32GB) and tops out at $829 (64MB).

Specs: 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance processor; 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit Multi-Touch display; 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels-per-inch; a claimed 10 hours of battery life; and more.

The iPad also comes with an available external dock to which you can attach the iPad, in portrait mode, to an external keyboard. Some skeptics online doubted someone could comfortably use the virtual keyboard with the device lying flat on a table.

Other skeptics also started Twittering about other perceived deficiencies in the iPad, such as the inability to multitask by running multiple apps simultaneously, which also limits the iPhone. Also, the iPad doesn't have a Web cam or still camera or support Adobe Flash media.

Still others groaned at Apple's choice of iPad as the product name, dredging up on You Tube a parody ad from the Fox comedy skit show "MadTV" of a few years ago. In the skit, "iPad" is the name given a -- ahem -- "feminine hygiene product" that connects to your Apple computer.

Still, those who instantly fell in love with the iPad -- and there are always a few million of those -- are being further tortured by Apple by having to wait 60 to 90 days for their beloved must have device to be available. Apple says the wi-fi models will be available toward the end of March and the w-fi/3G models towards the end of April.

It will be interesting to see how the iPad fares in the marketplace and how competitors from Amazon to HP and Dell, among others, will respond to it.

Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the Web are alive today with buzz about the iPad, including a tweet from someone recalling the moment when singer Kanye West interrupted Music Video Awards winner Taylor Swift live on TV last year: "Imma let you finish, Steve, but Moses had the greatest tablet of all time!"