Good morning San Francisco. If you’re not down at the event Apple is putting on at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, then you obviously are following along at home or at work.
Steve Jobs came on promptly at 10am to deliver the news that all of us have been waiting for whether it was for days, months or even years.
Yes, Apple’s ‘latest creation’.
And yes ladies and gentlemen, that product is the iPad, the name of which was previously rumored.
It is indeed official.
Here are some quips from Steve about the iPad, compiled from Engadget and Gizmodo:
So, gonna give you a little overview. It's very thin -- you can change the homescreen to whatever you want. What this device does is extraordinary. You can browse the web with it. It's the best web experience you've ever had.
Way better than a laptop, way better then a phone. You can turn it any way you want. To see the whole page is phenomenal.
We have the iTunes store built right in. YouTube, and YouTube in HD.
Album, photos... you can look at all of them, flick through them, it's a wonderful way to share. Calendar... months...
Seriously, this thing actually is an iPhone on steroids.
We want to kick of 2010 by introducing a magical and revolutionary product today... but first I have a few updates.
Those updates included the fact that they had just sold their 250 millionth iPod, that Apple now has 284 retail stores with 50 million vistors thus far and also that they have had 3 billion downloads at the App Store with over 140,000 applications being contained within it.
Jobs also reiterated what was found out a few days ago. That the company had produced over $15 billion in revenue over the first quarter of this New Year. It’s no surprise then that Apple is the largest ‘mobile devices’ company in the world.
The iPad itself includes a 9.7 inch IPS display, yay for the full capacitive touchscreen. That will be a major selling point. It’s only half an inch thin and weighs only a pound and a half. That’s insane.
It also includes 1GHz Apple A4 chip, and has 16GB to 64GB of flash storage, 802.11n, . 30-pin connector, speaker, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, accelerometer, microphone, and compass.
The best part?
Probably the 10 hours of battery life it has.
Wow.
The gaming looks pretty awesome and the SDK for developers apparently has been leaked today.
Steve Jobs also introduced something called iBooks with something called the iBook Store which allows you to download e-books right onto your iPad. It doesn't appear that McGraw-Hill is one of the five big partners. It's becoming clearer why its CEO 'leaked' the tablet yesterday.
Hmm.
The iBooks store looks very similar to the iTunes store.
The stuff we have all been waiting for has been the service plans and what not. You know, whether or not this thing is worth purchasing. Here is a summary:
Now what does it cost for the data plans? Well in the US carriers charge about $60 a month. We have a real breakthrough. Two awesome plans for iPad owners. The first one gives you 250MB of data a month for $14.99.
We have an unlimited plan for just $29.99 a month.
We have a breakthrough deal with AT&T.
And a collective sigh from all San Franciscans.
So how do you turn this on and manage it? You can activate this right on the iPad. And there's no contract -- it's prepaid.
No contracts just sold a million people on the iPad, easy.
So now, prices and models. It breaks down like this.
So $499 for 16GB of iPad. That's our base model. 32GB is $599, 64GB is $799. 3G models cost an extra $130. $629, 729, and 829 with 3G.
And when will we see these bad boys?
We will be shipping these in 60 days. 3G models will ship in 90 days.
The iPad truly looks impressive.
For more info, contact Adam: admillios@gmail.com
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