iPad

Three reasons the iPad will be a success | The Australian

LIKE a latter day Moses, Apple supremo Steve Jobs has handed down a tablet, called the iPad, from on high to his faithful followers.

But will the newly unveiled iPad tablet PC sell in biblical numbers to unbelievers as well as Apple zealots?

The iPad certainly produced thunder bolts and lightning on the web as social networking sites such as Twitter went berserk and tech blogs staggered under freak traffic loads when the online world tuned in to Mr Jobs' iPad launch in San Francisco around 5 am this morning.

The new iPad is 1.3 cm thick, weighs 0.68 kg and looks like a giant iPhone. As well as applications created for it, the iPad will run most of the iPhone's 100,000 plus applications either in a window or in a double pixel mode that fills the iPad's 9.7 inch, touchscreen display.

It will come in two basic flavours – one with 3G network capability and one without. The cheapest iPad with 16GB of memory will launch worldwide in late March for US$499 which should see it priced here at well under A$1000.


The 3G version with 16GB will go on sale in the US and some other countries in April for US$629. There are 32GB and 64GB models with and without 3G ranging up $US829 in price.

The iPad's user interface is similar to the iPhones, although the larger display allows an almost full sized touch keyboard and there's an optional dock that gives a full size mechanical keyboard. Unlike the iPhone, the iPad can run more than one app at a time and features a gruntier, 1 Ghz processor to handle the heavier workload.