After much anticipation and speculation concerning what Apple’s “next big gadget” would be, we finally have the iPad. You can read about all the gritty tech specs at apple.com or at wired.com, but the basics:
- 9.5 inches by 7.5 inches by 0.5 inches
- 1.5 pounds
- 9.7-inch display with 1024 x 768-pixel resolution
- 16 to 64-GB flash storage
- 10 hours of battery life
- Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity
- Starts at $499 (up to $829)
Although the slim, sleek design is very Apple-y, for my money, it looks more like an enlarged iPhone than the smartphone/laptop hybrid it has been billed as (similar to the iPhone, it also appears to only run a single app at a time). I’m not sure what kind of hardware requirements led to that massive black band around the screen, but I’d probably be a little more impressed with the design without it. That’s not to say I wouldn’t take a new iPad in a heartbeat if it was offered to me, but I wonder if a slightly different design may have helped to keep it away from the “swollen iPhone” description and pushed it into the hybrid category they were aiming for?
We’ll see. I have no doubt that Jobs and Apple will find a way to make these things look like you can’t possibly live without one — I can’t wait to see what kind of marketing scheme they come up with for this one.
