Whats Up The Sleeves of the Apple iPad Apple iPad Specifications

The anxiety is finally over. The Apple iPad Tablet eventually stepped out of hiding, silencing all rumours, on 27 January 2010, at an event held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Peace at last!

The Apple iPad fills up the gap between smartphones (iPhone) and netbooks (MacBooks). It is more capable than the smartphones; smaller than netbooks and hence more easily portable.

Interface – A 9.7″ LED backlit, glossy, capacitive touchscreen is featured. It offers a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. Like the iPhone, the iPad too presents multi-touch capability. So you can pinch, stretch and flip through files on this tablet. The touchscreen interface of the Apple iPhone has remained unbeatable to this day. An Apple touchscreen product which is larger than the iPhone can only mean greater pleasure to use. The display is coated with a finger-print-proof film.

The accelerometer of the iPad rotates the display between landscape and portrait orientations. The device is also said to allow rotation when turned 180 degrees around (something that the iPhone is not capable of doing).

This tablet is supposed to offer the ability to connect to the Apple wireless keyboard as well. This can particularly be useful when you want to use the whole screen for displaying the image or view, without sharing real estate with the virtual keyboard. Plus, the package will contain a docking station that can be used for charging the device as well as for affixing a physical keyboard (that has to be purchased separately).

Memory – There are 3 types of models planned for release with 3 different capacities of flash drive storage – 16GB, 32GB and 64GB.

Other internal specifications – A native processor of 1GHz clock speed is used in the Apple iPad. The redesigned version of the iPhone operating system itself is supposed to be running on this tablet.

Connectivity – This device supports WiFi. Hence you can browse the web, email and socialise over the internet at hotspots. Bluetooth capability is as well present for wireless linking with other compatible gadgets. There is an SD card reader housed in the iPad too. The dock has USB connectivity, which can be used with a USB cable for linking with other devices. The initial models will not be offering 3G ability. The ones that will ship later will be incorporating the said technology. There is a digital compass integrated in this device. A-GPS will be present in the 3G models.

Entertainment – The Apple tablet has built-in speakers. There is a 3.5mm headphone jack as well. A number of audio and video file formats are supported too. However, there’s information that this gadget does not support Adobe Flash which is required to watch many online videos.

Aesthetics – Apart from making great interfaces, Apple is also renowned for making their devices sleek and attractive. Anyone will crave to hold one of the Apple products in their hands. The iPad is no exception. It is just half an inch thick, with a length of about 9.5″ and a width of about 7.4″. The weight of the tablet is just 0.73 kg. The rear side of the gadget is slightly convexed. There are buttons for volume control, mute and power on and off along its side. On the front, below the screen is a ‘home’ button as well.

Battery Life – The Apple iPad is claimed to have a 10-hour runtime life. It can be recharged using the docking station or connecting it to a computer or laptop via USB.

Pricing and Availability – The UK pricing details have not yet been revealed. In the US, the 16GB model will cost $499 (~GBP 307); the 32GB model will sell at $599 (~GBP 369); and the 64GB model will be priced at $699 (~ GBP 431). The device is expected to start shipping in the latter part of March 2010. The 3G models are currently scheduled for an April 2010 release.

What’s new – The Apple iPad seems like it will pull the carpet from beneath the Amazon Kindle e-reader. Being a colour screen device, it already has an upper hand over the Kindle, in terms of display. Plus, Apple is said to have developed a special eBook store called iBook, which will have books for downloading on to the iPad. Apple has reportedly tied up with 5 publishers (HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Penguin and Macmillan) for selling ebooks on the iBook.

Apart from the iBook the other new feature of the iPad will be the iWork. This feature will present a set of tools for official work. The tool called “Pages” is something like Microsoft Word, which allows creation of documents. Presentations can be designed on a tool called “KeyNote”. The third is a tool for spreadsheets, called “Numbers”. The iPad is said to allow importing iWork and Microsoft Office documents. Sending documents in iWork 09 and PDF formats is also mentioned to be allowed.