Apple iPad Announced

Apple has made their big announcement, as expected for a new tablet computer called the iPad. Details are coming in quickly, and the gadget hounds at Engadget are covering things as they come in as they live blog the event. Word is: "It's a half-inch thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds, with a 9.7-inch capacitive touchscreen IPS LCD display, and it's running a custom 1GHz Apple "A4" chip developed by the P.A. Semi team, with a 10-hour battery life and a month of standby. It'll come in 16, 32, and 64GB sizes, and it's got the expected connectivity: very little. There's a 30-pin Dock connector, a speaker, a microphone, Bluetooth, and 802.11n WiFi, as well as an accelerometer and a compass. As expected, it can run iPhone apps -- either pixel-for-pixel in a window, or pixel-doubled fullscreen -- but developers can also target the new screen size using the updated iPhone OS SDK, which is available today." There's a short clip of the iPad being unveiled on the YouTube. Eurogamer adds pricing details to the info mix: "It's going to cost $499 for the 16GB model, $599 for 32GB model and $699 for 64GB model. Those are Wi-Fi only. And the 3G models cost an extra $130 each...There's Wi-Fi and models with 3G, and Apple's struck a deal with US data providers to charge 250MB usage at $15 a month or unlimited data for $30. That's with AT&T."