Still looking thin after a liver transplant last year, Jobs was energetic but spoke in a tired-sounding voice to a packed theater filled with journalists and tech bloggers at the Yerba Buena Center for the Performing Arts.
Using words like “magical” and “revolutionary,” Jobs pitched the 10-inch, 1.5-pound, half-inch thick iPad as new category of device between a smartphone and a notebook computer. The iPad looks and behaves very much like an iPhone on steroids and will run all 140,000 apps available for Apple’s best-selling smartphone.
“Do we have what it takes to establish a third category of products?” Jobs asked toward the end of the presentation. “We think we’ve got the goods.”
Those “goods” include:
• A 9.7-inch touchscreen that is extremely bright and sharp. It uses a screen technology, called IPS, that’s high quality but is relatively cheap to build.
• Apple is using its own 1-gigahertz processor to power the iPad. The company bought a chip design firm, PA Semi, in 2008, and this is the first processor resulting from that acquisition to be used in an Apple product.
• Buyers will have a choice of models with 16, 32 and 64 gigabytes of flash memory, for $499, $599 and $699, respectively. The versions with 3G network capabilities will cost $130 more each, so the most expensive model will be $829.
• AT&T will offer two data plans for them. A 250-megabyte-per-month plan is $14.99; an unlimited plan is $29.99. Typically, data-only 3G plans for computers run at $60 a month for unlimited service.
• A new e-book reading application, iBooks, takes direct aim at the business now dominated by Amazon.com’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader. Jobs said Apple’s effort is “standing on the shoulders” of Amazon’s Kindle. iPad owners will be able to buy books and download them wirelessly into the device from Apple’s new iBookstore.
• A full-size, onscreen virtual keyboard lets users type just as they would on a traditional notebook or smaller netbook. An optional keyboard dock is available, and the iPad will work with the wireless Bluetooth keyboard Apple already sells.
• While all iPhone and iPod Touch apps will run on the iPad, they’ll do so in a small window. Users can tap a button and expand them to full-screen. Apple released a new version of its software developers kit Wednesday so apps could be revised for the iPad.
The launch drew mixed reaction from many of the tech journalists, analysts and bloggers attending. Some expressed disappointment that the device didn’t have all the features that had been mentioned in the frenzied, speculative atmosphere leading up to Wednesday’s unveiling. For example, the influential tech blog Gizmodo topped its site with a graphic showing two thumbs down over an iPad and the words “NO THANKS.”
But Andy Ihnatko, computer columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times and the author of many books about Apple’s products, said the company made a smart move by building on the strength of the iPhone. “Apple’s strategy was, ‘We got it right with the iPhone,’?” Ihnatko said. “We don’t need to build something completely new.”
He also praised the pricing, saying it was a “knockout.” Many rumors had put the price at around $1,000, a fact that Jobs mocked during his presentation.
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