Lomas Davies | IT Support for Architects | Apple have released the iPad

Apple have released the iPad

The leaks have been true and probably part of the hype, Apple's tablet device was launched 27th January 2010 in San Francisco.

It comprises a sleek 9.7-inch screen powered by an Apple designed 1GHz chip with a 10-hour battery in an impossibly thin aluminum shell. It uses an enhanced variant of the operating system in the iPhone rather than OSX. The user interface is through touch screen actions entirely familiar to an iPhone user, but the onscreen pop up keyboard is a full QWERTY version and the interface includes the ability for contextual pop up menus.

Similar to the iPhone the device includes an accelerometer a compass and wifi. Whilst there are no phone functions there is an option to have 3G data connectivity built in and the device does not appear to be locked to particular networks like the iPhone.

Whilst the device can run existing iPhone apps at actual size or in pixel doubled full screen mode it is obvious that the device will be operating at its best with purpose-designed applications.

The built in web browser, email, iTunes and iphoto applications look more like Safari and Mail etc from the full Apple OSX than apps on an iPhone. The significant new item of apple software for the iPad however is the iBook application and the associated new iBook web store. Apple have obviously been working hard and signed up several leading publishers to use it as a distribution channel. The potential for the iPad to be a kindle killer is real.

Apple have also re engineered their iWork suite of word processing, spreadsheets and presentation which at just $9.99 each look like must have additions to the out of the box software.

The success of the device long term may revolve around how much it is adopted as a platform by third party developers. The launch event in San Francisco included demos of third party software by games developers and also an online version of the New York Times Newspaper. Apple have now released the software development kit as an additional element of the existing iPhone app development kit and with the existing success of the app store third party software is likely to be available soon.

The device comes in three basic memory specifications 16GB, 32GB and 64GB; each model is available in wifi only or wifi plus 3G. The base level 16Gb Wi-Fi only version sneaks in at $499, A surprise add on is a keyboard dock which potentially converts the iPad from laptop to desktop mode for some serious word processing!

The iPad will be shipping in 60 days for the Wi-Fi only version and to 90 days for the Wi-Fi and 3G versions.