Apple Aims to Validate Tablet Concept with iPad Design

by Cameron Sturdevant

Steve Jobs announces the name of the latest Apple device, the iPad.

Jobs holds up an iPad for the first public look at the tablet device Apple thinks will fill a gap between its iPhone and MacBooks.

Jobs projected the display of his iPad during his demonstration of the new tablet device.

One version of the charging dock enables the iPad to double as a digital photo frame.

Another version of the charging dock adds a mechanical keyboard for heavy-duty typing projects.

Using an iPad in the wild is a little less glamorous than the thin and light tablet’s svelte appearance would imply.

Seen from the rear, the iPad has a sealed battery that Apple has benchmarked at 10 hours while showing video and a month of standby capacity. No claims were made as to the batterys service life replacement.

I’m a long-time user of the Apple iPhone and the use and performance of the iPad was very similar in terms of applications (YouTube shown here). The iPad does have a nice feel in the hand. I wanted to “accidentally” drop it to see the result, but prudence deterred me.

Here you see e-mail messages along the left side with a PDF image opened from an attachment on the right. (It’s the Paris metro map.)

Here is the 30-pin dock and built-in speakers. There is a camera connection kit to get photos directly into the iPad.

Here is the headphone jack to work with the built-in speakers.

The New York Times made a couple of appearances. Here is the Safari demo page.

The iPad lets readers insert personalized bookmarks into any file.

Like other Mac devices such as the MacBook, it’s easy to browse through and then expand photos.

Like all other PCs, the iPad includes a calendar application. Here is a detail view.

This is a detail view of the contact management feature.

Here is a view for a satellite.

Manage your music library here.

Movie display looked great during the demo. Apple claims you can watch 10 hours of video on a single charge.

Here is a view of Jobs composing a new e-mail message. When I typed on the iPad in the demonstration area, it was responsive, if a bit ginger.