Apple officially announces the iPad

When Steve Jobs walked out on stage last Wednesday, there was little doubt about what he would be announcing; after months of speculation, Apple Inc. has finally introduced us to the iPad.
Apple's newest offering, a tablet designed to bridge the gap between smart phones and computers, lived up to the hype that had been surrounding the tablet for months on the Internet. Speculation about the tablet had been building for several weeks leading up to the announcement. It was topped off by a comment made the night before the announcement by McGraw-Hill Chief Executive Terry McGraw which suggested the product announced the following day would run on the iPhone operating system, which in fact it will.
Jobs, who addressed the San Fransisco, California crowd of Apple faithful in his trademark black turtleneck and bluejeans, called the iPad "a magical and revolutionary product".
The iPad will feature a full on-screen touch QWERTY keyboard, which Jobs used to demonstrate how the device can send e-mail and browse the Web. According to Jobs, the device is about half an inch thick and weighs no more than 1.5 pounds. The iPad also boasts a 9.7 inch touch screen and a battery that will last for 10 hours, or more than a month when in standby mode.
Every iPad will come equipped with WiFi but only some will be able to connect to 3G cell phone networks. US buyers will be able to get a data plan from wireless carrier AT&T but there is no word on which wireless carrier will support the iPad in Canada. Jobs mentioned that international carriers will be announced in June or July, leaving the possibility for a summer release in Canada.
The price of the iPad will depend on the size of the hard drive. The 16GB model will retail for US $499 and the 32GB model for US $599, while the largest model, the 64GB drive, will cost US $799. Adding the capability to connect to 3G networks will cost you an additional US $130.
The first non-WiFi iPad models will ship in the US in 60 days while the WiFi editions will begin shipping in 90 days.
The iPad will be able to run any application from Apple's App Store, which currently has over 140,000 applications that have been downloaded three billion times by iPhone and iTouch users.
The New York Times showed the crowd how it plans to use the iPad to improve the New York Times application, while both Electronic Arts and Major League Baseball demonstrated how they plan to use the iPad to further connect with fans.
In order to appeal to business users, Apple also unveiled a new version of its iWork productivity software.
In addition to the app store, Apple also announced a new online book store, iBooks, which users can then use to download digital copies of books that they can then read on the iPad. This feature is very similar to that of Amazon.com's Kindle; an electronic reader that users can use to download books over 3G cell phone networks.
Despite all the hype, some people are still not convinced. The biggest complaint is that users will not be able to multitask on the device. On a notebook, users can run any number of programs at once; while the iPad will have more of a cell phone feel to it in that users can only do one thing at once. Another big complaint is that the iPad will not support flash programs. Those looking to stream videos from the Web will be out of luck unless they carry a flash-enabled device with them. There are also no USB ports, making printing and saving to external memory virtually impossible.
The iPad will probably be in high demand at its initial release simply because it is an Apple product that was built up for months. Whether it will truly narrow the gap between cell phones and notebooks, and whether people are ready for their computer and cell phone to be the same device, is yet to be seen.