Behold, the iPad.

In a presentation today that bred more anticipation than tonight's State of the Union speech, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the company's new tablet computer, the touch-screen iPad.

In making the announcement today in San Francisco, Jobs noted that there are two main mobile computing devices now, laptops and smartphones. He dismissed netbooks as "cheap laptops" and then said, “We think we've got something that is better. We call it the iPad."

The tablet looks in many ways like a bigger version of the iPhone, which quickly made Apple a serious player in the smartphone market.


The iPad has thick black borders on the sides, it's a half-inch thick and features a 9.7-inch multi-touch display.

It comes with 6, 32 or 64 GB of flash storage and features Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and an accelerometer and compass. The battery is billed as lasting 10 hours. It starts at $499 and the top model with 3G will cost $829.

The iPad has Wi-Fi and there are two wireless plans. For 250MB a month, you pay $14.99. For unlimited use, you pay $29.99. AT&T will provide the service. There's no contract.

The first models will ship in 60 days.

The iPad will run applications from the iPhone store and developers will get new tools to build apps for the bigger device.

Jobs said it’s a dream to type on, is a great way to use iTunes -- it has a built-in iPod -- and watch TV shows and movies, calling it more intimate than a laptop.
Browsing a newspaper site, he pointed out that the “whole Web site is in your hand,” according to the Journal. A newspaper app looks more like an actual newspaper than it does on the iPhone.

The iPad's e-book functionality builds on what the Kindle and other readers began, Jobs said. "We are going to stand on their shoulders and go a little bit further," he said.

The iPad has an iBookstore with five partners: Penguin, Harper Collins, Simon Schuster, Macmillan and Hachette.

Browsing through a book mimics turning the pages of a book. Books can use video and photos.

Electronics Arts showed off its "Need for Speed" game. With the additional screen space, the company added a shifter and rearview mirrors, Travis Boatman from EA said.

Apple has a challenge with the iPad. It'll have to show why consumers ought to pay for yet another Internet-connected screen, on top of the TVs, computers and smart phones they already have. Tablet computers have existed for a decade, with little success.

The device was introduced after weeks of rumors.

The best report came from The Onion under the headline “Frantic Steve Jobs stays up all night designing the tablet.”

Jobs finally “glued nine separate iPhones to the back of a plastic cafeteria tray. ‘OK, yeah, this will work. This will definitely work. Just need to write 'tablet' on this little strip of masking tape here and I'm golden.'"

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