Hardware:
On the top of the device, there’s a standard headphone jack and a tiny mike hole. The speaker on the bottom edge next the USB out is considerably more powerful than the one on the iPhone, and is plenty adequate for watching movies and music videos — we watched Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” video and the Bob Dylan 1966 “World Tour (The Home Movies)” and had no problem hearing dialogue or lyrics, and it wasn’t even turned up all the way.

That said, you’ll get much more satisfaction out of connecting the device to external speakers via a standard audio cable, or, even better, to a pair of wireless speakers via Bluetooth. We weren’t able to connect via the iPad’s cable to the USB input in the Suzuki Kizashi’s audio system, which meant we couldn’t control the iPad through the car’s dashboard, but we were able to pair it via Bluetooth in about a minute using the exact same process as on an iPhone. Sound quality through the car’s Rockford Fosgate speakers was excellent — the only downside was having to use the iPad to skip tracks or pause, but that was actually almost easier considering the iPad touchscreen’s huge screen and easily navigable touchscreen interface.

Buying music and video:
The iTunes store on the iPad is a delightful new addition to Apple’s music and video marketplace, and is a cross between the extensive boxes and scrolling boxes you’ll find on desktop iTunes, and the minimal listings on the iPhone. You get about 20 different thumbnails to choose from on any page you happen to be on. You can choose home pages by Genre, Featured, Top Charts, and Genius as well as sample any song before you buy it. As with other iterations of the iTunes store, you can also just enter a band, album, or song name into the search field and find an album. The Music Video store is just as unsatisfying a browse as on regular iTunes — there are a few “Hot Music Video” selections to choose from on the home page, but you’re on your own with just searching by name for anything else.

Playing music and videos:
The iPod function is a partially reduced version of desktop iTunes — side-by-side album thumbnails of albums that flip open when you touch them, or lists with smaller thumbnails in artist or song view. Oddly, there’s no Cover Flow option in the iPod player, which would be nice considering how beautiful the album art looks on the iPad’s 9.7-inch screen (gorgeous album art automatically fills the screen when you’re playing an album).

Music videos also look stunning on the iPad’s big screen, and holding the thing in your hand or lap while watching a clip is actually a more satisfying experience than watching it on your computer, if only because you aren’t distracted by a keyboard or someone texting you in the middle of it (remember, the iPad can’t multitask). Scrolling through your music video collection is much easier with big thumbnails at your disposal on a bigger touchscreen, too.

What we don’t like: The music player control buttons are relatively small and relegated to the top of the screen. It would be nice to have some oversized buttons, partly just for the fun of it, and partly for safety if you’re, say, driving your car.

Also, since the iPad doesn’t support Flash, the software that powers most of the streaming video on the Web, it can’t play any videos from Veoh, AOL Music, MTV, etc. The good news is that Veoh, at least, is working on a compatible app for streaming its music on the iPad. For now, you’ll have to get your free music video streaming on from YouTube, which looks pretty good on the iPod (we watched Vampire Weekend’s “Cousins” and it was as crispy as on the smaller iPod screen).

Reading iBooks:
The iPad’s built-in e-reader is miles ahead of the Kindle thanks to its fast page finger sweep page turning and color capability — perfect if you’re looking at vintage photos of Mick Jagger on the Rolling Stones 1969 tour in Ethan Russell and Gerard Van der Leun’s memoir Let It Bleed. But the touchscreen gets distractingly smudgy with fingerprints that are all too noticeable when you’re reading outside, in the sun (not a problem with the more dull black-and-white e-ink of the Kindle and other e-readers of its ilk).

The selection of books on the iBooks store is mostly of the bio and history variety and light on the picture-book variety. Photographs look stunningly crisp and clear, so we can’t wait for some coffee table titles like Mark Seliger’s The Music Book or anything by Anton Corbijn to make it onto the store.

The download on the iPad’s music apps:
At launch, there were only about 100 dedicated iPad music apps available in the iPad App Store, but that number is sure to grow in the coming days, weeks, and months.

Right now, most of what you’ll find is of the whimsical “Cat Piano” variety, as well as a whole boatload of other music making options (several instrument simulators, including “Pianist Pro,” “GrooveMaker,” “Accordion HD” and “DrumPad HD”). These are “HD” upgrades of existing iPhone apps — mainly what you’re getting is a much larger version of the existing app without any loss in graphic quality or responsiveness, something that comes in handy when you’re playing a tune, mixing a track, or spinning your tunes on a virtual DJ deck.

In effect, though, this larger screen view along with the touchscreen capability brings these apps — in conjunction with the iPad — close to the bona fide instrument realm. “Baby Decks DJ,” a blown-up version of “Baby Scratch,” lets you have infinitely better control of a pair of virtual turntables for scratching. Current launch apps like the Korg “iELECTRIBE,” a virtual touch-sensitive version of the Korg’s renowned ELECTRIBE-R analog beatbox, complete with all the same effect knobs, oscillator buttons, and samples, is a good example of where iPad music creation apps are headed in terms of verisimilitude with the meat-world inspiration. We’re also looking forward to seeing more of the music-meets-graphics-apps like Brain Eno’s “Trope” and “Air.” For now, we spent a few hours swiping our fingers all across the screen with “RJ Voyager for iPad” (a visual music doodling adventure by RJD2) and “I-Am-T-Pain” creator Smule’s “Magic Piano” (a surreal and innovative keyboard improv app that lets you listen to other players tickling the virtual ivories in real-time “pianoroulette”).

Surprisingly, there aren’t yet many iPad-optimized music playing or Internet radio apps. Of course, you can use any existing iPhone app on the iPad, but it will show up in reduced iPhone size in the center of your iPad screen (you can enlarge it on your screen, but then it gets annoyingly grainy). Pandora’s iPad app is similar to the iPad’s iPod functionality — control buttons at the top, but with the nifty addition of album covers for each song on a particular radio station scrolling across the top. Other iPad-specific-music-entertainment apps we didn’t get a chance to try out in full are Shazam, WunderRadio, NPR, Soundhound, and Musiic. Expect a more details roundup of iPad’s better music apps in the coming weeks.

One thing we don’t like about the iPad app store: the price of the apps are as a rule more expensive than on the iPhone. While some apps like Shazam and Pandora are free, most of the quality music making apps start at $9.99 and go up to as much as $24.99. Unless they’re free, the cheapest apps are about $2.99.

Bottom line:
The iPad just launched two days ago. Like the iPhone at launch, it needs some time to grow into its own, but you can see the big, responsive touchscreen’s potential, particularly with virtual-instrument/music-making apps, and we expect much of the innovation to come out of this space. Imagine Yamaha’s Tenori-on transported to the iPad screen, for example. We’re thinking entirely new instrument on this thing.

So, is the iPad better than the iPod or iPhone? In some ways, yes, but it’s no replacement. If you have the money, the iPad is a fun upscale toy and conversation starter. That said, its full potential won’t be realized for a year or two, at least. For now, it’s not an essential buy by any means, but keep watching this space, because there’s definitely a tablet in your future.

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While commenting on the e-reader/e-book market and the company’s intention to enter it in the next 2 years, the CEO of Chinese MID manufacturer Aigo also mentioned its intention to launch a MID tablet later this year. Using the provisional brand name of “AigoPad,” he also said the tablet would likely use Android as its operating system but didn’t disclose any more information beyond that.

As one of the main Chinese manufacturers specializing in MIDs, and e-readers and tablets being the hot products this year, this news doesn’t come as a complete surprise. But it should be interesting to see what Aigo comes up with keeping in mind its good track record of delivering interesting good products such as the recently featured N500 Maemo MID. The question is whether the “AigoPad” will be a smaller MID in-line with devices such as the Archos 5 Android or a larger device to compete with the upcoming generation of larger tablets like the Apple iPad.

Just two days after Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad, Sourcebits, a Bangalore, India-based company responsible for over 150 iPhone apps, announced plans to shift more than half of its 150-person development team over to a newly created iPad Lab. That venture will focus on building what Sourcebits touts as “super apps” for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.

“A super app is a ‘wow’ app, that unlocks something, that is more engaging,” said Brian Meehan, global head of product development for Sourcebits and steward of the new iPad Lab. But the “super apps” concept isn’t a new one for Sourcebits, which has followed that same approach when it comes to building iPhone and iPod touch applications.

Take Knocking Live Video, for example: The social networking app allows iPhones to stream live video to one another. Another Sourcebits offering, TweetGlobe, allows users to get GPS readings of the people they follow on Twitter.

Though Sourcebits followed its “super apps” approach long before rumors of an Apple reached fever pitch, Meehan is excited about the prospect of taking the super apps concept to the big screen, even if Apple’s tablet has been dismissed in some circles as an oversized iPod touch.

Meehan disagrees with that criticism. “My feeling is, people were unsure of the Amazon Kindle, and it’s had tremendous success,” he said. “But it has not one tenth of the iPad’s functions.” The iPhone met similar uncertainty after its unveiling in 2007, Meehan adds. “And even today, the iPhone’s capabilities are still being unlocked.”

For the next three months–the time between the iPad’s unveiling, the March release of initial iPad, and the arrival of the 3G-enabled version of a tablet in April–iPad Lab’s team of 80 developers plan on burning the midnight oil so that the iPad early adopters can expect a multitude of supercharged super apps will be waiting for them when they get their hands on a tablet.

Knocking Live will be one of the first apps upgraded for the iPad, though the new device’s lack of a video camera will limit it to the receiving end of video streams, much like second-generation iPod touch users. Meehan won’t divulge further what the iPad Lab is working on, only that high profile clients including GE and the Coca-Cola Company have already signed on. “We’re pretty much in 24-hour development right now,” he said.

Despite the iPad’s size and unique functionality when compared to Apple’s other mobile handhelds, the development processes turn out to be not much different, according to Meehan. As with most other iPhone apps, the older versions of Sourcebits’ offerings will run on the the iPad in an iPhone-sized window; you’ll also be able to double them in size with some pixelation. Meehan says that new apps will be compatible with both devices, meaning anyone who owns both an iPhone and an iPad will be able to buy a Sourcebits app once and sync it to both devices seamlessly.

Though Meehan is enthusiastic about the iPad’s enhanced capabilities compared to iPhone, he doesn’t anticipate that it will steal any of the iPhone’s thunder. “Gaming is obviously going to be a better experience on the larger screen,” he said. “But I don’t think we’re ever going to take away focus from the iPhone. The iPhone is always in your pocket.”

What Meehan does expect, though, is the decline of a different portable device. “When I think of my friends, family, students, I don’t think they’re buying a laptop,” he said.

Though Sourcebits will devote a huge portion of its task force to iPad development, the company is still developing apps for multiple platforms, including Palm Pre, Android, and BlackBerry. In general, the company works mostly with big name clients to produce what Meehan describes as “branded apps,” contracting with companies who want their own apps but don’t keep a developer on staff.

With the iPad as the new frontier in app development, Sourcebits has an opportunity to not only add a new dimension to its work with existing clients, but also use the iPad’s unique features to bring in new clients.

“We are focused on giving clients insights into what we can unlock,” Meehan said. “There’s a tremendous amount of things that developers will bring to the iPad.”

However, on rare occasion, a fledgling tech company creates a product that redefines innovation itself, a product that forever changes the way we think of computing and communication.

The iPad is not that product.

For the cave dwellers out there who haven’t heard about it, the iPad is Apple’s newest device, introduced late in January and set to be released sometime in April. With the same gorgeous and flavorful design as the iPhone and iPod Touch, the iPad joins Apple’s portable tech family as the obese, deficient younger brother.

At first glance, it looks like a ground-breaking device and a true game-changer, but upon further investigation, it becomes apparent that Apple’s new baby is nothing more than an iPod with a larger screen.

The first and foremost problem with the iPad is this notion that it is the absolute best way to experience the Internet. Apparently being able to see an entire page without scrolling is something of a big deal, as if using the scroll wheel on a mouse or pressing the down button is a task too difficult for the average computer user. What Apple isn’t telling you is that the browser on the iPad doesn’t have Flash support, which means you won’t be watching any Hulu or listening to any Pandora stations. Of course,  you can always waste your money, time and disk space on an app that lets you do what you can do on a normal computer for free.

So you’ve just downloaded Pandora Radio from the App Store — problem solved right?

Not really, because every time you need to do something other than listening to Pandora, you have to exit the application. The iPad, like the iPhone and iPod Touch, is not capable of multitasking. Multitasking means exactly what it sounds like it means: It’s the ability to do more than one thing at once. It’s being able to surf the Web while chatting on AIM. I’m only explaining this because multitasking is so common in computers that the average, not-so-nerdy computer user might not even think about it. Without the ability to do more than one thing at once, the quality of user experience declines significantly regardless of how high the quality of the applications on the device. It’s simple.

Software limitations like these are big problems, but the the bigger issues with the iPad lie under the hood.

Most computers have a few standard ports for connecting displays and peripheral devices, such as cameras and music players. The iPad has no standard ports; instead, there is one proprietary docking port. It’s the same port on the bottom of the iPhone. If you want to upload pictures from your camera or take music from a different media player you’ll need to buy Apple’s over-priced connection changers.  The iPad is too revolutionary to use the standard USB that practically every peripheral device on the market uses.

Most computers have two main input devices: a keyboard and a mouse. At this point you might be giving your newspaper the stink-eye, because you’re probably saying to yourself,

“Well duh, Ben Badio, it’s a tablet! It’s not supposed to have a keyboard and mouse!” Well some call that an innovation, but it’s really just another limitation. No matter how cool it seems, having to touch the screen with your fingers weakens the overall computer experience.

Those of you planning on buying iPads or other tablets can expect serious wrist cramping and finger fatigue, not to mention sore fingertips from poking a piece of glass over and over again. When it comes to ease and precision of use, the keyboard and mouse combo always prevails. It’s just the way computers are supposed to be.

So yes, the iPad is a brick with Internet, but please, don’t blame Apple. It’s not like Apple is doing something that has never been done before. Keyboard-free touch-enabled devices have been attempted by a number of companies. In the early 2000s, a number of PC manufacturers tried to market tablet PCs running a special version of Windows XP. They failed to sell a significant number of devices. Back in the ’90s, a touch-enabled device called the “Newton” was produced and unsuccessfully marketed by none other than Apple.

The iPad is not their first attempt.

The reason these tablets fail is that a tablet is not a very functional device. The tablet market is a mirage. Tablets seem like the future because they aren’t conventional, but what many don’t realize is that those typical conventions are what make computers so easy to use. Tablets don’t do anything a typical notebook can’t do, but they can’t do a lot of what a typical notebook can do. What you get with a tablet is an in-between device. It’s a missing link in the evolution of the computer that should remain missing.

If you really want to buy an IPAD, I recommend always a netbook. Netbooks, with compact size and low price are the real future of mobile computing. For less than $ 499 you can use a netbook with Wi-Fi or 3G connection to find a hard drive, high performance, a couple doors USB, a VGA port for display, and best of all, a keyboard and mouse.

In other words, spend your money on a real computer.

The device comes in the form of a tablet, just as everyone speculated, but is called an iPad, instead of the rumoured iSlate or iTablet. Frankly, iPad is such a lousy name for an Apple product!

Anyway, don’t be turned off by its name.

The iPad is a 0.5in thick, 9.6in x 7.5in, 1.5/1.6 lb. tablet with 9.7 in LED-backlit display with full multi-touch capability. The resolution, however, falls short of wide-screen, at 1024×768.

And similar to the iPhone, the touchscreen has fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating.

Its similarities with the iPod Touch don’t stop there – the iPad has an accelerometer, ambient light sensor, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and comes in 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of solid state storage.

And it runs most of the apps on available on the iTunes App Store! Yes, that means your iPod Touch/iPhone apps will work – except those that require a camera or a phone, of course.

Running applications that were designed for the iPod Touch/iPhone screen, however, will get automatically scaled to allow it to be displayed in full screen.

Awesome, huh? Imagine, Super Monkey Ball on that gorgeous screen! Multimedia capability, audio/video playback, speakers, headphone jack and mic, comes standard on this tablet, even allowing you to connect it to the TV or projector, using an optional cable.

What is different on the iPad, as compared to the iPod Touch, is the optional support for 3G. The 3G version comes with full location-aware functionality (WiFi, Digital Compass, Assisted GPS and Cellular), as opposed to WiFi and Digital Compass support on the WiFi only, non-3G model.

And oh, the 3G connection is not locked to one provider. Apple, however, is negotiating with carriers to provide affordable pre-paid packages for data.

The iPad also comes with its own store – the iTunes App Store works, but the new store is the iBooks store. iBooks now mean electronic books, instead of the old portable laptops that Apple used to make.

This puts the iPad in direct competition to Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

Funny, though, with ebook readers from Amazon and B&N having iPhone/iPod Touch versions, the iPad can now automatically render books bought from both stores. How cool is that? Imagine having access to all those three bookstores!

The iPad comes with optional accessories, such as Dock Connector to VGA/Composite/Component cable adapter, the Dock, Camera Connection Kit (to let you retrieve photos from your digital cameras), an iPod Keyboard Dock (Dock connected to a keyboard) and a case.

Two surprises that came with the iPad – 1GHz Apple A4 Processor and the price. The processor is the first high-performance, low-power SoC designed by Apple.

This may be from their acquisition of PA Semiconductors not too long ago. This signals that this same chip will probably run the next generation iPhones and iPod Touches.

The price came as a surprise, too. The WiFi-only 16GB iPad is pegged at $499, with the 32GB at $599 and 64GB at $699. The WiFi+3G models are USD130 more. Not bad, I’d say.

Sounds great on paper, right? There are quite a number of questions that can only be answered when the device ships in 60 days.

Personally, the 10-hour battery rating claimed by Apple is equivalent to how many hours in actual real world scenarios.

Usually, when Apple say seven hours, you’d get five. Does this mean that, on average, we get from six to eight hours on the iPad?

The iPad obviously runs on the iPhone OS, does it mean that there is still no multi-tasking on this version, iPhone OS 3.2?

Will the WiFi-only version tether with the iPhone? How much RAM does it come with (considering the iPhone 3GS comes with 256MB and the Google Nexus One comes with 512MB)?

I cannot wait for TechNews Lab to get its review unit (unless I get one first, of course. hahaha).
So, if you want to see the iPad technical specifications, features, etc., go to http://apple.com/ipad.

It was fascinating to hear how Steve Jobs was positioning both Apple as a manufacturer of mobile devices larger than Sony, Samsung and Nokia in that context, and then the iPad as a new category of product in opposition to the netbook.  It’s well worth listening to the keynote, and watching the slick demonstrations.  For me iPad follows two important paths.  The first is simple user experience and the second is Darwinian divergence in product categories.

On the first path, the iPad uses the iPhone operating system with a gorgeous looking 9.7 inch multi-touch screen, 16-64GB of storage, Wi-Fi, 3G, the standard iPod/iPhone 30 pin connector and not much else – go here for more explanation and tech details.  It’s a device very much oriented towards consuming content from the web, your photos, video and e-books.  I called up David Jennings who wrote the excellent Net, Blogs and Rock and Roll to ask him about the significance of the iPod when it first came out, and what he thought of the iPad.  He was quick to point out that the ergonomics of the iPod and iPad are different – you can walk down the street listening to music, but you aren’t going to be walking round much with your iPad.  However, we both reminisced about the point just over a decade ago when  portable mini disk players and the early MP3 players started.

There were plenty of devices from Sony, RIO and Creative, and they just started to get really useful when the capacity jumped in to Gigabytes and you could take a huge chunk of your song collection with you rather than having to make painful choices for each trip.  I remember buying Creative MP3 players for my nephews, but not thinking of one for myself because they seemed just too clunky and full of features.  Just at that time Apple comes out with the iPod and simplifies the player’s operating system to just the few things that are useful, and creates iTunes which was significantly easier to plug in to and use than the media players used by the rest of the market.  So it was combination of elegant design, simple user interface and timing on capacity (the first iPods had 5Gb) which helped iPod define the category and then take off to get the enormous market share they now have.  I jumped in at the third generation and have had an iPod strapped to my belt ever since.  David thinks he’ll get seduced in to an iPad, but probably not until the second iteration.

When I look at the simplicity of the book interface on the colour multi-touch screen, combined with  what they are doing with the iBooks store and adopting the EPUB standard, I’m convinced this will be the product  that takes the e-book/reader concept mainstream.  The simplicity of the limited set of functionality will appeal to the technologically challenged who think about  using a netbook or a laptop to consume the Internet on something much bigger than their mobile phone, but just don’t want the hassle and learning curve of getting to grips with a PC or a Mac.  My technophobe wife is already interested, so I think there is going to be a broad appeal amongst that new techno challenged demographic who want to mostly consume with a little creation, and don’t need all the power of a PC.

• iTunes no longer ignores your “Remember password for purchases” setting.
• Addresses problems with syncing some Smart Playlists and Podcasts with iPod.
• Resolves a problem recognizing when iPod is connected.
• Addresses issues that affect stability and performance.

The “remember password for purchases” fix will be very popular, since it has been the biggest complaint we’ve ever received from iPhone Atlas readers about iTunes.

iTunes 9.0.3 is available for download via Software Update or you can grab the installer here.

There is currently no indication that this update adds features for iPad, but it’s really to early to tell that yet. If you find support for the iPad or have other comments about the update please let us know by posting a comment.

Its a classic case of, “I’m right your wrong”, with no one budging on either side. Apple says flash is buggy and the main reason Macs crash all the time. Adobe says flash is used on at least 70% of the internet. Flash does take a lot of processing power so these mobile devices would be hard pressed to run them without degrading performance. But many popular websites rely in it. I don’t what I am going to do when I can’t browse ipodfan.com on my iPad.

HTML5 will be a big thing to watch out for. Its widespread use could mean a fair amount of competition for Flash. But, it will take time to be widely adopted. Until then, if own and iPod or iPhone or you plan on buying an iPad, you will just have to wait.