Apple iPad: Jobs blows netbooks out of the water

Steve Jobs has finally unveiled the must-have gadget for 2010: the Apple iPad. Dressed in his uniform of turtle-neck and blue jeans, he starting by teasing his audience of journalists with marketing spiel: "Everybody uses a laptop and/or a smartphone. And the question has arisen, lately, is there room for a device in the middle? We've questioned this for years ourselves, but the bar is pretty high."

Jobs then went on to explain why this device in the middle is NOT the netbook: "They're slow, run on clunky PC software... just cheap laptops."

At that point, Jobs whipped out from behind a chair what we've all been waiting for: an iPad. It's pretty much what we expected: a jumbo iPhone. And after all the rumours, here are the facts:

Weight: 700g
Dimensions: 0.5 inches thick
Display: 9.7inches
Battery life: 10 hours (1 month on standby!)
Memory: 16-64GB flash
Processing power: 1GHz Apple A4 chip
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth
Price: $499 (£309) for a 16GB model, $599 for 32GB, $699 (£432) for 64GB. Add $130 to each of those prices for a 3G model.
Released: 60 days for Wi-Fi only models; 90 days for 3G models.

Most exciting is the fact that the iPad is comparable in price to a netbook. Other manufacturers are going to have to raise their game. So what can you do with your iPad? For a video demonstration see here, but it was widely expected that Apple would attempt to break into the lucrative emerging ebooks market - currently cornered by Amazon with its Kindle. Sure enough, owners of the iPad will be able to buy books via iBooks.

For the moment, you can use all your current iPhone apps; they will just be scaled up for the larger screen. It seems a waste of the extra space, but no doubt developers will quickly modify their apps for the iPad. "If a developer spends some time modifying their application, they can take advantage of the large touchscreen display," says Scott Forstall, head of iPhone apps. "We think it's going to be a whole other gold rush for developers."

One developer was given the opportunity to demonstrate its app built specifically for the iPad - in just three weeks. Martin Nisenholtz of the New York Times demonstrated what was essentially a facsimile of the print paper. Users can save stories, resize text and change columns, skim photos and play video - but it's not exactly the revolution print journalists were hoping would save their industry.

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING:Claudine Beaumont, the Daily Telegraph: "The iPad's slick, neat user interface, instant familiarity and surprisingly low price - the entry level model will cost just $499 (£309) - are expected to make this device a huge success. It won't replace your laptop, but I think it may have sounded the death knell for netbook computers."

Adam Frucci, Engadget: "If this is supposed to be a replacement for netbooks, how can it possibly not have multitasking? Are you saying I can't listen to Pandora while writing a document? I can't have my Twitter app open at the same time as my browser? I can't have AIM open at the same time as my email? Are you kidding me? This alone guarantees that I will not buy this product."

Mark Wilson, Gizmodo: "Apple didn't really sell this point, but it's the single biggest benefit of the iPad: speed. It feels at least a generation faster than the iPhone 3GS."

Donald Bell, CNET: "Really, it's the casual computer user that will see the biggest benefit from the iPad. The kind of person who doesn't own an iPhone or a laptop and would be happy to browse the New York Times stories over morning coffee, if it didn't mean sitting at a computer desk."

Jim Sloane, Deloitte: "These devices will contribute to the growing ubiquity of computing in the home, heralding an era in which connected, browser based devices become as ubiquitous in the living room as scatter cushions." ·