Anavrin » Overview » iPad FAQ

iPad: What We Know

 

The mind boggling media run up to the announcement of the iPad was crazy, it is upon us now.  We are waiting for it to actually go on sale and ship some time in March.

 

What are the intended uses? Web browsing, reading and sending email, view photos, watch videos, listen to music, play games, read e-books.

Is My Kindle going to Work? Since the iPad is backward compatible the Kindle App will work.

Keyboarding? Apple announced a keyboard dock with the iPad and has said that they have a bluetooth profile that will allow the machine to use an external bluetooth keyboard as well.

How do sync my computer with Apple iPad?
iPad syncs with iTunes just like the iPhone and iPod touch, and you can sync all of your contacts, photos, music, movies, TV shows, applications easily from your Mac or PC. You can download iTunes for free.

 

Shipping Date: Apple has said 60 days for the US with the wifi and 3G versions. 90 days for the international versions to ship. This should put it in your hands some time in late March.

 

How much will it cost? The starting model will be $499 and will be Wifi only and 16 GB in capacity. Double the capacity for $100 up to the 64 GB model and it will cost $699 USD. If you want your iPad with 3G wireless service, that will add $130 to the price of the device.

 

• 16 GB Wifi     $499
• 32 GB Wifi     $599
• 64 GB Wifi     $699
• 16 GB Wifi/3G $629
• 32 GB Wifi/3G $729
• 64 GB Wifi/3G $829

 

    This will weigh the iPad in at 6 models and split it similarly to the iPod Touch/iPhone in capabilities. Also the 3G adds A-GPS to the mix as well.

 

    Some are complaining about the $130 price for the addition of the 3G capabilities saying that it should add just $10-20 to the price of the device, but this is Apple, when do they ever not take the opportunity to charge as much as they can for anything. Extra ram for you Mac through the Apple store anyone...?

 

What are the Physical Specs? The iPad measures about 9.62x7.5x.5 inches. That gives a diaganol screen measure of 9.7" inches. The iPad weighs in at 1.5 pounds in the wifi form factor, and 1.6 pounds in the 3G. That puts it close to .5 pounds heavier than the Kindle. It will probably be uncomfortable to hold it one handed with out cradling it. You will also be connecting to the world via 802.11n wifi or 3G networking.

 

What are the Hardware Specs? It has an Apple A4 processor running at 1 Ghz in speed. The assumption is that it is a chip developed by PA Semi that Apple bought about 2 years ago. Obviously it has some under pinnings to the Arm chip in the iPhone because all the apps from the iPhone will run on the iPad. And the speed of the chip, if no other architecture are made to the chip is running about 50% faster in clock speed along. If they have made changes to the architecture to make it more efficient then the chip could be 50-100% faster in processing power than the iPhone CPU.  No word yet on how much RAM it has, and the assumption is that it will have at least 256 MB of RAM which is the same amount as the iPhone.

 

    There is no camera on the iPad, which is an odd omission in my opinion. This thing would be great as a Skypeing device and being able to snap pictures to your hearts content, and with the add thickness of the device it would be easy to add better auto focus, lense and sensor to it over the iPhone. From the inclusion of it on the Nintendo DSi we know it is something that people would like and use.

 

 "If there is a build-in-front-camera when they start selling ... it would be THE revolutionary, killer video-chat-device and MY MUST-HAVE reason," said an unidentified commenter on a 9to5Mac blog that asked readers to vote on whether they would buy an iPad.

 

What is the Screen Technology? The screen is 9.7" measured diagonally. It uses a LED Back light with IPS LCD screen. IPS stands for In-Plane Switching. This is the same tech that is used in the new iMac's, and allows for a brighter screen and wide viewing angles. The Screen resolution is 1024 X 768 pixels. This is the standard 4:3 ratio, not the more popular 16:9.  This will allow the screen to display 720p shows and movies. And with the iPod connector on the bottom, you will be able to hook this bad boy up to a TV with the composite cables at 576p or to any VGA capable display up to 1024x768.  That gives a PPI of 132.

 

What is the Battery Life? Apple is claiming that the battery will last 10 hours under use, and 1 month in standby mode. These of course are Apple's claims, what it will be like in the real world is anyone's guess, but usually it is about 20-30% less than the manufacturer's claim. That will still give the iPad a 7-8 hour battery life, which would be in line with what most netbooks offer. How does this compare with the Kindle? The Kindle with the radio off, will run for about 3000 pages before recharge is needed, which equals to about 30-40 hours of actual usage. The creavet here is this is with the radio off and the fact that the Kindle is much more limited in what it can do. 

 

 

What Operating System will it Run? There has been no hard facts here, but from reports from different reporting agencies it looks to be running a version of the iPhone OS 3.2. Which makes sense from the backwards compatibility to iPhone Apps.

 

Data connection Plan Cost?    In the US it will cost $15/month for 250 MB of transfer, or $30 a month for unlimited data transfers. This through AT&T of course. The good news is that the iPad is unlocked and will not come with any kind of contract obligation. The bad news is that the only GSM provider in the US besides AT&T is T-Mobile and they us a non-standard band for 3G, so the iPad won't work with anyone in the US but AT&T. And if you want to pop your SIM out of your iPhone or other smart phone into your iPad, well, you are out of luck. The iPad only uses MicroSim's whatever they are.

 

 

There is still no Flash support?    During his presentation, Jobs went to a page that had a flash video on it. It was just a big open white space on the screen with the little LEGO brick saying that you needed this plugin.  There is no official word on if it will support Flash, but I would say no. It runs iPhone OS 3.2, and that doesn't supposrt Flash.

 

 

Adobe had this to say: Brad Arkin, Adobe's director for product security and privacy, dismissed those arguments today. In a tweet, Arkin said: "Upcoming flash player 10.1 will be on 19 of the top 20 smart phones. Handset proc[essor] and mobile network are not issues."

Adrian Ludwig, who works on the Flash team, was more blunt. "It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers," said Ludwig in an entry on Adobe's Flash platform blog. "Without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of Web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the Web."

 

Things to that you might not like. 

The iPad has a large somewhat fugly bezel. I like a thin bezel, but that will make a device much more fragile. So hate it on a LCD monitor, but it is a necessary, though unliked evil on the iPad.  

Of course there is no camera. 

 

iPad has a touch screen only keyboard, but that can be remedied with a Bluetooth keyboard, or the keyboard dock. Just need to get to work on a metamorphic screen and we will be all good.  

 

No HDMI or DisplayPort output. These would be nice, but don't really fit into what this thing is about.

No Built in USB. There is no built in USB to hook things like cameras or other devices to the machine. Then again, that isn't the intended role.

No Widescreen display. This is a 6 of one, half dozen of the other. Widescreen orientation would be nice on the display, but not a deal breaker.

 

Unlocked, but unusable. Even though the radio will come unlocked, it won't work with T-Mobile's 3G, and AT&T is the only other game in town.

 

Closed App ecosystem. Unless you jail break it, you will only be able to play the way that Daddy Steve says you can, and there is no guarantee that the future iPhone OS will be jail breakable.

Multi-Tasking is still MIA unless you jailbreak your phone.

 

Drag and Drop File Management. You have to use your iTunes app to manage any and all of your files on your machine, and if you try and plug it into a machine at work or any besides the one it is sync'ed to it is all gone...

 

NO SD Card slot or other expandable memory. Some people really like to fill their devices up to the gills with music and content, and with out a nice way to expand the memory of the device, you are stuck with the shipped 16, 32, 64 GB of Flash storage. A microSD slot would have been easy and simple. I personally use the network to store my data, so I use next to nothing on my storage.

NO Standard GPS and 3G. I will end up getting a 16 GB 3G model because I want/need the GPS, and when there is a time where I don't have a wifi, the data connection will be nice. But from what I have read, 3G/GPS, would only have risen the cost of the unit by $10-20, but Apple is going to ask for $130 for that capability. Then again, if you can charge that much, why not?

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