Apple IPAD thread

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iPad

CNET live blog

9:53 a.m. PST: OK, we're all settled inside Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where the event should get going in just under 10 minutes. I'm with CNET reviewer Donald Bell, who will be providing some occasional commentary today. The place is packed already, and Bob Dylan is on the speakers. The stage is a bit of a different setup than we've seen at these events before, with a comfortable-looking leather chair and table set up on the left.

10:01 a.m.: Lights are lowering, and music is getting turned down. Here we go.

10:01 a.m.: Steve Jobs takes the stage to a standing ovation.

10:02 a.m.: He says he wants to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary product today. But first a few updates to other products.

iPods are up first. Steve says the 250 millionth iPod was sold last week.

10:03 a.m.: Now he's talking about retail stores.

And another store, the App Store, is an "incredible phenomenon" he says. With 140,000 apps in the App Store, there have been 3 billion downloads over the past 18 months

10:04 a.m.: Finally, he shows an old photo of himself and Woz and says since they started the company in 1976, and now they have a company making $15.6 billion in revenue. "Apple is an over-$50 billion company now," he says.

10:05 a.m.: He is going to explain where the revenue comes from: iPods, iPhones, and Macs. "What's interesting," he says, is that iPods, iPhones, and Macs are mobile devices. Apple is a mobile device company. "That's what we do."

10:06 a.m.: Apple is the largest mobile devices company in the world now, by revenue, according to Jobs. He says this includes Sony, Samsung, and Nokia's mobile devices units.

10:06 a.m.: That's the end of the updates. Now to the main event.

He shows a photo of Moses holding a tablet. "I chuckled when I saw this."

10:07 a.m.: Quick history lesson: The 1991 PowerBook is on the screen now. It's the first modern laptop, he tells us.

He shows the 2007 original iPhone, too.

"All of us use laptops and smartphones now," he says. "The question has arisen lately, is there room for a third category of device in the middle?"

10:09 a.m.: In order to create a new category of devices, they have to be really good at doing some important things, he says. That includes Web browsing, e-mail, photos, watching video, listening to music, playing games, and reading e-books.

10:09 a.m.: Some people have thought that's a Netbook, he says. "The problem is Netbooks aren't better at anything," he says to loud laughter and applause.

"They're just cheap laptops. We think we have something better."

10:10 a.m.: iPad is the name.

10:10 a.m.: It's a giant iPod Touch-looking device, just like we thought. Same home button, same bezel.

10:11 a.m.: You can browse the Web with it, using the touch screen to navigate.

10:11 a.m.: It can be oriented to landscape or portrait mode.

10:12 a.m.: He shows e-mail, Facebook, and The New York Times as examples of sites to visit. The virtual keyboard is landscape.

10:12 a.m.: There's a calendar and address book for contacts. And maps using Google Maps, too.

10:13 a.m.: The iPad will have access to the iTunes Store.

10:13 a.m.: You can also watch YouTube, TV shows, and movies on it. Now Jobs is going to demo the device for us.

10:14 a.m.: He takes a seat in that leather chair, reclining like he's in a living room.

You slide to unlock the screen just like an iPhone. He pulls up The New York Times again. Shows how you can scroll up and down, zoom with his fingers.

10:16 a.m.: He clicks the Safari bookmark bar to pick other sites like Time.com and Fandango. He stresses that you get the "whole web site" not just a mobile version of these sites.

10:17 a.m.: Now onto e-mail. There's a dropdown in-box menu on the left, while the text of emails show up on the right. You can zoom in on images in the body of the email, tap to open PDF attachments.

10:18 a.m.: Now he's pretending to send an e-mail to two of his execs at Apple, Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall.

10:20 a.m.: Photos can be viewed in stacks organized by events, and viewed in portrait or landscape. You sort through by flicking with your finger. A bottom bar looks like a film strip you can scroll through to see all photos in an album. Can organize by faces, places, or events, just like iPhoto.

Editor's note: Meanwhile, CNET's Ina Fried notes that all the tablet chatter has Twitter on a delay. Posts are taking 8 or 9 minutes to show up on the site. Reporter Caroline McCarthy wrote up that story here.

It can also do built-in slideshows from a drop-down menu, which he's demoing now.

10:21 a.m.: Now on to music. It has a "built-in iPod," he says.

10:22 a.m.: It plays your music and displays album artwork. You can scroll through your music library from a menu on the left. When you select an album, a pop-up window will show all the songs on that album.

10:23 a.m.: We're getting an iTunes demo now. You can buy movies, TV shows, music, podcasts, and iTunes U stuff.

10:23 a.m.: He runs through the calendar and contacts real quick. But now he's showing maps.

10:24 a.m.: It works just like Google Maps on an iPhone.

10:25 a.m.: YouTube HD videos are up now. You can watch videos in portrait or landscape.

10:26 a.m.: He shows how you can watch downloaded movies and TV shows, too. With movies (he picked "Star Trek"), you can jump ahead to particular chapters you want to watch from a menu that appears on the left.

10:27 a.m.: He's showing his favorite sequence from "Up" now--a Pixar movie of course.

"And that gives you an overview of what the iPad can do," he says.

10:28 a.m.: He's going to talk specs now. The iPad is 0.5 inches thin and weighs 1.5 pounds. A 9.7-inch IPS display, the same display used in the latest-generation iMac.

10:29 a.m.: It has a full capacitive multitouch screen, and a 1Ghz custom Apple chip called A4. It's the most advanced chip they've done, he says: processor, graphics, i/o memory controller on one chip. It can have 16, 32, or 64GB of SSD storage.

10:29 a.m.: It has 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, an accelerometer, a compass, and 10-hour battery life.

The battery life elicits some enthusiastic applause from the audience.

There's also one month of standby battery life. You can leave it asleep and not use it for 30 days.