iPad sets off excitement
January 30, 2010
Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced on Wednesday night what the U.S. technology company Apple hopes will be the coolest device on the planet: a slender tablet computer called the iPad. For all the hoopla surrounding it, however, the question is whether the iPad can achieve anything close to the success of the iPhone, which transformed the cellphone and forced the industry to race to catch up. Apple is positioning the device somewhere between a laptop and a smartphone.
With a thickness of just 1.25 cm and weighing 680 gm, the device will vividly display books, newspapers, websites and videos on a 24.3-cm glass touch screen. Giving media companies another way to sell content, it may herald a new era for publishing. But the iPad lacks some features common in laptops and phones. To its instant critics, it was a little more than an over-size iPod Touch. A camera is absent, and Flash, the software that handles video and animation on the Web, does not work on the device.
Mr.Jobs presented the iPad to an enthusiastic crowd and said that the iPad was the best device for certain kinds of computing such as browsing the Web, reading e-books and playing video. One question is whether there is enough room for another device in the cluttered lives of consumers.