NEW IT World: January 2010

Apple finally unveiled its tablet computer

Apple has done a fantabulous job,ipad is mindblowing!!!!!!!

The iPad is, as predicted, essentially a giant iPod Touch: aluminum-backed, half-inch thin, with a 10-inch screen surrounded by a shiny black border. At the bottom, there's the standard iPod/iPhone connector and a single Home button. It will be available in models ranging from $499 (16 gigs of memory, Wi-Fi) to $830 (64 gigs of memory, Wi-Fi and 3G cellular).
The cellular signal will be provided by AT&T for $15 a month (250 megabytes of data transferred -- think e-mail only) or $30 a month, unlimited. Amazingly, those AT&T deals involve no contract. You can cancel whenever you like. And since this thing isn't a phone, you don't have to worry about dropped calls; you're paying exclusively for Internet service.
There's no reason you couldn't use it to make calls using Skype, of course -- Apple says that virtually all of the existing 140,000 iPhone apps run fine on the iPad. (You can run them either at regular tiny size, or blown up double with some loss of clarity.)
Now, though, it looks like Apple really has created something new. Criticisms of "Like a laptop" and "a big iPod Touch" don't really do justice to the possibilities.
The iPad as an e-book reader is a no-brainer. It's just infinitely better-looking and more responsive than the Kindle, not to mention it has color and doesn't require external illumination. (Book fans should note, however, that the iPad e-bookstore won't offer bestsellers at $10 each, like Amazon and Barnes & Noble do. And although Apple says the iPad has a 10-hour battery life, it hasn't yet said "doing what." Playing video eats up battery a lot faster than reading e-books.)
Web browsing, painting programs, TV and movies, newspapers and magazines all seem like naturals on this 1.5-pound machine, too.
Overall, the iPad seems like a dream screen for reading and watching--at some loss of convenience in creating. True, there's an on-screen keyboard, big enough to type on with both hands in the usual way. And Apple will offer a specialized multitouch word processor, spreadsheet and presentation app for $10 each. But I'm guessing that, with no mouse and no physical keys to feel, writing and editing will be more effort than on a laptop. (Apple will also sell an external keyboard that holds the iPad upright as you type. Then again, if you need to carry all that around, maybe a laptop would make more sense.)
Apple hasn't given the thing to any reviewers yet, there are no iPad-only apps yet (there will be), the e-bookstore hasn't gone online yet, and so on.

Like the iPhone, the iPad is really a vessel, a tool, a 1.5-pound sack of potential. It may become many things. It may change an industry or two, or it may not. It may introduce a new category -- something between phone and laptop -- or it may not.