The iPad: does it have wings? I guess that Apple hopes it will fly out of the shops, anyway. Some people are saying that it is an iPhone on steroids.
There are specs are at
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/165759,the-apple-ipad-the-specs.aspx
Apple certainly knows how to build up expectations. There's been talk for months. I thought that it might be Apple’s way of getting around the restrictions under which netbook computers suffer. There'd allegedly been a bit of Microsoft-Intel skulduggery with the aim of keeping Linux off netbooks: certainly the specifications for these little devices had been set very firmly by parts and systems suppliers.
Apple has always had one advantage: their current OS is based on Free BSD, a Linux-like UNIX clone. albeit with a nicer interface. If Apple had created a “tablet”, which would not strictly be a netbook, it would be hard for either Intel or Microsoft to dictate the specifications. And Apple had certainly resisted the netbook bandwagon.
And then Apple surprised us all. From the specifications, I was clearly wrong to think that way. The tablet doesn’t use the BSD-related OS and, in a sense, the device comes in below the netbook specification, though not by far. To compensate, it offers greater portability, more responsive hard drive and Apple style.
The following table shows the iPad specifications compared with the approximate specifications of a typical netbook:
| | NETBOOK | iPAD |
| Processor | 1.6 GHz Intel Atom* | 1 GHz Apple* |
| Monitor | 7” – 12” | 9.7” |
| Weight | 1.6kg (typical) | 0.7kg |
| Hard Drive | 160 GB (typical, electro-mech) | 16 – 64 GB (SSD?) |
| Connectivity | 802.11g/n, Bluetooth, (3g) | 802.11g/?, Bluetooth, 3g |
| Operating system | Win XP Home/ Linux | iPhone |
| Battery life | under 10 hrs | probably over 10 hrs |
* Because the two chips have different architectures, the difference between the two may be less than the clock speed suggests, but it is probable that the Apple chip would process a little more slowly than the Atom chip.
It will be interesting to hear more as more details are released. Things not mentioned in this table are lack of USB ports or a CD/DVD drive. This is a very different beast from the notebook computer - like netbook.
However we are still waiting to see the first models arrive in Australia, and will get a better picture by then of how these devices might be used -- or whether they are a device that comes with limited features and stacks of hype.
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Since writing this, more features have been reported, as at
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/12-key-features-the-ipad-lacks-20100128-n1ae.html
For all the hype, this is a very limited device...
