Posted on 01/27/2010 10:27:03 AM PST by Swordmaker
It's called the iPad... but news is coming out slowly because the Verizon data network crashed under the load...
I will post details later... when they are known.
Nice! That’s the way to read an eBook. Just like a real book.
Looks like iBooks and iWork for it should be pretty nice. Coupled with that 10 hour battery you can seriously cut down on taking anything else with you on trips.
Price won’t be too bad after the first gizillion....
Always.
Another one of Apple's apps—an e-book reader!
Amazon's done a great job of pioneering this functionality with the Kindle, so we're going to stand on its shoulders. Here's reading a book with our new app, "iBooks."
I KNEW iBook was coming back. Okay, partial credit.
Bookshelf of books, there's a button on upper left corner that's the Store. They've created the new iBook Store, fully integrated with the iBooks app. Download and purchase apps right on your iPad. Top chart list, NYT bestseller list. Five of the largest publisher: Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette Boook Group. (Didn't see McGraw-Hill on that list!)
Here's a demo. Hitting the store button is like a secret passageway. It flips around. If you've used iTunes or the App Store, you're already familiar. Prices look like they very between $7.99 and $14.99. Buying Teddy Kennedy's memoir. You can get a sample if you want, but Steve's going to tap and buy. Downloads right onto the bookshelf. "It's just so simple." Just tap if you want to read. Tap anywhere on the right fo flip forward, on the left to flip back. Drag page if you want to slowly turn the page. Go to Table of Contents and pick a chapter.
Photos, black and white, color, video in your books. Change the font size if you want, bigger or smaller. Change the font: Baskerville, Cochin, Palatino, Times New Roman, Verdana. That's iBooks.
We didn't see any hyphenation in iBooks, and it was all force-justified text. I wonder if those will be options.
All in one really great app. Using epub format. Most popular open book format in the world. Very very excited. Think iPad will be a terrific e-book reader for poular books and textbooks.
Big announcement that they're using EPUB. That's basically the standard, so that's huge news because Apple could have gone its own way.
Good link. I knew the device had to work as an e-reader too, that’s the newest big “thing”. It’s pretty much what I thought it would be, an e-reader with all the ipod touch/iphone goodies thrown in.
Still no price?
Text books, and other educational novels + the ability to take notes as you read are the holy grail for me. Which is why I am waiting until I see the MS Courier if it is ever released.
I say $800
1 - it will sell like hotcakes.
2 - I won’t be buying one.
3 - What is with Apple’s aversion to the keyboard? It’s still the fastest way to write a message by far.
That second screen shot looks a whole lot like “Delicious Library” to me.....
Now we’re switching gears to iWork. Create a version of iWork for the iPad. Initial reaction was that they were really heavy duty apps that require a lot of horsepower. Could tablet power them? Answer was a resounding “you betcha.” Could we come up with an entirely new interface for these apps? Very different from a personal computer.
10:58 PT - DM: So here’s Phil Schiller to talk about iWork on the iPad.
10:59 PT - DM: Schiller: iWork is a suite of applications that millions and millions of our customers really love. Home, business, and school customers can do word processing, presentations, and spreadsheets. Can you bring this software to a multi-touch product.
10:59 PT - DM: Completely new version of Keynote designed just for the iPad. Complete new version of Pages—the most beautiful word processor that you will ever see. And Numbers: a spreadsheet that is fun and cool to use—when’s the last time someone told you that? And Phil’s going to give us a demo.
11:00 PT - JS: Putting a “work” suite of apps on this device is a big deal, because it says that it’s not just a toy, not just for recreation, but also for people who want to get work done. That’s interesting because it broadens who Apple will sell this product to.
11:00 PT - DM: Keynote first. Keynote runs in landscape because slides are designed horizontally. First thing you see is slide library. Presentations that we’ve created in Keynote. Tap a button to create a new presentation, access to tempates. Choose one and you get the layout. Menu items on top and slide navigator on the left. Scroll with your finger to move around the slide navigator. Go to a slide? Just tap on it. Text, tables, charts.
11:02 PT - JS: I assume that Amazon will be allowed to build its own app for iPad, as it has for iPhone. So there may be an outlet for Kindle owners.
11:01 PT - DM: How do you move a slide around in the navigator without a keyboard or mouse? Tap and hold, drag it wherever you want and now you’ve rearranged your slide. Can select multiple slides by tapping and holding and then tapping additional slides. Here’s a slide with images: how do you get those in? Grab them from your photo albums with a media navigator. Drag your photo where you want. To resize, grab a handle and start resizing. Want to match size? While resizing tap another photo and it matches. Want to do a mask? Just tap and pan around.
11:03 PT - DM: What else? Animations. Tap the animation mode. Tap an animation, and you can choose one and it previews it. With just a finger you’re doing very advanced slide animation techniques. Hit the play button and we’re presenting. Tap or swipe to go forward.
11:04 PT - JS: The more I see about this device, the more I start to think that Apple really does want you to replace your laptop with this thing. At least for some tasks that people currently use laptops for because there’s been no other option.
11:04 PT - DM: So that’s Keynote. Let’s look at Pages. Same sort of set up at the beginning: a library of documents, and access to templates. Scroll through the text. Tap anywhere and up comes a keyboard. And there’s a ruler—The most beautiful ruler you’ve ever seen! says Phil. New tool called Page Navigator. Hold finger on the right and it brings up a loupe that lets you skim through your pages. Automatic text wrap around a graphic. Tap and drag an image around and it automatically reflows text. Tap the info button to bring down control panel to change text styles.
11:06 PT - DM: And last, Numbers. Library of spreadsheets, templates. Tabs along the top: one doc can hold many spreadsheets. Here’s what you can do without a keyboard and mouse. Rearrange columns by tapping and and dragging. Move the columns to the end of the table and it auomatically updates linked chart.
11:08 PT - JS: Okay, some questions. Where do all these documents get saved, how do you view and open, and more importantly, how does it sync? Over a wire? Over the network? To a computer, or the cloud?
11:07 PT - DM: What about adding new rows of data and adding a subtotal? Tap button bottom left to add column and then double tap to bring up specific keyboard for data entry. Access to numbers, forumulas and functions, and text. Just want to add a sum on the coumn. Tap the SUM button and it automatically figures out the formula needed. Then just tap the green checkbox and we’re done. If you want to fill that across all of them. You could copy and paste, but it’s faster to just fill (uses same pop-up style menu as Copy/passte on the iPhone I note). Change style of graphs.
11:09 PT - JS: All this entry does make us ask the question, are you expected to type only on this device, or is there some sort of external keyboard option from Apple? Because if I could take iWork with me on the road, I might not want to type that entire Pages document by touchscreen.
Hard to have a usable physical keyboard in a .5 in thick package.
Sounds just like what I was looking for!
Hubby and I will have to take a trip to the Apple store soon!
Thanks for the Mac pings!
They shoulda called it the “applet”.
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