WSJ’s Yukari Iwatani Kane and Geoffrey A. Fowler are live-blogging the Apple announcement of its new tablet product, which they are reporting is to be called the iPad. As I expected, it sounds, from their transcribing of Jobs’ words, that the iPad product will be a sup’d up version of the iPhone, which isn’t as powerful (or big) as a laptop but offers much of the core, day-2-day capabilities (email, internet, video, etc.) of a laptop.
Update:
So far, based upon what I’m reading in the WSJ live blog, I’m not all that impressed with the iPad product. It seems to be a larger version of the iPhone (or, really, iTouch), running many of the same apps. NYT is going to have an app for it for reading the NYT (now, moving to subscription-based online makes much more sense for them), and they have agreements with book publishers (and will have an iBookstore for purchases). Still, the memory is so small that it doesn’t look like you’ll be able to replace your laptop. The comments from readers of the WSJ live-blog have much of the same initial reaction. It’s going to be interesting to see if there will be the same type of furor for this device, but, my initial thinking is that it will sell great with Apple-enthusiasts, but probably won’t have the same type of mass appeal as the iPhone. WSJ provides the following video of Jobs’ unveiling of the iPad:
- Gregg J. Lallier
