Finally! The wait is over and iPad is here. I can’t believe none of the rumour mills came up with that name prior to the announcement.

I’m writing this as Steve Jobs presents it, but the iPad basically looks like a bigger iPhone and the OS appears almost identical. Sadly, it also seems like there is still no Flash player - one of the big gripes with the iPhone.

It does have a big on-screen QWERTY keyboard, and that screen does appear to have a decent resolution too. The big question for me is whether it will have a file browser. Netbooks may be poor at doing these things, but at least you can access your hard disk like a normal computer. The other thing you can do with a Netbook is multi-task, and this is something that is of course noticeably absent in the iPhone OS. Does this mean we will have the same issue on the iPad? I often browse websites whilst chatting to others on IM - the iPhone OS cannot do this.

Specs
The iPad is half an inch thin and weighs 1.5 pounds. 9.7″ high quality IPS display. 16 - 64Gb of solid state storage inside the iPad. Powered by a 1GHz A4 Apple chip. Bluetooth and WiFi of course.

Plus… the iPad will have 3G built-in, if you want to pay almost $200 extra. Apple have a deal in the USA with AT&T at $14.99 per month for 250MB per month, or $29 for unlimited. There’s no contract, it’s pre-pay. No need to go to a shop, just activate it right on the iPad. Apple hope to have international deals in place by June/July. Apple have also not locked the iPad to any network, which sounds good. Frankly though, I would rather have mobile broadband than dog-slow 3G.

No announcement on the resolution at this point, but it could be 4x iPhone, so 960 x 640. Also no mention on in-built webcam unless I missed that - no doubt Apple will hold something back so they can stiff all the early adopters with a better version released a little later.

Battery Life
10 hours of battery life (apparently). I doubt that users would actually see that in real world applications, not if the iPhone is anything to go by anyway. It also looks like the battery is sealed in, much like the new MacBook Pros.

Apps
The iPad will use the same app store that the iPhone and iPod Touch use. In fact, it will run all these apps, either in the middle of the iPad screen with a black border surrounding it, or by scaling it to full-screen. Clearly, Apple are doing what they can to leverage the 140,000 or so existing apps.

A new Apple iPad developer SDK is available to download today from Apple.com, and it looks like some of the developers have already had access to it, notably Electronic Arts, who have been showing off Need for Speed. This game looks better than the iPhone version, but not as good as a full desktop version.

iBooks
Looks like Apple have Amazon and Sony firmly in their sites by adding lots of e-reader functionality. It will be possible to download books immediately from the iBooks Store as Apple already have 5 large publishers onboard: Penguin; Harper Collins; Simon & Schuster; Macmillan, and; Hachette Book Group.

Productivity Software
Wahey! Great news! Apple have re-developed iWork specifically for the iPad. It would be useful to have Keynote in such a mobile form factor.

Apple have announced that the three iWork apps will be available for $9.99 each, which I guess will be about £7 in the UK.

Price
Apple are pricing the iPad aggressively, starting at $499 for 16Gb, $599 for 32Gb and $699 for the 64Gb model. 3G costs an extra $130. UK pricing yet to be announced, but I guess a range of £400 - £550.

Availability
60 days until shipping - that’s poor. Very poor in fact. Were they not ready? Not sure I will be jumping in to order one.

Accessories
There will be a keyboard dock which doubles as a stand, although the images show this in portrait mode, whereas I would naturally want to dock in landscape. I can see the benefit of having a dock at home and in the office and taking the iPad between the two.

Conclusion
It looks like the price will be right, but I have to say that it looks like a few key features are missing. There was no mention of USB, no webcam, no confirmation of multi-tasking, no demonstration of IM, no mention of a file browser, and a few other minor things, all of which just make me think that people would be better waiting for version 2. The delay on the shipping is also a concern.

I’m not blown away and I need a bit of time to digest whether or not this is actually going to be of any use to me. I’ll always have an Apple laptop for work. I’ll continue to use my Apple desktops at home. My Netbook is very light, runs Linux, and can basically then run any application I want. I’m not sure I want to be limited to what App Store can offer.

Will it fit into my life - do I actually need one? Well, there is the possibility of getting rid of the iPhone (or Palm Pre as I now have) and replacing it with a small and simple mobile that has days of battery life, and using the iPad for the basic mobile browsing that I would use an iPhone for.

If you wait a year, you can guarantee that the faults will have been ironed out, it will have the new features and probably more storage and a quicker processor.