Apple's finally unveiled the iPad!

Apple's finally unveiled the iPad. It's a half-inch thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds, with a 9.7-inch capacitive touchscreen IPS LCD display, and it's running a custom 1GHz Apple "A4" chip developed by the P.A. Semi team, with a 10-hour battery life and a month of standby. It'll come in 16, 32, and 64GB sizes, and it's got the expected connectivity: very little.
There's a 30-pin Dock connector, a speaker, a microphone, Bluetooth, 802.11n WiFi and optional 3G, as well as an accelerometer and a compass. There's also a keyboard dock, which connects underneath in the portrait orientation, support for up to 1024x768 VGA out and 480p composite out through new dock adapter cables, and a camera attachment kit that lets you import photos from your camera over USB or directly through an SD reader.


The device is managed by iTunes, just like the iPhone -- you sync everything over to your Mac. As expected, it can run iPhone apps -- either pixel-for-pixel in a window, or pixel-doubled fullscreen -- but developers can also target the new screen size using the updated iPhone OS SDK, which is available today.

The 3G version runs on AT&T and comes with new data plans: 250MB for $14.99 and an unlimited plan for $29.99 a month contract-free. Activations are handled on the iPad, so you can activate and cancel whenever you want. Every iPad is unlocked and comes with a GSM "micro-SIM," so you can use it abroad, but there aren't any international deals in place right now.

It starts at $499 for 16GB, 32GB for $599, and $699 64GB. Adding 3G costs a $130 per model, so the most expensive model (64GB / 3G) is $829. The WiFi-only model will ship in 60 days, and the 3G models will come in 90.

The screen is gorgeous, tilting is responsive, and the thing is super thin. Still, if you've used the iPhone before -- and you can see the two devices side-by-side here -- there's not a lot of surprises here so far. Here are some initial thoughts on the iPad like it's not light. It feels pretty weighty in your hand. The screen is stunning, and it's 1024 x 768. Feels just like a huge iPhone in your hands and many more but now after Apple's finally unveiled the iPad the thoughts has changed.