Apple Unveils "iPad" Tablet; Boasts 10 Hours of Battery Life, 9.7" Screen

[Rob Williams]

Life is full of surprises, but the fact that Apple announced a tablet computer at a special event in San Francisco today isn't one of them. Officially named the "iPad" (Wow... iTab would have been better), this tablet computer is designed to comfortably fit in between a smartphone and a notebook, offering the right amount of functionality without being too simple, or too complicated. It was long rumored that the OS to be used would be iPhone-esque, and that was right on the money.

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You can read the rest of our news post here.

 

[MacMan]

Nice, but I'm a little disapointed!

The iPad is certainly nice, but for me it's nothing more, and nothing less than the now top-of-the-line iPod Touch.

The most significant thing in all of Steve's presentation was the processor.... the Apple A4 chip! The Engadget live blog wondered what kind of chip it had. It seemed to them to be amazingly fast in the demos, handily taking on video, gaming, etc. at an amazing speed, and all without the slightest hic-up! Apple's buyout of PA Semi is beginning to be seen, and if the first A4 chip is any indication of what's in store, than it bods well for future products. The new chip begs the question, however: will Apple keep it to itself, or will it license it to other manufacturers? Keeping to itself, or licensing them offers both positives and negatives for Apple, but considering that the iPad is not all that much more expensive than the current top-of-the-line iPod Touch, then the biggest loser might be Apple's iPod Touch and maybe the Sony PS3 and Nintendo Gameboy! As a portable, hand-held gaming device, well it might have a shot and especially if other OEMs come out with physical controllers, etc.

I will, as an Apple lover, be keeping my eye out on this thing, hoping that Apple can do a little more with it, no.... make that a lot more with it in the future. As a tablet it's certainly better than a lot of the others out there on the PC side, but whether that will be enough to turn tablets finally into a successful platform, well, that is a question that only time will reveal.

The tablet is nice, but, in conclusion, with all of the super hype that has gone before it, well, what can I say, but that I'm a little disappointed, other than the A4 chip, just as I feared I might be.

 

[Kougar]

The most significant thing in all of Steve's presentation was the processor.... the Apple A4 chip! The Engadget live blog wondered what kind of chip it had. It seemed to them to be amazingly fast in the demos, handily taking on video, gaming, etc. at an amazing speed, and all without the slightest hic-up! Apple's buyout of PA Semi is beginning to be seen, and if the first A4 chip is any indication of what's in store, than it bods well for future products. The new chip begs the question, however: will Apple keep it to itself, or will it license it to other manufacturers?

Given Apple's propensity to keep everything closed and tightly locked down, I highly doubt they will be licensing their processor out. They already go to some unusual lengths to ensure the hardware in their desktops isn't directly compatible with PC's and to otherwise differentiate it as better quality (through the use of sever grade hardware).

 

[Kougar]

The most significant thing in all of Steve's presentation was the processor.... the Apple A4 chip! The Engadget live blog wondered what kind of chip it had. It seemed to them to be amazingly fast in the demos, handily taking on video, gaming, etc. at an amazing speed, and all without the slightest hic-up! Apple's buyout of PA Semi is beginning to be seen, and if the first A4 chip is any indication of what's in store, than it bods well for future products. The new chip begs the question, however: will Apple keep it to itself, or will it license it to other manufacturers? Keeping to itself, or licensing them offers both positives and negatives for Apple, but considering that the iPad is not all that much more expensive than the current top-of-the-line iPod Touch, then the biggest loser might be Apple's iPod Touch and maybe the Sony PS3 and Nintendo Gameboy! As a portable, hand-held gaming device, well it might have a shot and especially if other OEMs come out with physical controllers, etc.

The chip now appears to be a regular ARM9 core, nothing special. While the iTouch uses a 600Mhz chip the iPad uses a multimedia capable version clocking about 1GHz, which is fairly standard for the newest ARM stuff. Unfortunately for the theory this means there isn't anything for Apple to license out, anyone can license the ARM9 SoC and build their own stuff onto one.

 

[MacMan]

The chip now appears to be a regular ARM9 core, nothing special. While the iTouch uses a 600Mhz chip the iPad uses a multimedia capable version clocking about 1GHz, which is fairly standard for the newest ARM stuff. Unfortunately for the theory this means there isn't anything for Apple to license out, anyone can license the ARM9 SoC and build their own stuff onto one.

I've heard rumors about Apple including the Arm chip, but nothing confirmed that I know of. You may have heard otherwise of course. . Even if that's the case, after PA Semi's input, the chip has been enhanced, as Stephen Fry, who is no friend of Apple's, said the speed was the most remarkable thing about the iPad.

Anyone can put an Arm Cortex in their devices, but most of them, however, can not hope to add the extra muscle that PA Semi can add. PA is famous for designing speedy and power efficient chips for the US military! As you may already know, the US Congress threatened to stop the sale of PA Semi to Apple because the military is so dependent them. PA Semi designs chips for everything from cruise missiles, jet fighters, and what have you. Apple had to agree, in writing, to keep on designing chips for the military in order to get the go ahead to buy PA Semi.

Arm will license their chips to anyone, and anyone can modify them anyway they want, but most companies don't have what it takes to compete with a company such as PA Semi, thus, unless your AMD, Intel or some other semiconductor company, most other companies will be at a disadvantage with their own Arm chips.

Apple may have started out with just an ordinary Arm Cortex chip, but thanks to PA Semi, the Apple A4 chip ended up being anything other than just another ordinary and regular Arm Cortex, but rather its an Arm Cortex 9 on steroids and all thanks to PA Semi. I've read many who have noticed its incredible when compared to other chips, including those regular and 'ordinary' Arm Cortex chips!

By the way, your probably 100% correct about Apple not offering this chip to others, because, quite frankly, I don't think Apple will license them either. But Apple is a rather different animal, because just as you never know what a wild Snow Leopard will do, the same applies to Apple - they are predictably, unpredictable, so you never really know, you know, just what on hell they will do next?

 

[b1lk1]

Any way you look at it the name is just pure fail. If they needed to make sure they were going to be the butt of soooo many new jokes they sure set themselves up for it.

I'm gonna reserve judgement until I see what they can/cannot do in real life, but to me it seems like it is aiming for a very small crowd although I am sure the MACamaniacs will buy them all up.

 

[Rob Williams]

The most significant thing in all of Steve's presentation was the processor.... the Apple A4 chip! The Engadget live blog wondered what kind of chip it had. It seemed to them to be amazingly fast in the demos, handily taking on video, gaming, etc. at an amazing speed, and all without the slightest hic-up!

That's all fine and good, but at the same time, the iPad lacks multi-tasking, so it's hard at this point to know whether or not that's an OS issue, or a CPU issue. I'm guessing the former, but why on earth would it be lacking it in the first place?

Anyone can put an Arm Cortex in their devices, but most of them, however, can not hope to add the extra muscle that PA Semi can add.

This raises a major issue I have with Apple... the absolute lack of technical information regarding its chips. Could you imagine if AMD or Intel released a new chip and didn't have a block diagram to accompany it? People would be freaking out. It seems bizarre that Apple can release a completely new CPU based on an already-existing architecture and not give real technical details. There's a lot more to a processor than just the frequency.

Apple may have started out with just an ordinary Arm Cortex chip, but thanks to PA Semi, the Apple A4 chip ended up being anything other than just another ordinary and regular Arm Cortex, but rather its an Arm Cortex 9 on steroids and all thanks to PA Semi.

This is an extremely simplistic view on things. Who's to say PA Semi did anything to improve the ARM chip? Even Apple itself doesn't admit that, so how are you so sure that there are real improvements at all? If anything, I'd be willing to bet the battery-life was improved, but I sure wouldn't consider that to be an ARM on steroids. I'm not saying PA Semi did little to it, but it's pretty hard to know given the absolute lack of information around the chip.

Any way you look at it the name is just pure fail. If they needed to make sure they were going to be the butt of soooo many new jokes they sure set themselves up for it.

What's wrong with the Apple MacsiPad??

 

[Kougar]

Macman, here's one article on it. http://www.brightsideofnews.com/new...c-unveiled---its-an-arm-cpu-and-the-gpu!.aspx

Unfortunately as I was trying to say, the ~1GHz speed is standard speeds for ARM9 Cortex chips. If a company orders ARM's prebuilt designs they can use chips clocking up to 2GHz according to ARM's product page. Apple may want people to believe otherwise but there isn't anything special about the chip.