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There are hopes that the iPad will rescue the print media industry. Through iBooks you can subscribe to magazines and newspapers, as well as buy digital books. This might sound like it will hurt Amazon’s Kindle reader, but the world’s biggest book store is making hay: it already released a Kindle App for the iPad.
There are already thousands of apps made exclusively for the iPad, plus it can run existing iPhone apps. The extra hardware has also attracted game developers and several big titles are being created for it.
It’s the must-have gadget of the year and when Apple released it in April, it sold 300,000 units on the first day. With a large touch-screen it is touted as the new way to go online. Here is your guide to everything you need to know about the new iPad.
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Apple has yet to release the iPad locally, so what you can buy in the U.A.E. is actually ‘grey’, meaning it was bought at retail elsewhere and is being resold here. This is not illegal, but it might affect your warranty. Also, it is more expensive: a local 16GB model costs 42% more than it would in the U.S.
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189.7 mm
242.8 mm
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Compared to an iPhone, the iPad is 66% wider and 55% taller. But at 13.4 mm it is only a little over a millimetre thicker. The screen measures 25 centimetres across (diagonally) and has a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. It weighs 680 grams (as much as five iPhones)
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Don’t look for any USB or Memory card ports. The only way to transfer anything off the iPad is through the supplied data cable or via the Internet. The iPad can also not play Flash content on websites.
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The iPad has three different models, separated by the amount of onboard flash memory. Each is $100 more expensive than the last. With the iPad you can browse the web and do other things online, depending on the apps you use. But the included Safari browser is limited: it does not let you browse more than a page at a time! Luckily Atomic Web ($1 on the App Store) is much better, but – yes –you need to pay to have a decent browser on an Internet-centric gadget. Websites are able to detect the iPad and create a special page for it: Gmail already has a iPad-friendly version.
Using wireless networks the iPad can connect to the Internet, where you can browse the web, buy apps from the iTunes store and so on. For $130 on top of the regular price you can get a 3G model that, with a Micro-SIM card, will connect to a mobile network.
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