I pretty much keep this an iPhone and iTouch only site, but today’s news about the Apple iPad has to be discussed. The iPad looks like an iPhone with one button on the front and is a half-inch thick, weighs 1.5 pounds and has a 9.7-inch touch screen (compared to 3.5 inch for iPhone and 6 inch for Amazon Kindle) with a 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch. This is an aspect ratio of 4:3 which isn’t great for watching movies and TV. Hopefully, Apple changes this to 16:9 or 16:10 in the next generation. To me this is the biggest flaw in the device. It comes in three models: 16 GB for $499, 32 for $599 and 64 GB for $699. All models have WiFi and Bluetooth and you can get one with 3G with an ATT contract for unlimited data for $29.99 per month.

What does this mean?????The iPad will have similar verison of the iPhone software running on it and will offer all the apps. It plugs into your computer through USB to connect to iTunes. The battery lasts for 10 hours, but I’m not sure what that means since watching video or playing certain games has to drain the battery way faster than just looking at pictures or surfing the net. In addition to apps and surfing the net, the iPad is for watching TV and movies – yes even in HD although not true 1080p. So what does this mean??? Well for the iPhone nothing. This isn’t a phone so I don’t think it will effect iPhone sales at all. For Amazon Kindle its a killer. Yes, its a little more expensive, but it offers so much more, is bigger and has a better display. For ATT its more business, but can their network handle it??? I’m not so sure. The iPhone is killing it in markets like New York so how is to gonna handle millions of iPads? My guess is it will be jailbroken quickly allowing people to stream TV shows and movies over 3G. Time will tell, but the sooner Apple lets other US carriers share the burden of its heavy bandwidth useage the better. For the cable companies you better wake up! In 10 years I see many people consuming both old and new media from the net. Why pay that cable bill when a 4G network gives you quality TV streamed to your iPad??? So what do you think?