The Apple iPad: the name itself seems to be like a killer invention isn’t it? We cannot say that it is just a name; it makes a statement and this is just exactly the product that has gulped the planet of electronics. There were heaps of guesses made on iPad’s name before Apple announced it and they were very interesting too: Apple Canvas, Tablet, iSlate and more. Let alone the names, what has more than a speculation or rumour, a real dream for decades has come very much into realism. Publicised on 27th Jan 2010, Apple managed to create more than just the buzz and speculation as it would for its other products; this time, it made a style statement and enormous expectation (which is more than double that of iPhone) for which is the most noteworthy launch in its history, which is the making of an completely new set of invention for the concern.
iPad in short can be described as something between its role model iPhone and the ridiculously successful Apple MacBook Line. It might possibly a revolution in the PC market if Apple manages to deliver what it has promised. Those promises seem to be quite big from Apple as they have been bouncing off words like “revolutionary” and “magical” to explain what most have neglected as nothing but a magnified side of its own iPod Touch. We have definitive answers for all the keen minds here, hence read on for the complete review of the Apple iPad.
Design:
Enlarged iPhone:
The very first thing that you will observe about the Apple iPad is the fact that, well, there is nothing to notice on it. Design wise, there is nothing much to mention as 98% of its facia is covered by its 9.7″ multitouch LED backlit display of resolution 1024 x 768 pixels. This massive display is bordered by a sleek black bezel which some might think is very broad but in reality it is a very significant design thought that avoids the touch screen from being accidentally set off while working. The only physical button that you will ever find in iPad’s facia is its trade-mark Home button like the ones found in the iPod Touch and iPhone. This black gadget is a loyally undemanding piece of curled aluminium, and like most of Apple products, it is a real beauty. But we must admit that it is not precisely noteworthy for its design flourishes simply because it is cute but not a stunner. This might be because of the fact that we had already got used to its identical miniature versions.
Large Multi-Touch LED:
As indicated above, the iPad seems to be very famous for its display and its 9.7” LED backlit IPS display did not disappoint us. The black levels are deep and colours on the display are lively and concentrated. The iPad has very high brightness settings, but it also handles the lower settings too, which is particularly significant for the readers and the good thing is that brightness control has been included in the iBooks. The viewing angle of the iPad is remarkably broad as Apple has employed the In Plane Switching for the screen. But we really wonder if this is going to please the people who like to do all their work with some privacy. The multitouch and capacitive display handled every input swiftly and accurately and if you are accustomed to the iPhone, you might be very well aware of the excellence in Apple’s input technology. It is not an overstatement if we said that it is the best of its class as we have never seen such a responsive display.
Reading on the iPad:
Since the release of the iPad there has been a lot of debate on reading with this device versus reading with Kindle or other e-Ink e-readers. In our opinion, if you have the iPad in its cranked up brightness level, reading can be a real pain; however, as we had said earlier, iPad handles low levels of brightness also and hence, it is just the subject of fine-tuning. After a couple of minutes of reading, you would forget that you are staring at the ipad or the display technology; you will just see a book.
Viewing angle and other controls:
Though the iPad has some heft on it weighing about 1.5 pounds, it can be held comfortably in a lot of angles. Bearing in mind the computing power of the iPad, it has a width that tops out at ½” is just more than impressive. Having it in your hand, the matte black aluminium in its rear might allow you to feel some of its warmth and rest of it, getting out of the way and allows you to do what you really intended to. Apart from the home button and display, there are a few controls on the sides of the device to discuss about: display position lock and a volume rocker is on the right hand side, headphone jack and a power or sleep button on either side of top edge and Apple’s well known thirty pin dock connector along with a slim speaker on the base of the iPad.
USB and Card reader only accessory:
The absence of a SD Card reader or USB port is a serious issue. Apple provides both these connectivity options as an optional extra in order to transfer media onto the iPad, but it looks like a bad omission to not to have these built-in. If Apple looks to fight with the nettop market, which it does, it has to offer a few port choices apart from the proprietary dock connector. The screen position lock forces the device to remain in landscape or portrait mode and other than this new addition, you will not find anything that is no right about the controls or layout on the iPad. If you have used the iPhone or the iPod Touch, you will feel right at home and that is precisely how the company wants it to be.
No Webcam:
One hardware that you will seriously miss is the webcam. We are terribly disappointed that you will not be able to Skype or iChat video chats mainly because having the iPad in hands and talking to family and friends is not only a perfect match, but also the complete realisation of one of everybody’s all-time science fiction fantasies. We can understand that Apple cannot include every component that we anticipate, but this looked an obvious one and its oversight has left every buyer wondering why. Yet another issue of concern is that, Apple’s designers have blundered the headphone jack on to crown of the iPad. The thought of bringing the headphone chord across the display or spinning it in the rear is a very bad though. And in practice too, it stinks. We just wonder why Apple did not place it on some logical place like the the base of the iPad or even its side is just haunting us and this mystery will also haunt every one with earpieces on while walking.
Ergonomics:
Coming to the part of ergonomics, having the iPad seated on your lap will be a comfy experience, but you will definitely find yourself handling this flat slab while standing or on a move, and in that case, the iPad can be a pain. In those cases, typing in single finger will almost become a play of hunt and peck and as we had said earlier, the iPad has some mass on it and hence, you might feel the pain having it in one hand for a long period. But this will not be of big concern as most of us will do the heavy typing works while placed on a normal desk, and this means unless you possess a dock you will be working on the iPad as a flat surface. Even to our surprise, the flat-typing experience was quite good; though it might take a little to get used to, it is not completely weird. Having it on desk or lap, you will find that it is a greater pleasurable experience than the one hand typing. You might find that there is some learning curve now and then that will diminish the interests of some of the hit and run shoppers.
Features:
Processor, Connectivity and Capacities:
Done with the design and external features, let us move on to see what is inside the gadget. iPad has packed in Apple’s custom Cortex A8 core along with a PowerVR SGX graphics processor. Apple has not revealed the RAM specification of the iPad, but we hope that it has at least 512MB inside it. The other major connectivity and application features of the iPad include Bluetooth 2.1, 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, ambient light sensor, a digital compass, microphone and an accelerometer. The 3G model that is available right now in the market also comes with UMTS / HSDPA data coupled with an AGPS chip. The Apple iPad is available in capacities of 32GB, 16GB, and 64GB.
User interface:
As of now, you must be almost clear of the fact that the interface of the iPad is very similar in all ways to that of the iPhone or the iPod Touch Interface. The cause for this very obvious as the iPad is constructed on the same OS as iPhone; a origin of OS X for mobile devices. When it comes to the actual navigation through the device, it is accurately like that of the iPhone. There are pages with grids of icons, a dock for your favourite apps at a maximum of six and a persistent status bar with information on time, WiFi etc. We though Apple would make use of this chance to open up the desktop space and allow micro apps and widgets, and unfortunately, Apple did not have the same idea. At a glance of the home screen of the iPad, you will not be able to get any good piece of information over the time and WiFi status and using all the wide real-estate to just exhibit a extensively spaced grid of icons if simply a waste and even looks kind of silly. By not giving more than one entity to look at a time, designers in Apple are simply wrong and contradicting years of improvement to the company’s desktop OS.
Few additions:
Having said all those similarities, there are also some new stuff that Apple has added into the user interface of the iPad that shows the company’s effort to expand the language of this operating system. The following is a description of a handful of tools that Apple has added to the existing user interface.
Spilt Screens: As the name indicates, Apple has made use of all its large space to break up multiple pages that divides the content into segments of the same screen. For instance, in a mail application, you will able to look at the list of mails while having the content of a mail in view. This feature also comes in very handy to keep the multi page work in keynote available as and when you are editing.
Pop-over Modals: Pop over modals is nothing but the small Windows that show up and float over the content that you are interacting with. It basically enhances the consequence inside the iPod App while displaying the track listings as you select an album or even while getting info on specific books or MP3 to purchase from the iBook store and iTunes. The best thing about these pop over is that, points of contact and it has separate navigation part from the main content that you are working with.
Full sized virtual keyboards: In portrait mode, you will be mostly able to do only single finger typing, but occasionally you can also message with your thumbs. On the other hand, the landscape mode, the keyboard is quite big and totally usable and in fact we were really surprised to see how quickly we were able to type in the messages and mails.
Contextual Menus: While the tap and hold gets you to options for context specific menus, the iPad interface also has heaps of single tap buttons that leads you to similar kind of options. The shift certainly seems to be towards these transient menus as opposed to paging through screens like we are used to on the iPhone.
Coverflow: Those of us who use Safari will have a clear idea in how it handles multiple pages; this behaviour seems to be used throughout the iPad to navigate through files or lists of options. In Safari, as in other apps, the content is presented as a grid, while elsewhere it is a scrollable list akin to Mobile Safari’s present use.
Tap and Hold: This is an application that is already available in the iPhone; but the point is that Apple has highly expanded its use with the iPad which means you are now offered with a lot of situations where you will be able to do a long press to get deep into the contextual interaction and function. We were big fans of this gesture in Hello and Android, and we were really glad to see Apple putting it to better use within the user interface of the iPad. It will be a step forward if Apple introduces this gesture throughout its mobile Operating Systems.
Drop down Tool Bars: Apple has included the toolbar items with the previous iterations of the iPhone OS; but with the iPad, the toolbar are just not links to deeper pages as they are self contained menus with lots of levels and options for tweaking the work that you are doing and these toolbars are all over the iPad.
Nothing like a PC:
You would have noticed that we have not mentioned anywhere about the files, folders or Windows and this is obviously because of the fact that there is no such thing in the iPad universe. Remember, this is not a computer and with all this enhancements in the UI to the iPhone vocabulary means that you will be just able to do more and go further than what the iPhone can do. Lot of the applications found on the iPad are far more expansive than what is actually possible on an iPhone and it is just not like any of the computers that you have ever used. As we said in the introduction, this is entirely a different genre, a kind of hybrid. While the user interface will feel similar to most of you, it is also not a PC of any sort. You will just get your work done with it, play with it and read some content, but the underlying framework of the OS is simply completely invincible. To be more specific, consider the Numbers or Keynote applications as you will not have files, rather a long cover flow style list of work to scroll through. But it has its own disadvantages; say, you have saved about 150 documents, you have to just scroll through the entire list to get to the last one. Sometimes the iPad might even give a feel that it is a computer for the beginners.
A few let-downs:
There is no doubt that Apple has to be appreciated for the approach that it has taken; they have simply built a computer that is so obvious and simple to use that anyone can pick it up and understand it at an instant. There is a lot to like in the iPad, especially in some of the innovative and third party applications built by the third party developers currently like the TweetDeck, Marvel App and SketchBook Pro. But as reviewers, we have the responsibility to explore the holes and found that there were big ones that went just beyond user interface.
No Multitasking:
As we have been mourning in the entire review, the iPad does not support multitasking, save for Apple’s own applications including the Safari browser, iPod and mail. Everything else that you use in this gadget is just do it or jump out experience; this means for the messaging apps, you are either having a conversation or not. For those of you who are used to the iPhone way of doing things, this will be just familiar, but if you are looking to have a conversation as you are receiving a mail, as you would do in a laptop or computer, then you are simply out of luck. This will turn out to be very irritating for those of us who like to have the Twitter app open in the background to monitor updates. Even downloading software or updating the settings will be a real chore mainly because of the stop start nature of the operating system. All this means that you have to go just one at a time, which is totally acceptable if we are talking about a smartphone, but for a notebook like device, it is simply a big no. There will be hardly anyone out there who does not have more than one application open at the same time. So how many out there will save their money and wait for multitasking? The honest answer will be a large number of users simply do not care and that is why it is so easy for Apple to ignore the issue or just claim that their OS supports the functionality as they allow a handful of applications to run in the background. For people like us, iPad might do a lot of stuff better than a netbook, but multitasking is certainly not in the list.
The way iPad handles notifications, just adds to the woes of lack of multitasking. Apple provides a method of utilizing push notifications to circumvent in the background of an app. For instance, with your AIM set to send push messages, you will still be able to see you IM contact’s messages and just come back into the app when you need to respond. This is all good, but the bad news is that Apple still handles notifications in the same terrible and interruptive way as it does on the iPhone. This was already annoying on a phone, but the same terrible mistake on a computer like device? It is totally annoying. While you can always set notifications to just a sound and badge, we also know the elegant manner in which Android and webOS handles it and all that we could think of at this point is, why cannot Apple just follow the same.
A powerful platform:
Said that, there is no doubt that Apple has managed to create a very engaging, simple and surprisingly powerful platform for the device. For some of the applications, especially for some of the third party titles that have started to out, the stuff that these people are thinking out is simply insane cleverness and ridiculously cool. The common users will be able to accomplish much of what they would like to do with a netbook or laptop on the iPad. Still, there will be a few experiences that will go far beyond what you would like to do on a typical computer. Though we cannot classify the iPad as a laptop replacement as its OS is not capable of doing everything that a laptop can do; maybe it simply does not have to.
Applications:
We will not discuss about all the applications, but there are a few of them that deserve a special mention. Some pristine applications have also be included that are very significant to what the iPad is all about and we will dig deep in those applications.
Browsing:
Steve Jobs had promised that the web browsing on iPad will be “The finest browsing experience you have ever had”. So is it true? Well, Apple seems to be telling the truth as the browsing on the iPad is truly amazing; swift and fluent. The screen shows the pages beautifully in both portrait and landscape mode. The scrolling is so smooth and the touch retort is simply out of the world and the pinch to zoom in and out cannot work better. The finger base operation really is kind of fantastic, and it makes browsing bizarrely like reviving an old buddy. A few other add-ons to the app such as the drop down toolbars, proper bookmarks and improvised tab grid, all make it an absolute delight to use. Without any question, we can say that iPad has one of the finest browsing experiences we have ever had. But if it is THE BEST? Well, no.
Flash issue:
Yes, the obvious question from you is, why? That answer is simple, but extremely complicated at the same time. At present, Adobe’s Flash has become a web standard that allows for easy insertion of rich media into the webpages. This includes everything from streaming videos and audio files, online gaming to complete web sites that are made using Flash’s broad and deep development tools. A survey from a very reliable source states that the penetration percentage of Flash on PCs around the world is around 98 which means, almost everyone and the number of sites that employ this standard on their pages is really mammoth. Most, if not all of the pages that you would typically visit use Flash in at least part of their content. So why are we saying so much about Adobe Flash? Yes! You guessed it right and yea it is ridiculous that the Apple iPad does not support flash and will not support, perhaps ever. Apple has not only ditched what seems to be the industry standard for rich media and webpages, but is also pushing in a new standard called as HTML5. Apple attempt in moving its agenda forward and bringing the sites into the fold of HTML5 has been little successful as it has managed to talk just about one percent of them, which is as you can sense, way less.
So, is the lack of Flash a deal breaker for the end user? We think so. For instance when you visit some of the most popular sites like NBC, Hulu, HBO, LaLa which ironically Apple had just purchased, and heaps of other very famous sites, you will just be pissed off. This is because of the fact, there will be certain parts or elements of the sites that will not work and in the case of HBO, the whole site itself would refuse to work. We are geeks so, we will realise what is wrong when a site shows a broken plug-in icon or simply displays we need Flash; but when it comes to the whole wide world that Apple is selling its product to, will just flatly end up in a really confusing and frustrating experience. This is really a big issue that Apple has to be concerned about. We are not promoting Flash here, but we would certainly like to have a less CPU intensive format take its place and HTML5, obviously is not the format, at least not yet. Overall, the lack of Flash is a black spot on the otherwise flawless and brilliant browsing experience on the Safari browser.
Mailing:
Let us move on to the all important Mail. Now a days, most of us check our mails, at least once an hour and frankly, it was not a pleasure on the iPhone. So we expected that this misery would change with the iPad, but unfortunately, it has not.
iPad as e-Reader:
To just say the Apple’s iPad is out and about to put a main cavity in the sales of Amazon’s hit e-reader Kindle will be a real understatement. The iBook App is certainly the most beautifully thought out Apps of the iPad that has made real good use of the device’s wide real estate. It is really easy to spit out thousand word only on just how good an ebook reading it is, but we will really try our best to keep it concise bearing in mind there is a whole lot to be said about the iPad. In a few words, it is a brilliant e-reader with just enough features and options to shut up even the toughest critic in the world.
The virtual bookshelf, on which your digital tomes sit, is an example of Apple design at its best; elegant, simple, well-executed. The layout has been kept pretty simple, on the crown of the page in portrait mode, there is an icon to turn over to your library, brightness control, a chapter button, font size and font face options along with a search drop down. Within the book, a long press will bring you the options of Copy, Paste, dictionary, book mark and search options. Dictionary is a great implementation that come on the content and the Bookmark is yet another ideal execution. Turning pages is achieved with a swiping gesture, or a single tap in the right-hand margins. Besides the beautiful page turning animation that is hopeless but stunning none the less, the complete package is just so perfect. Overall, the iPad gave us an e-book reading that truly gave the sensual pleasure of holding an definite volume in your hands.
Miscellaneous Apps:
The contacts and calendar apps on the ipad are quite good as they seem to be much more working and worthy on the iPad.. The calendar app in fact provides you with a correct complete month view and also allows you to interrelate with your full schedule which is very much similar to the iCal application for OS X does.
iTunes, App Store and iBookStore:
All three of the stores that you will be spending on including iTunes, iBookstore and App Store hew very close to the desktop version of iTunes which is quite an advantage. All the three main jobs of finding, previewing and buying has been made extremely easy by Apple with the kind of data you will be getting at a single glance and the modals that we had mentioned above have given a perfect effect here to pop over information on the content just as you are checking it. The iBook store’s wedding with the iPad e-Reader is a match made in heaven, but we found that the current selection of e-Books lacked some classics. Downloading is very clear and simple and you will also find heaps of free samples and free titles as well to pick up if you like to do some testing yourself. It is quite obvious that the publishers who are not yet collaborated with Apple will find light in this and if the company is half as successful at pushing the books as it has been at pushing music, this will indeed be the game changer. However, there is still some room for improvement as the iBook store can have a clearer and more coherent periodicals strategy.
The Apps compatibility:
The Apple iPad can run almost all the 1,50,000 Apps of iPhone and iPod Touch. It manages to do so in two modes; the first is a scaled down version in the centre of the big screen and the second is a pixel double iteration. As you can see, both these modes leave something to be desired, and we can just say that gaming looks okay. We appreciate that Apple has included this functionality , but keep in mind that fact that you are actually using an iPhone Simulator that is complete with iPhone keyboard that is scaled up if you are using the pixel doubling , which again does not look that great. This is actually nothing to worry about as you will have access to applications that you might need to use, but it is not something that you will be probably spending much time with.
iWork:
If you are wondering if you will be able to create any kind of content, even any of the stuffy business man content, then the iPad has Apps that will calm you down. The new touch-optimised iWork suite is beautifully realised, making it quick, easy and fun to piece together a spreadsheet or presentation. They are surprisingly useful and amazingly robust. The iWork App also helps to elevate the iPad to more than just a plaything.
Third Party Apps:
There are numerous third party applications in order to do a deep section on it, but the following are some innovations that makes the iPad look like a device dropped from the space ship of the ‘V’s .
ABC Video Player: Though this App seems like a side step from the lack of Flash issue, the iPad seems to be doing just a perfect job of managing the ABC network’s online videos. We hope that Hulu will be stirring up things in a similar way.
Marvel: This is a really cool application that really gets our juices flowing on what will be possible on this larger format. Truly, it is an excellent execution and we feel that they have to convert the entire catalog into this format.
Netflix: Yes! Netflix has made its way into the iPad. And now, it apparently seems to be heading towards the iPhone and iPod touch, but it will not be as exciting as having it in the iPad.
PhotoGene, SketchBook Pro and Brushes: As these three names indicate, iPad can and will prove to be a content creation tool as well as a content reference tool. After using it, we really loved it and they show amazing potential for this platform.
Yahoo! Entertainment: Yahoo Entertainment was seriously an honest surprise. We thought that Yahoo’s first App on the iPad will be either handsome or useful, but, trust us, it was both. The news presentation and TV schedule was simply top notch. We are pretty sure that Yahoo will take things a little deeper in the future updates.
TweetDeck: Now who on earth is not Tweeting? And the TweetDeck is a really great way to use Twitter. It is very much like the desktop App and it just left us wondering, if only we could run it in the background.
Multimedia:
As Steve Jobs said during his keynote, if you are going to create a third category of device, between the smartphone and the laptop, then it needs to be better than either for certain tasks. And that is certainly true in the case of multimedia.
The videos on the Apple iPad are not mind blowing but they certainly do a very admirable job. The iPod App is much more mature and well organised than its miniature cousin, though we are really surprised that Apple has not leveraged its latest iTunes LP content in the iPad. We thought that this is just the right device to view all the rich media although we did not find any on the tablet. The video on the iPad is done solid Spartan manner; up to 720p with restrictions and the HD content on the wide display is again one of the best. The videos really do look stunning on the display and it seems like Apple has done its homework on the technology and we are really pleased with the results. YouTube has made proper use of the segmented windows concept that can be seen all over the iPad, giving you the option to browse through other videos or even comment on the video that you are watching while it is playing. As we just mentioned, it also allows for YouTube HD content, which looks quite sharp most of the time.
The speaker does a very impressive job of outputting clean and well balanced sound, given its size. But, to be honest, you are not going to use this as your party sound system; it is just enough to listen to some quite music.
Performance:
The A4 Single Cortex A8 Core handled almost anything that we threw at it with ease; from opening and rendering of webpages to some of the most graphic intensive games. We were totally impressed by the photo app which allowed rapid fast scrolling through the high resolution photos without any hiccups and it also handled rotation and zooming without any kind of resistance or hesitation. The applications did open quickly, but not instantly. One of the most disappointing facts was that, there is no real multitasking in iPad, so having a system with so much of power to perform just one app at a time admirably was not a huge surprise, especially as we had experienced the same thing on the previous version at the January event. Something that did show some sign that the A4 had more to offer were the iPad’s third part apps which were much more of a graphically intensive package with far more range of functionality.
Battery life:
Apple has equipped the iPad with a non-removable 24 Watt Hour Lithium polymer battery which did a real good job on our tests. It was almost impossible to believe that the iPad was able to offer a life of a whooping 10 hrs 45 minutes when we were using the iPad heavily: downloading and using heaps of new apps, watching HD videos, some 3D gaming, getting mails downloaded in the background and we did everything that we possibly could with the iPad. Now, that is pretty crazy endurance considering what we were actually doing with it.
Warranty:
Apple offers iPad 12 months warranty for parts and labour.
Verdict:
If you have read the complete review, it should be obvious that there are features of the device that we fell in love with and there were a few others that we were furious about. So, in this wrap up, we will give you two ideas, one is about the device’s impact on the progression of the PC and the other is whether or not you should invest your cash on this thing.
The Apple iPad is, without doubt a computer revolution and it has evolved PC in a noteworthy way. Despite its few restrictions, Apple has equipped the device with a few aspects that makes it a significant mark in the market. It is simply elegant, powerful, and is unlike any computing device that you might have ever used. Though the iPad cannot be said to be magical, it has certainly bought in a little revolution and we have to give Apple that at least for its thought. As this is the first version of the iPad, trust us, in a couple of years, it will look completely out dated. Apple has managed to pull off a unified touch computing platform with very few coarse edges and that is certainly no minute feat. So, must you buy it? It is not a laptop replacement; not yet. If you are looking for a laptop to work on documents like Word, Excel or the various other PC or Mac apps, the iPad cannot take its place. But if you belong to that genre of majority of system users, that is, if you do not do much on your system other than listen to music, watch some online video, play games, casually browse the web and read news sites, and keep in touch with friends via IM, Twitter, and Facebook; this is exactly the device that you were looking for. The iPad will simply be a joy for you.
The Apple iPad is clearly for 2 people. The 1st one is simply who is just too excited about the potential of this product and can afford this luxury. The 2nd is the majority who simply does not need to get that much work to be done, and would wish their computing experience to be faster, easier, and simpler. Now if that sounds like you, prepare to enter your credit card details to place your order.
Apple iPad – Technical Specification Table
| Manufacturer | Apple |
| Model Name | iPad |
| Device type | Portable |
| Dimensions (H x W x D) | 9.56 x 7.47 x 0.5 inches |
| Weight | 1.6 Pounds |
| Colour | Black and White |
| Display | 9.7 inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology |
| Display resolution | 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch |
| Capacities available | 8GB, 32GB and 64GB |
| Processor | 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip |
| Sensors | Accelerometer and Ambient light sensor |
| Supported audio formats | HE-AAC (V1), AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV |
| Supported video formats | H.264 video, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, Motion JPEG |
| Mail attachment Support | .jpg, .tiff, .gif (images); .doc and .docx (Microsoft Word); .htm and .html (web pages); .key (Keynote); .numbers (Numbers); .pages (Pages); .pdf (Preview and Adobe Acrobat); .ppt and .pptx (Microsoft PowerPoint); .txt (text); .rtf (rich text format); .vcf (contact information); .xls and .xlsx (Microsoft Excel) |
| Wireless | Wi-Fi model Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology Wi-Fi + 3G model UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz), GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), Data only, Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n) and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology |
| TV | Support for 480p and 576p component TV out |
| Input and output | Dock connector port, 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack, Built-in speaker, Microphone and Micro-SIM card tray (Wi-Fi + 3G model only) |
| Battery | Built-in 25-watt-hour rechargeable lithium-polymer battery |
| Battery Life | Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music Up to 9 hours of surfing the web using 3G data network |
| iTunes version | iTunes 9.1 or later |
| System Requirements | Mac : Mac computer with USB 2.0 port, Mac OS X v10.4.11 or later Windows: PC with USB 2.0 port, Windows Vista or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 3 or later |
| Box contents | iPad Dock Connector to USB Cable 10W USB Power Adapter Documentation |
| Warranty | One year |