Apple uncloaks deep details of its 11 iPad apps
Holy tablet is not giant iPhone
Updated Apple's iPad won't be available in the company's brick-and-mortar stores until this Saturday, but on Monday Cupertino added a series of videos to its website that provide more detail on the device's "magical and revolutionary" capabilities - and The Reg sat through each self-congratulatory video to give you a deep-dive preview.
The 11 Guided Tours provide far more solid details than do Apple's previous video offerings: a TV advert and an eight-minute homage featuring designer Jony Ive, marketeer Phil Schiller, software chief Scott Forstall, and hardware honcho Bob Mansfield.
Even though the first batch of iPads is already sold out, Apple's videos are intended to stoke the fanboi frenzy by providing demos and details of its Safari browser; mail, photo, and video apps; YouTube access; and iPod and iTunes store capabilities. The Tours also detail four apps that don't mimic iPhone and iPod touch capabilities, namely its iBooks ebook reader and online iBookstore, plus the Keynote presentation app, Pages word processor and minimalist page-layout app, and Numbers spreadsheet app for undemanding number crunchers.
Except for those last three, all apps are free and ship with the iPad. Apple says that Keynote, Pages and Numbers were all rewritten "from the ground up" for the iPad, and for that bit of extra effort, they're charging $9.99 each. The three productivity apps - also found in Apple's iWork suite for the Mac - are the most interesting of those demoed in the Guided Tours.
Keynote, for example, takes the presentation capabilities of its Mac counterpart and translates them to a multi-touch interface. To change the position of a slide in a presentation sequence, for example, you tap and hold on it, then move it to its new position.
In Keynote, you reorder a presentation's slides by finger-dragging them into a new spot in the sequence
A group of slides can be moved together by tapping and holding on one, sliding it out of the sequence, then using your other hand to tap other slides, which zip under the first slide - you then drag the collection to a new spot in the sequence.
Keynote uses pop-up dialogs to allow you to control fonts, photo-manipulation parameters, and the like
Keynote, as might be guessed, has access to images stored in the iPad's Photo app. A variety of transformations can be made to a photo: resizing; adding a variety of borders and shadows; changing zoom, rotation, and opacity; and other edits.
Existing Keynote presentations can be uploaded to the iPad from your Mac, and PowerPoint presentations can be uploaded from Macs or Windows PCs. Presentations can be created on the iPad from scratch or based on 16 included templates, and a set of new transitions and animation effects can be added to slide sequences or elements.
Presentations can be displayed either on the iPad itself or on a projector or TV using an optional $29 VGA adapter.
Next page: Pages and Numbers
COMMENTS
More vitriol
What is it with these muppets who can see no reason to change or invent or improve, Every time Apple get a mention off they go; everything from battery life to only one browser (so Windoze don't you think)
Look fuckwits, Apple have done this to make money, they make money by selling products, they make more money by selling more products to more people than before. How they do that is called marketing, or in economic terms creating an incentive, their chosen route is ease of operation, not battery life or whatever you can do with your dell dongle thingy from the local PC warehouse (another great retail experience!).
So when your business, or the one you're in, has been as inventive, creative, as self assured to do something like launch a paradigm shift product - stop bitching stand back and see if it flies. If it does - great, if not no whining lets see if new wings will fix it.
No wonder the UK's up shit creek if the IT industry is full of these underachieving navel gazing wankers.
F in luddites one and all...... I'm sick of 'em.
I'll get my coat - the one with the can do attitude.
Quite
Of course, your Tablet PC is also incredibly user friendly, has dedicated apps designed for the tablet interface and isn't bulky or expensive ... Right?
Retarded?
Maybe you and the other three people in the world who bought a tablet pc should get together and start a group.
A retard
Mat, I guess I am a retard.
I only use one browser. Maybe you can explain to us retards why you need multiple ones ?
An SDCARD adapter is not exactly that unusual.. many 'tablet PCs' need them too.
Maybe someone is just a bit put out that they bought a crap tablet PC ? Personally I've had 2 - a fujitsu back in 2002/3 when they came out, and an HP last year. Both have been absolute crap - I imagine something like trying to drive a car with a joystick... wrong interface for the OS.
Even with vista/win7 tablet support is pitiful.
I used to hate macs.. I now have 3 and an iphone. It took a bit of pride swallowing, but take the iphone - pick one up.. play with it for 10 mins. surf a bit on it.. I dare u to try and not find that, despite yourself you actually find it just flows.
THAT will be what sells the iPad, now whether it has an SDCARD adapter or a VGA port hardly anyone will use sticking out the side.
You'd think...
...that buying any Apple product had been made compulsory, the way some people moan about them. If you're not interested in an iPad, don't buy one and don't even bother being puerile enough to make a stupid and ill-informed comment about it.
If Apple products are so expensive and shiny, have you ever stopped to wonder why they sell by the gerzillion? Ever really used the Mac OS that you bitch about so long and loud and not just glanced at it while you drooled over the Packard Bells at PC World? Ever looked at your hideous beige box or Android phone or whatever and wondered why it looks like creativity passed their designers by? And why do so many of you prefer to lie - and even devise wish-lists of lies - to bad-mouth Cupertino's latest product?
Every PC, and these days, every so-called "smart" phone looks to Apple because Mr Jobs and his merry men really do lead the way. You think the rest of the beige box and mobile phone world isn't watching Apple's every move to see what they, the beige phone makers, are going to pop out next? Microsoft's own OS is now such a blatant homage to the Mac OS, it's embarrassing. Every new Apple product is the rest of the world's cue to make things they hope will compete. Apple didn't invent the MP3 player, but look what they did with it, fer crissake! Acer, Asus, Dell, Packard Bell and (enter name of beige-box manufacturer here) didn't actually invent much of anything, and their only innovation is to make stuff as cheaply as possible and sell it in quantity to the simple folks who don't expect quality anyway and certainly wouldn't dream of paying for it.
Will I buy an iPad? Nope. Don't need one, can't really see a use for one. Don't have an iPod or an iPhone either, and even though I won't be getting an iPad I'm not going to write to any public forum and complain that it's crap solely because I'm not getting one. Are the people who will buy an iPad sheep for buying Apple stuff, or could it be that the people who buy naff stuff from beige-box makers in such numbers are the sheep for being so... well, ordinary?
Anyway, Apple is hugely successful, but you're not.
