The Apple iPad…after months of rumors and speculations with Steve Jobs’ keynote speech

The Apple iPad… There it is, after months of rumors and speculations with Steve Jobs’ keynote speech, STAR A3000last January, as the highlight, Apple’s newest product is on our desk, to play the leading role in this Apple iPad review. With unknown strategic precision, Apple’s marketing department has managed to put a product onto the market that knows two extremes from the very start. It is seen as spectacularly succe ssful by the Apple fan side, and as senseless, not-adding-anything-new by the other – often non-Apple-owner – side. The Apple iPad is, of course, just a piece of consumer electronics … but is that really true? Time for an Apple iPad review! Apple iPad tablet We  ipad dock had to get an Apple iPad shipped to us from the U.S., as Apple’s new tablet is not yet officially available outside the U.S. market. Apple seems to be very successful with this kind of phased introduction. The demand surpasses the supply, at least that is the official explanation, but it has in any case led to the introduction being postponed for a month in some European countries. A side-effect is that there are diverse outfits surfacing that can deliver iPads in Europe…at prices for which you could buy two iPad tablets in the U.S. 32GB Apple iPad with Wi-Fi apple-ipad-2  ipad charger apple-ipad-5 apple-ipad-review apple-ipad-7 The tablet that we are discussing in this Apple iPad review is a Wi-Fi version with a 32GB storage capacity. The Apple iPad 3G was not yet available. A first impression is that, contrary to the popular e-readers, the weight  silly bandz (680 grams) is noticeably present. The body’s material, a combination of metal and glass, seems to be of high-quality. Still, you tend to handle the iPad very carefully. You don’t even want to think about what would happen if you were to drop the iPad on a hard floor. We wonder what the first damage cases will be, and what disastrous impact such unintended falls will have… E-books aren't very social, are they? If you're using the apps and stores of big guns like Amazon and Apple, they're very much solo experiences: you buy e-books and read them. That's in contrast to the social features around other areas like music (Ping) and gaming (Game Center). Yet back in the real world, reading is often a social experience, shown most obviously in book groups. Well, Kobo just stole a march on its bigger rivals by launching something called Reading Life in its iPad e-reader app. And it's a very, very interesting idea. The Kobo app gpad - which like iBooks and Kindle doubles as an e-book store and e-reader - now tracks your reading history, and lets you sign into Facebook to share details of what you're buying and reading with friends. However, it's also got Foursquare-style gamification elements. You can 'check-in' wrist watches to characters and locations within individual books - Alice or the White Rabbit's Hole in Alice in Wonderland, for example. Plus there are achievement badges to earn for individual activities, and usage habits like reading every day or late at night. All of this can be shared on Facebook too. What's lacking - for now - is a layer more akin to those real-world book groups - for example, the ability to share comments on the ChangJiang W008 books that you're reading with friends, or see what other people are saying about the e-book that you're currently reading. This may come in time. For now, Reading Life is a Dapeng T7000 glimpse at how e-reading is going to become more social. Your move, Amazon and Apple (and not forgetting Google, which has just launched its own e-books service in the US).