The day that many Apple enthusiasts have been waiting for has come. Steve Jobs announced earlier today the coming debut of the iPad. A lot of Apple fanboys have been waiting for the day for a long, long time. Speculation as to what exactly Jobs and the crew at Apple were going to unveil had been pretty varied – some were anticipating some type of pad or tablet, others were thinking the iPhone 4, and so on. Personally, I’m glad to see a tablet-style device be released. Yeah sure, it’s not the first of it’s kind, but I think it may be the first to offer all of the things it can do, in as slim a package as it’s in.

The full breakdown of the techincal specifications for the iPad can be found here – http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/ – for the most part, everything you’d find on the iPhone 3GS minus the camera, but on a much larger screen.

Here’s my personal take on it, good and bad…

• Web surfing, email, watching video/movies, viewing photos, and reading e-books would be a much better user experience for the simple fact of the larger screen and more real estate.
• All the apps for the iPhone/iTouch will run on it.
• Only half an inch thick, weighs just one and half pounds. Screen size almost 8×10 inches and multi-touch.
• Wi-Fi and 3G capable. Built in speakers/mic, GPS, compass, accelerometer.
• Accessories include an SD-card dock and full-sized keyboard dock.
• The touch keyboard would be about netbook sized – pretty much anyone could type on it comfortably.
• Some cons – no camera, no stylus support, some of the features not available unless you get the Wi-Fi + 3G version, no multitasking (that’s a big one), and price.

Yup, the price. They start at $499 and go up. Too expensive for an iPhone replacement, but if you were looking to replace your old laptop or wanted something other than a netbook, this would do quite nicely, minus the no-multitasking bit.

My take on the iPad is this – I wouldn’t rush out to replace my netbook/laptop or iPhone with this. But I think a device like this would excel in the workplace and in a scholastic environment. If the iPad had stylus support, you could use these to transform your office into a completely paperless environment… hell, you could probably get away with it as-is. If schools would start offering all of their required textbooks in an electronic format (and it’s already starting to happen), the only think you’d need to take to school would be your iPad. I’d really love to see stylus support for this; that would definitely be the thing needed to vault this device into a realistic offering for the workplace/school. And then of course the whole no-multitasking thing. Really Apple wtf? How hard can that be? Ah well. We’ll see what happens.

So whatcha think folks? Chime in and voice your opinions about the iPad here… and if one of you actually gets one of these, I wanna see pics of you holding it ;)