Apple iPad tech specs: rumor vs. reality scorecard
By Laura June 
posted January 27th 2010 5:10PM
posted January 27th 2010 5:10PM
Remember that history of Apple tablet rumors we concocted for you just the other day? Well, we're here to take score now, folks. As you can see from the handy (and magical) chart below, Taiwan Economic News came pretty close to nailing the iPad's specs back September: built-in HSDPA, custom P.A. Semi system on a chip (with the fancy new name Apple A4), 9.6-inch size, February unveiling, and hey -- they were pretty close on that $799 - $999 pricing too. And while iLounge was wrong about some things, they certainly hit this one out of the park: "It's a big iPhone, but it's not a big iPhone." We're going to let you dig into the chart here for yourselves to see who got what right -- and who was terribly, terribly wrong.
Here are just a few of the no-shows today, however -- no camera, no multitasking, no phone, no Verizon, no iPhone OS 4.0, and no Flash anywhere to be seen. There were also no MacBook Pro spec bumps in sight, and no iLife to be found. Well, let's just try to be happy with what we did get, okay? The chart is after the break.
Um...Engadget...how'd you do? Or are you above it all and only "report"* tech news [*sarcasm]?
For all of those who thought edgadget was not on the take....I give you All Apple all the time. lol
Ok, it sucks, but will it sell? I think it might. Gotta hold it in my hands before I can make the call.
How was Ars only "partially correct" when we said the display wouldn't be AMOLED? It's not even really LED, as the chart says... it's LED-BACKLIT IPS LCD.
@foresmac FWIW, I think anyone that mentioned 10" LCD should at least get a yellow.
I know a lot of apple haters are gonna hate this, but judging by the comments I've read on Twitter and the fact that the tablet is a trending topic, this things gonna be a hit. Tech geeks might complain or hate it, but the general mainstream consumer could care less.
@sonola777
Twitter? Uh, ok.
A lot of you people really need to get a grip. This is not intended to replace full on laptops, nor is it going to replace your phone.
"It's too bright!" Shut up. There's a brightness slider for a REASON. And if it were less bright, you would bitch about that too. Complaining about an LED-backlit IPS display. Un-fucking-believable.
"No camera!" This I agree with. It should have a front facing camera.
"No multitasking!" Yet. You guys are aware that iPhone OS 4.0 is still coming, right? And that it will go right onto the iPad? And that Apple has been developing it with both the iPhone and iPad (and Touch) in mind? Think about it.
"The Zune HD has better specs!" Sure, if by "better" you mean "worse in every possible way".
"No flash!" Flash sucks. HTML 5 is better and fully supported. Go here: http://www.youtube.com/html5
"It doesn't match all the rumors!" Whose fault is that, you mouth breather? It's not Apple's job to fulfill the internet's collective fantasies.
"No new Macbooks!" Well no shit. This wasn't a Macbook event.
"No iPhone OS 4.0!" Well no shit. It's probably not ready yet.
"I'm so disappointed!" Why, because you took rumors as absolute truth? Apple didn't promise you anything. Get over it.
"It burns my eyes when I look at it!" Well you need to kill yourself then. It's the only solution.
Look people, it's very simple. This is a new type of device. It's not an "invention", it's a re-thinking of what a small portable device could be like. Netbooks are not flawless, obviously, and the iPad does a lot of things better than most netbooks do. For one thing it appears to be massively more powerful than most netbooks, i.e. full screen HD video with no slowdown, and smooth, fast web page loading. It also has a better screen than ALL netbooks. I mean come on can you really envision doing a full presentation in Powerpoint on a netbook, with transitions and everything? Well the iPad can do that, easily, with Keynote.
It's not perfect, and I think it needs some improvements too - but it's still pretty damn good for a rev 1. $499 is a seriously good price point for a device with this much power, access to Apple's entire App store/iTunes/iBook infrastructure, an LED backlit IPS screen, wireless a/b/g/n AND 3G if you want it, etc.
And don't kid yourselves, this is only the beginning. I predict iPhone OS 4.0 will open up a lot more possibilities for it. Off-handedly dismissing it because it doesn't have multitasking is stupid for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the obvious success of the iPhone.
@Jack
Zune HD has a Tegra and an OLED screen. And apple will never put multi tasking on an iPhone because it is to risky. A software update wouldn't get multi tasking without new hardware that could handle multi tasking because the iPhone 3GS doesn't have the mettle do deal with 2 or more apps open at the same time.
I know Microsoft and Apple and Google are trying to kill off flash but when the majority of websites use flash as a standard there is really no excuse. It's too premature to bring up the HTML5 card.
@CanyonOasis
Tegra and an OLED screen? What planet are you on where you think those are better than an LED backlit IPS screen and Apple's 1 GHz A4 chip? The simple fact that the iPad can do so much graphically intensive stuff completely smoothly while running at 1024x768 on a 10" screen should be a very large, clear indicator of how much power this thing is packing.
Your statement about the 3GS and multitasking is idiotic because people jailbreak them and multitask without any problems. The hardware is fine.
Flash needs to die. Period. It's old, it's bloated, it slows down every system it's used on, and it's not a standard. HTML 5 is a standard.
@Jack
OLED is a newer tech and is as good or better than the IPS LCD they put into the iPad. I wouldn't doubt that in a second, not to mention it uses FAR less battery. But since we're going to talk about LCD instead of OLEDs why doesn't it have a Pixel Qi screen? They want to add e-reader capability without a screen that can pull it off? Terrible. Not to mention it would of saved TONS on power. Their 1ghz A4 is not going to be anywhere near as powerful as a Tegra2 setup and probably ON PAR with the original Tegra setup.
Colour it how you want - you were wrong.
Howard Zinn died today!!
fuuuuuuuuuuuuck, and i'm here complaining about the stupid iPad.
@dedparrot
That's a real shame.
He was a great man.
I've tried and tried to stay off the "Apple bias" bandwagon, but this one broke me.
So which is it, Engadget? "A big iPhone but not a big iPhone" as quoted in the article, or "..not JUST a big iPhone" like it says on the chart. I wanna believe it's a mis-type, but deep down I know the truth. Christ, you guys are worse than the Windows 7 fans trying to whore up this pig of a device - now you've stooped to rewriting iPad *predictions* into sales pitches? Even worse, this spin-doctored prognostication qualifies as "hitting one out of the park"???
ENOUGH. The truth is out, and its time to face reality, gang. Steve-O blew it this time. He's a visionary but he ain't infallible, to say nothing of the people behind him. This is Apple's version of Microsoft Bob: a laughable product that nobody asked for. Sure, it may lead to greater things or be retooled/upgraded to fit some niche..but it should have never been released in this half-baked form. So, Josh and company, forgive us if we're NOT "happy with what we did get," OK? This is a huge letdown, and you guys seem to already be switching into apologist mode. Please prove me wrong.
I played my own iPad rumor game on my blog and got 14 out of 18 predictions right, 77%! It was only Jan 19th but that beats Sha Wu on Apple Insider.
I wish Jobs would make the press conferences at night when I'm not at work so I could have made this a drinking game.
Multitasking:
It's nice to have playing music in the background while browsing the web.
Oh! You can already do that in a single web-browser with tabs!
Now seriously, Multitasking w/o a physical keyboard is pointless.
A camera? Come on, there are very small cameras with better IQ than most cellular cams. Also, why would you want a camera with something this big? I'm not sure it's back is shiny enough to serve as a mirror.
Memory capacity is a bummer, i agree.
But the 10 hours of medium load battery life is impressive with a 1Ghz A4 (Tentatively an OOO processor, based on the Cortex A9, maybe? nah...)
But what else did you guys expect? The Nexus One is nothing better (Not even the price) and Apple is not fucking Jesus. They don't do miracles
Should I Mention I dislike the iPhone? And there is not even an Apple product in my house?
I think this is a fine piece of Hardware, average, but i don't see why so many people are dissapointed
Care to elaborate why below my comment?
According to the chart, Ars Technica was not correct about the screen. AMOLED is not the same as LED-backlit IPS TFT LCD.
AMOLED is organic LED. The LEDs are the image source.
LED LCD is just a traditional LCD screen with LEDs as backlights, not as the image source.
I sorta missed the part about being "surprised" at how we interact with the device. Don't get me wrong, i think its a neat gadget, but I'm not blown away by how I'm supposed to interact with it. Did i miss something?
Suddenly I couldn't be anymore excited about the Microsoft Courier coming out.
This may be something of a lament. When I saw the first iPhone I was smitten. I held out but I knew it was a question of time. So much gadget lust. I wanted it to be bad. I wanted to stay true to Palm but, frankly, I have loved my iPhone. Its essential quality is that it does a lot for so small a device.
When I saw the iPad my heart didn't pound. All I heard was the sound of tumbleweed skipping and scratching on the desert floor. Did the demo really involve loading a site that it could not display properly (for want of flash)? Are they mad?
This is not a huge iPhone it is the antithesis of the iPhone. Instead of defying the limitations on functionality that smartphone users had come to accept this is imposing limitations on what netbook users have come to expect. It involves downgrading functionality from devices with a similar form factor whilst upping the price. I really don't understand what was going through their minds.
This is genuinely bizarre.
Why would ANYONE consider this product after seeing ALL of the new tablet like devices shown at CES2010? Honestly? Give me one thing this does better than what was shown of the Notion Ink Adam besides have a piece of fruit on the back. There really isn't a damn thing. How Apple could even think this was a good idea after seeing all the new tech being pushed is beyond me.
Engadget, shouldn't your "Jan. 27 2010" rows in the table above (i.e., the top and bottom rows) be shaded green since all of Jobs' specs are "correct?"
I'm just sayin'.
Let me break it down for you... ITS AN OVERSIZED I-POD TOUCH/I-PHONE NOTHING ELSE... Thanks to the operating system you are being restricted to the exact same software restrictions as the Ipod Touch/IPhone, and thus most items on this device will be developed on Apple's over priced development software. Its worthless as a computer and a tablet, a computer actually does multiple functions in the way of reading data, this thing only reads specific formats unique to these devices, and a tablet has something called pressure sensitivity, something these screens don't and without a special pen will never have. I-Pad = One big fat fail.
Actually iLounge is partially correct on the display. Apple's tech specs show that it can display at 720p.
the first rumur is november '02
why did it take so long to build a big iPod? what the hell were apple doing all this time?
I now realize that a few people were going for mock ups, instead of editorial rumors. Way to go...
I wasn't sure what to expect with the iPad, but what they released fit my needs, so I plan to buy one.
Oh, side note: I HATE THIS APPLE iMAC KEYBOARD!
BOYCOTT!
I propose a boycott of the iPad until Apple allows Flash onto it and enables multitasking, which it seems to me are the most common & reasonable complaints that folks have been having about it. There lots of other changes that I'd like to see, but these could be done immediately and would sway me back to buying the machine.
If you agree, please help spread the word.
I disagree that it looks line an iPhone 3G. It's silver, 10 inches and much different.