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The iPad is preparing for a nice launch after much anticipation later this month. But so much has risen up since its announcement, so here’s a compilation of stuff about the iPad, in short, digestible chunks.

iPad to Support Emergency Calls?

The iPad has an interesting feature – the ability to support emergency calls. Check the video below.

So yeah, the iPad may be able to make emergency calls, in order to comply with the FCC.

Wall Street Journal is Coming to iPad

Murdoch states that Wall Street Journal will be coming to the iPad. Celebrate. Quote below:

Mr. Murdoch said the Journal planned to be on Apple Inc.’s iPad tablet computer. “In fact, we’ve been allowed to work on one, and it’s under padlock and key. The key is turned by Apple every night,” he said in response to a question. “under padlock and key.”

A move to monetize and help control the quickly dying newspaper industry?

AT&T CEO states iPad will be ‘WiFi-driven, not 3G.’

Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, states:

“When you think of the iPad and how that correlates with pricing, the iPad — it is going to be interesting to see the customer reaction to the iPad. Our expectation is that it is — there’s not going to be a lot of people out there looking for one more subscription revenue stream to put on our network, as a result of an iPad. We think it is going to be a largely Wi-Fi driven product. And that is why you see the pricing of the model to be one that is prepaid in nature.

We are going to be anxious to see what the customer response to this is and how customers use it. How much Wi-Fi versus wide area network, and what will have to happen with prices over time, I don’t know. It is going to be an interesting one to watch. We think it will be mainly a Wi-Fi driven product.”

Til later.

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Just a quickie, but it made me chuckle, a lot.

"It's super fast because it hasn't got Flash slowing it down."

On a serious note though, I’ve gotta hand it to Gizmodo, this is the kinda stuff that makes people read it. Humour, and stuff no-one else would have ever thought of.

[Gizmodo]

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The iPad announcement on the 27th changed eBooks forever?

Apple have kinda killed the whole idea of a $9.99 eBook – since the launch of the iPad, all the people partnered with Apple appear to be pushing on Amazon for the more expensive eBook model. Instead of the original Amazon controlled price of $9.99, each book publisher are now pushing for $14.99-$15.99 per book for new books, and then have that price slowly lower over time.

Macmillan was the first to suggest the prices, the noble one, and it suffered a brunt attack from Amazon – pulled from the Bookstore and the Kindle for a few days. However, Amazon quickly woke up to the fact that Macmillan was only the first – and that all the other ones of Apple’s educational partners will eventually succumb to this – 3 of them already have.

Now two other partners, Hachette and HarperCollins, have both dropped the $9.99 in favour of the $14.99 pricing strategy, and it won’t be long until Simon & Schuster and Penguin go for it to. Maybe even Apple’s dropped educational partner, McGrawHill, will change too.

Amazon’s strategy has slowly crumbled, but they may have tricks up their sleeves – such as exclusivity on new books and other tactics. We’ll have to wait and see.

But yeah, eBooks (iBooks?) are going to start costing more. Very soon.

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Google's Chrome Tablet

It’s only been a week since the iPad, and only a few days since the statement by Steve Jobs, with a few choice words for Google.

But now, this is Google’s tablet, as announced on their Chromium blog. Yeah, so Apple release a multitouch phone controlled around Apps and featuring an App store, and next – Google do. Then Apple release a multi-touch tablet… and so do Google.

I mean yeah, perhaps its inevitable for a computer company or a phone company to challenge the iPad or the iPhone, but a company who does not produce any physical product to start making phones after the competitors, and tablets after the competitors, is just kinda silly.

The tablet will run a multitouch version of Chrome OS, something I find peculiar if the OS is going to be ‘as lightweight as possible’.

I can imagine Jobs has some stronger words for Google.

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The home screen for the iPad.

Right. So before you think anything’s up, let me emphasize a point – just because a device sells for $499, doesn’t mean they earn $499. In fact, cut development costs, I’d have been surprised if Apple earned $80, not $200. Devices are usually expensive and as such do not generate massive income, however a lot of devices make up for this with other products included – this can range from software to monitors etc. that the other companies pay them to include.

But no, it’s vastly different to some other strategies – some companies barely scrape $5 per product sold and make up for it with bundled software promotion. Not Apple, as they’ve managed to cut costs down to the point where it earns them a shade more than what you’d expect. The entry-level $499 model generates $208 in profit, meanwhile top-range $829 model  doubles that, raking in $446 per individual unit sold.

From GigaOM:

Marshall estimates that the cost of making the 16GB Wi-Fi model of the iPad runs around $270.50, plus $20 for warranty costs for a total of $290.50. Most of that cost accounts for the 9.7-inch touchscreen display, which Marshall guesses costs around $100. Apple sees considerable savings on its own in-house A4 chips, which run around $15 per unit. With a cost of $290.50 and a selling price of $499, Apple stands to see a profit margin of 42.9 percent with each sale.

On other models that margin ranges from 48 to 55.1 percent, giving the iPad line as a whole an overall profit-generating power of about 50 percent, a number which assumes that the Wi-Fi models will sell considerably more than the 3G-capable devices, a reasonable assumption.

And, likely; they’re gonna love the income rate of these things.

[GigaOM]

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Found this while browsing YouTube. It’s Hitler’s personal response to the release of the iPad.

It’s pretty funny.

As you can see, we’re not the only ones miffed by Apple’s whopping mistake.

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Will be updated tomorrow. (Just as a note, this is not a review. This is simply explaining the products features.)

Right, so it’s finally here. The tablet that will destroy the computer, save the world and cure all illnesses. Well, maybe not that far. In fact, I doubt it’s gonna do any of those things collectively, but something it sure as hell will do is provide a challenging market in the eReader zone. Unusual, however – the iPhone left everyone in the phone market virtually crapping their pants, while I’m not so sure the iPad will do the same to the eReader market, being an unusually small and yet fast-developing market. Even though the iPad is bloody cheap ($499), it needs a computer to sync – and there’s no file storage. It’s more eReader/Desktop accompaniment than standalone tablet computer.

The iPad runs in a similar fashion to the iPhone, 4 columns of apps on multiple screens, a big difference being a dock at the bottom more similar to the Mac dock, yet only in appearance – it also allows for desktop backgrounds. You can add apps or websites to the pages, similar to an iPhone. The desktop backgrounds is a nice touch.

The browser, much unlike the iPhone, has a full web rendering engine that easily shows a full website when portrait, with a 1024×768 resolution. The large resolution makes it easier to read the web, and it presumably loads faster than the iPhone’s slow-as-ass browser.

In other terms of its UI, it has some useful friend-organization tools, such as a new contact page that heftily resembles an actual address book, and shows the contact list and the contact image side-by-side. This could be useful, this could be useless. I am a banana.

It has something interesting though – full iWork for the iPad, which will make using it to actually write and do work possible – better than the iPhone, much. This will allow Pages, Numbers and Keynote documents to be saved onto the iPad then either directly presented or printed or moved to a Macbook for presentation.

The thing’s able to display books in a unique app called ‘iBooks’ (what a surprise). And it truly might be something that could outplace the Kindle, showing pages with an attractive UI resembling a bookshelf.

As for prices, here’s a list:

16GB – WiFi: $499; 3G: $629;
32GB – WiFi: $599; 3G: $729;
64GB – WiFi: $699; 3G: $829;

Some claim being remarkably cheap for an eReader, the prices seem a little unusual, especially with paying $130 extra just to use 3G… which you pay $20 a year to use. What’s up with that? I suppose things will sort out soon.

The iPad cannot multitask, which is definitely not a boon to its sales.

Just for humour:

Origin unknown.

More on this tomorrow.

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It’s official. The Apple Tablet is here. And It’s called iPad.

Steve unveiled it just now, and he’s more than proud about it. Read the Liveblog until later: http://tekcube.com/live/

Apple claimed the iPad would have an interaction interface that you would be surprised by. Unfortunately, it’s surprisingly familiar.

Gallery:

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