You may have heard that Apple announced a new product last night – the iPad. While it was heavily rumoured before the event we weren’t sure exactly what Apple wanted the device to be.

The Apple iPad

Well, now it’s announced this is what we know:

• It’s a touchscreen tablet device with an LCD colour display. It doesn’t have the e-ink display used in many eBook readers which provides a reading experience close to paper and better battery life.
• It’s based on the iPhone operating system, this means it’s not a computer in its own right and still syncs with your main computer just like an iPod or iPhone.
• All current iPhone applications will work but they’ll be double sized to fit the screen, developers are able to create or adapt apps specifically for the iPad though. It also uses the same App store.
• One of the standard apps will be iBooks where you are able to download and read books. They’re partnering with various publishers and offering books in the store using the same micro-payment system that iTunes uses.

More interesting though is what it doesn’t do:

• There’s no multitasking. Just like the iPhone it can only do one thing at a time so you can’t have email open, last.fm playing in the background and your browser loading a page.
• No support for Flash. This means no web video, no Flash websites.
• No camera. Given that every other Apple device has a camera this is a strange thing to leave out.
• No GPS, no HDMI out, no USB.
• 1024×178 display. This isn’t widescreen (so you get black bar on movies) and isn’t HD. This doesn’t make it great for watching video, one of the things showed off by Apple.

No Flash on the Apple iPad

So what uses does the iPad have? Well it’s not intended to replace a laptop or a phone, but instead to exist in addition to these. I can see the iPad being a casual home device; something you have lying about the house to read books on, surf the web in front of the TV, and watch the occasional video. I don’t think it’s going to be great as a computer-like device, it’s not versatile and able to ‘do anything’ like a laptop or desktop.

As one commenter put it; “Apple has basically moved into the bedtime reading market today.”