Upstart Action Express Racing team pulls out surprise win at 24 Hours of Daytona

The iPad’s Interface and Gestures: What’s Actually New (Video)

The iPad is a gargantuan iPhone, perhaps more precisely than many hoped. But, if you look closely, you can see hints of what's truly coming next.

There are a few new scraps of gestures and interface bits, all thanks to the larger screen, which you can see sprinkled throughout the keynote video:

• True multi-finger multitouch
Two finger swipes, three finger twirls—multitouch gestures that weren't really possible on the iPhone's tiny screen, unless you're a mouse. This is what people were excited about, and we only get a taste. Though, the gesture Phil uses to drag multiple slides in Keynote, using two hands, looks a bit awkward and belabored.

• Popovers
The most significant new UI element of the iPad vs. the iPhone are popovers, which you see all over the place when you need to dive further into the interface, or make a choice from a list (since blowing up lists to full screen size doesn't make a whole lot of sense now). A box pops up, and has a list of choices or options, which might take you down through multiple levels of lists, like you see in the demo of Numbers, with selecting functions to calculate. Gruber has more on popovers, and why they're significant, here.

• Media Navigator
In some ways, the media navigator Phil Schiller shows off in iWork is the most interesting bit to me: That's what Apple sees as replacing a file browser in this type of computer. It's a popover too, technically.

• Long touches and drags
Lots of touch, hold and drag, something you didn't see much of in the iPhone. With more UI elements, and layers of them, you need a way of distinguishing what type of motion action you're trying to engage.

These are all pretty basic, so far, building right on top of the iPhone's established interface, but it points to the future: More fingers, more gestures, more layered UI elements and built-in browsers.

More Apps, More Problems: How the iPad Will Change the App Store

It doesn't really matter what you think of the iPad itself, because love it or loathe it, it will irreversibly change the landscape of the App Store. Here's how.

Apple Will Finally Have to Fix Fragmentation

Fragmentation in the App Store is a problem already. Even across devices with the same screen size, same core feature set and same product name, you find subtle differences in capability. A first-gen iPhone doesn't have a compass, so it can't run augmented reality apps. A second-gen iPod Touch can support mic input, while my first-gen model—purchased just a few months before—can't. An iPhone 3GS will run a 3D game like N.O.V.A. beautifully, while a regular old 3G struggles to keep a viewable framerate playing Sonic the Hedgehog.

Part of the current problem is the lack of division between products in the App Store. Developers generally say what kind of device is supported in obvious cases—a compass-based app will most of the time be listed as 3GS-only—but there's almost no enforcement by Apple, meaning that it's easy to download an app that you can't really use. It's getting to the point that there needs to be separate sections for each device, or some kind of rudimentary search or sort parameter for filtering out incompatible software.

We've needed a fix for fragmentation for a while, and hopefully the iPad, being such an obviously distinct device, will give Apple the kick in the ass they need to implement one. The iPad may run all iPhone apps, but the iPhone will not necessarily run all iPad apps, so assuming downloads aren't required to be packaged together as dual-mode iPad/iPhone apps, there will have to be a way to prevent purchasers from accidentally purchasing something they can't use at all on their iPhone. An improved, properly segmented App Store storefront or download system is inevitable; we'll just have to wait and see what it looks like.

Data Will Be Freed

In some iterations, the iPad is a 3G-capable device, and in all, it has a microphone. What it never has is built-in voice capabilities—that is, unless you download them. According to early reports, the new iPad and iPhone SDK has lifted the restriction on voice calls over 3G data (VoIPo3G?). Opening up voice over data services for the iPad could have a larger effect on iPhone apps than on iPad apps, since, you know, they're for phones.
AT&T isn't the first wireless company to allow voice over 3G data, and the iPhone is far from the first phone to support it, but for both to now be onboard with a technology that threatens a core feature of carriers' business plans is a very, very good sign.

In-App Purchasing Will Finally Take Off

The iPad will ship with a book store, but what about all those fancy magazines? (Or to adopt their parlance, "WHITHER THE PERIODICAL?") If print publications were placing their future success in Apple's hands, Apple's just handed it right back. Unlike books, which will be sold directly through an iTunes-style storefront and viewed through a common interface, magazines and newspapers will be in charge of selling their own apps, with their own interfaces, and their own business models. But this could turn out to be a good thing.

Imagine an icon on your iPad. When you tap it, it'll open up your favorite magazine, in full color, with magazine-style formatting and interactive content. The app itself is free, but the content is not—new issues come either individually, at newsstand-ish prices, or through a subscription. They will compete with one another to provide the best e-magazine experience. Unique, miniature storefronts, selling content for anything from a single publication to an entire publishing empire: this is the kind of thing the App Store's in-app purchase system was made for.

What's funny about this is that in-app purchases are still App Store transactions, carried out through the same payment system and with a portion of revenues set aside for Apple. Nothing will change except the packaging, but that alone will be enough to fundamentally change the App Store economy, and how we pay for print content. (Increased dependence on in-app purchases could help stem the tide of piracy as well, but that's another discussion entirely. Soon!)

Note: Apple may be faced with some resistance in this model, though, since magazine publishers would much rather handle billing themselves, if just for the valuable data they could glean about their subscribers.

"Apps" Will Grow Into "Applications"

Apps are small, they're simple, they've got a short title. They're like applications, but nuggetized. And that's fine! We call software on phones by a different name than we call software on PCs, because something about the products feels different. The iPad could bridge that gap.

The SDK has been out for less than two days, so nobody has had time to really delve into the app potential of the iPad. Except, of course, Apple. Steve Jobs spent what probably seemed like too long on iWork for the iPad, a set of $10-a-pop apps that Apple fully redesigned for the iPad's touch interface which are an order of magnitude more complex than anything on the iPhone right now. (Our friend John Mahoney at PopSci goes so far as to say these are a sneak preview of Apple's entire future software philosophy. He could be right.)

Of course, these are Apple apps, so you'd expect them to be executed well, and to use Apple's device to its maximum potential. But with more screen real estate, more power, serious text entry abilities and a more mature SDK at their disposal, the developers are going to give us apps of an entirely new caliber, not just a new size.

Apple Will Rule With an Iron Fist, Or Learn to Let Things Go

With iBooks, Apple is setting itself up for an awkward situation. Apple has strict (if sometimes inscrutable) rules about what types of apps are permitted, mostly concerning appropriateness of content and the safety and stability of the app's code. The prohibition that always rubbed developers and customers the wrong way, though, is the ban on apps that duplicate the functionality of Apple's apps, like email clients, new browsers, and by extension, alternative music stores and app stores. These are now joined by iBooks, which is unique in that its actually invading territory inhabited by preexisting apps, like Amazon's Kindle app and indie favorites like Stanza. So what does Apple do? Do they purge Kindle and co. from the App Store, or mark ereader apps as incompatible with the iPad? The Kindle app is to iBooks what an Amazon MP3 store app would be to iTunes, all the way down to the competing file formats and DRM systems (iBooks renders a proprietary type of ePub file, while the Kindle sells books in a proprietary AZW format), so even if this would be a terribly dickish thing to do, it's possible.

The more likely path is a continuation of the gradual erosion of Apple's tight grip on the App Store. Along with explicit, proactive feature additions like the ones we saw in OS 3.0, Apple's been letting more and more types of apps slide through the approval process. The Rhapsody app may not provide a plain music download service like iTunes, but it is music that you pay for, in an app that doesn't come from Apple. you may not be able to download a browser with an entirely new rendering engine, but now you can download a cornucopia of alternative browsers that render through WebKit. Some apps can stream video over 3G now; others can broadcast voice communication over AT&T's data network. It's too early to presume, but if iBooks doesn't murder its competition, Apple could be charting a course toward a more open App Store, not a more tightly controlled one.

[The iPad on Giz]

Slate Showdown: iPad vs. HP Slate vs. JooJoo vs. Android Tablets & More (UPDATED)

Everybody's talking about tablets, especially those single-pane capacitive touchscreen ones more specifically known as "slates." The iPad is the biggest newsmaker, but there are lots headed our way (most with built-in webcams). Here's how they measure up, spec-wise:

Updated: We've added Lenovo IdeaPad U1 and Archos 9 Windows 7 edition—see below for more details.

Click on the image to view it larger

As you can see, they have different strengths and weaknesses, some of which will become more clear in the coming months as we learn more about each tablet. (That Dell Mini 5 is especially inscrutable right now.)

The iPad has the most storage, cheap 3G, the time-tested iPhone OS and its mountain of apps, and a serious amount of Apple marketing juice behind it. But it's also famously lacking features common to the other tablets, such as webcam and multitasking (only first party apps like music and email can multitask). The Notion Ink Adam is perhaps the most interesting of the bunch, with its dual-function transflective screen from Pixel Qi: It can be either a normal LCD or, with the flick of a switch, an easy-on-the-eyes reflective LCD that resembles e-ink. Its hardware is also surprisingly impressive—but it remains to be seen if Android is really the right OS for a 10-inch tablet.

The Dell Mini 5 and forthcoming Android edition of the Archos 7 tablet are two of a kind, almost oversized smartphones in their feature sets. Is an extra two or three inches of screen real estate worth the consequent decrease in pocketability? Perhaps not. And finally, there's the maligned JooJoo, formerly the CrunchPad, a bit of an oddball as the only web-only device in the bunch. It doesn't really have apps, can't multitask, and pretty much confines you to an albeit fancy browser, sort of like Chrome OS will. The JooJoo is also the only tablet here to have no demonstrated way to read ebooks.

Update: The two new additions in v.2 of this chart, the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 and Archos 9, are both unusual. The Windows 7-powered Archos 9 has been available since September, is the only slate here that lacks multitouch, and is the only one with a HDD instead of solid state memory of some kind. It's more related to the older tablets, but there's no keyboard, just a 9-inch touchscreen. It doesn't even have specific apps like the HP Slate's TouchSmart, it's just a Windows computer.

The Lenovo IdeaPad U1 is even weirder, in that it's actually two computers—the specs listed in the chart are for the tablet detached, but when it's attached to its base, it switches both hardware and software. In its attached form, it's a Windows 7 laptop with a full keyboard and trackpad, Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of memory, eSATA, VGA- and HDMI-out, and all the other amenities you'd expect from a modern thin-and-light. We just have see what it's like when it ships in June.

Data Sources:
Apple iPad: [Gizmodo]
HP Slate: [Gizmodo, GDGT; Tipster]
Fusion Garage JooJoo: [Gizmodo]
Notion Ink Adam: [Slashgear]
Dell Mini 5: [Gizmodo, Gizmodo]
Archos 7 Android: [DanceWithShadows, Gizmodo]
Lenovo IdeaPad U1: [Lenovo, Gizmodo, Gizmodo]
Archos 9: [UMPCPortal, Archos]

A quick word about "slates" vs. "tablets": These are tablets, and it's a word we prefer. The sad fact is, it's overused. There's no way to say "tablet" without including every godawful stylus-based convertible laptop built since 2002. (Thank you, Bill Gates!) And even the new touchscreen tablets come in single-pane and keyboard-equipped laptop styles. So "slate," good or bad, is the more apt term.

The iPad Is The Gadget We Never Knew We Needed

Now that we've seen the iPad in the light of day, there's a lot of chatter about what it can't do. But Apple is now a massive threat to anything not a PC or smartphone. Here's why:

Generally speaking, the iPad's goal is not to replace your netbook, assuming you own and love one. It's not about replacing your Kindle either, assuming you cashed in for that as well. We have reviewed plenty of both, and know there's plenty to like. If you derive pleasure out of using either, then Apple might have a hard time convincing you to switch to the iPad. But for the millions of people who aren't on either bandwagon, yet have the money and interest in a "third" device between the phone and the computer, the iPad will have greater appeal.

250 Million iPods Earlier...

When the first iPod came out, its goal was not to grab the customers who Creative and Archos were fighting over, with their dueling 6GB "jukeboxes." It was to grab everyone else. I remember listening to arguments about why Archos had a better device than Creative or even Apple. Lot of good that early-adopter love got them in the long run. The pocket media player market exploded, with Apple eating over half the pie consistently for almost a decade.

When the iPhone came out, BlackBerry users were like, "No flippin' way." And guess what, those people still buy BlackBerries. (And why shouldn't they? Today's BlackBerry is still great, and hardly distinguishable from the BB of 2007.) The point is, the iPhone wasn't designed to win the hearts and minds of people who already knew their way around a smartphone. It came to convince people walking around with Samsung and LG flip phones that there was more to life. And it worked.

iPhones now account for more than half of AT&T's phone sales. You can bet that WinMo, Palm and BB combined weren't doing that kind of share pre-iPhone. Globally, the smartphone business grew from a niche thing for people in suits to being a 180-million unit per year business, says Gartner, eclipsing the entire notebook business—about 20% of which, I might add, are netbooks. The iPhone isn't the sole driver of this growth, of course, but its popularity has opened many new doors for the category. Just ask anyone in the business of developing/marketing/selling Droids or Palm Pres.

You could say, "Those were Apple's successes, what about their failures?" In the second age of Steve Jobs, there aren't a whole lot. Apple TV is the standout—quite possibly because Apple discovered, after releasing the product, that there wasn't a big enough market for it, or any of its competitors. Apple TV may be crowded out by connected Blu-ray players, home-theater PCs and HD video players, but Apple TV's niche is, to this day, almost frustratingly unique.

So how do you know if a market exists? You ask the "other" Steve, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

It's Business Time

There's a famous Ballmerism, one he's even said to me, that goes something like, "A business isn't worth entering unless the sales potential is 50 million units or more." 50 million. That's why Ballmer is happy to go into the portable media player business and the game console business, but laughs about ebook readers. Microsoft may not sell 50 million Zunes, but it's worth being a contender.

You can bet Apple thinks this way. You can easily argue that, despite its sheen of innovation, Apple is far more conservative than Microsoft. Apple TV is a bit of an anomaly, but with no major hardware refreshes and a few small-minded software updates, you can hardly accuse Apple of throwing good money after bad. Presumably Apple TV was a learning experience for Jobs & Co., one they're not likely to repeat.

With that in mind, let's look at these popular in between sized devices, particularly at netbooks and ebook readers.

Like Notebooks, Only Littler

Netbooks are cooking, but it's well known they're cooking because notebooks are not. A netbook was originally conceived as something miraculously small and simple, running Linux with a warm fuzzy interface that dear old gran could use to bone up on pinochle before Friday's showdown with the Rosenfelds. But instead of growing outward to this new audience (always with the grandmothers, it seems), it grew inward, cannibalizing real PC sales.

The Linux fell away, mostly because it was ill-conceived, and these simply became tiny, cheap, limited-function Windows PCs. They may have been a 40-million-unit business last year, according to DisplaySearch, but they only got cheaper, and the rest of the business was so depressed nobody was happy. (And just ask Ballmer how much he makes on those XP licenses, or even the "low-powered OS" that is Windows 7 Starter.)

Point is, nerds may love their netbooks, but the market that the netbook originally set out to reach is too far away, running farther away and screaming louder with every blog post about what chipset and graphics processor a netbook is rumored to have, or whether or not it is, indeed, a netbook at all. Clearly the audience is cheap geeks, and while that may be a good market to be in (just read Giz comments), it's definitively not Steve Jobs' market.

Easy on the Eyes

Now, about that Kindle. Best ebook reader out there. Every time we say that, we say it with a wink. We totally respect the Kindle (and I for one have hopes for Nook once it pulls itself out of the firmware mess it's in), but we think e-ink is a limited medium.

Its functionality is ideal for a very specific task—simulating printed words on paper—and for that I have always sung its praise. The Kindle is ideal for delivering and serving up those kinds of books, and as a voracious reader of those kinds of books, I am grateful for its existence. But there are other kinds of books of which I am a consumer: Cookbooks, children's books and comic books. (Notice, they all end in "book.") The Kindle can't do any of those categories well at all, because they are highly graphical. E-ink's slow-refreshing, difficult-to-resize grayscale images are pretty much hideous. No big deal for the compleat Dickens, but too feeble to take on my dog-eared, saffron-stained Best-Ever Curry Cookbook.

So, e-ink's known weaknesses aside, let's talk again about Ballmer's favorite number, 50 million. Guess how many Kindles are estimated to have been sold ever since the very first one launched? 2.5 million. Nobody knows for sure because Amazon won't release the actual figures. Guess how many ebook readers are supposedly going to sell this year, according to Forrester? Roughly 6 million. In a year. Compare that to 21 million iPods sold last quarter, along with 9 million iPhones.

I am not suggesting that the iPod or iPhone is a worthwhile replacement for reading, but I am saying that, for better or worse, there are probably at least 2.5 million iPod or iPhone users who read books on those devices.

Are you starting to see the larger picture here? I am not trying to convince you to buy an Apple iPad, I am trying to explain to you why you probably will anyway. As the Kindle fights just to differentiate itself while drowning in a milk-white e-ink sea of God-awful knockoffs, you'll see that color screen shining in the distance.

Sure the iPad may not be as easy on the eyes as a Kindle. But you will be able to read in bed without an additional light source. You will be able to read things online without banging your head against a wall to get to the right page. And, once the publishers get their acts together, you will be able to enjoy comics, cookbooks, and children's books, with colorful images. Even before you set them into motion, dancing around the screen, they'll look way better than they would on e-ink. (I haven't even mentioned magazines, but once that biz figures out what to do with this thing, they will make it work, because they need color screens, preferably touchscreens.)

Tide Rollin' In

So we have this new device, carefully planned by a company with a unique ability to reach new markets. And we have two types of products that have effectively failed to reach those markets. And you're going to bet on the failures? The iPad has shortcomings, but they only betray Apple's caution, just like what happened with iPhone No. 1. Now every 15-year-old kid asks for an iPhone, and the ones that don't get them get iPod Touches.

We can sit here in our geeky little dorkosphere arguing about it all day, but as much as Apple clearly enjoys our participation, the people Jobs wants to sell this to don't read our rants. They can't even understand them. My step-mother refuses to touch computers, but nowadays checks email, reads newspapers and plays Solitaire on an iPod Touch, after basically picking it up by accident one day. That's a future iPad user if I ever saw one.

Jobs doesn't care about the netbook business, or the ebook business. He's just aiming for the same people they were aiming at. The difference is, he's going to reach them. And the fight will be with whoever enters into the tablet business with him. Paging Mr. Ballmer...

PS - If I've gotten to the end of this lengthy piece without telling you much about the iPad at all, it's because other Giz staffers have already done such a handsome job of that already. If you missed out, here are the best four links to get you up to speed:

• Apple iPad: Everything You Need To Know

• Apple iPad First Hands On

• Apple iPad Just Tried to Assassinate Laptops

• 8 Things That Suck About Apple iPad

Apple iPad Just Tried To Assassinate the Computer

Only way to interpret the launch of the iPad? Apple has declared the PC dead. Well-crafted but closed devices are their future of consumer computing. And if no one else can match the iPad experience, they may be right.

"In many ways this defines our vision, our sense of what's next." – Jonathan Ive

PCs will be around as expert devices for the long haul, but it's clear that Apple, coasting on the deserved success of the iPhone, sees simple, closed internet devices as the future of computing. (Or at the very least, portable computing.) And for the average consumer, it could be.

It's the "internet device" vision of a decade ago all over again, except now Apple can offer what is arguably the best user experience for internet and media consumption combined with a very reasonable (for a brand new gadget) price.

It may not be good for you, because you're an internet dork who wants to do heavy video editing or run Photoshop. (Or, you know, multitask.) But for the average person off the street walking into a Best Buy, their laptop money may now be going to an iPad.

What happens when they find the iPad is all they needed in the first place? They never buy a laptop again.

In the meantime, here are a few things to think about for we full-time dorks.

Does it kill netbooks?

If there's anything that you can take home from today's announcement of the iPad it's this: from here on out the battle between physical keyboards and touchscreen ones has moved beyond smartphones and into every other area of computing. Get ready to hear someone say "I touchtype just fine on a soft keyboard on my PC" very soon.

I'd be lying if I said the giant bezel doesn't ward me off a bit, even if I understand why it's necessary to be there. But it isn't as sexy as it could be, all things considered.

But a 1.5-pound device with a (theoretical) 10-hour battery life? Done and done. Heck, I'll haul two.

Yet I will buy the dock! Perhaps, even if I am frustrated to no end that they are not simply supporting the Bluetooth keyboard. But I suppose that is that—this really is what Apple imagines the future of laptops to be.

Belay that! A couple of you have pointed out that the Bluetooth keyboard is in fact supported! I am a'flutter.

But it's a lot more likely I'll carry around an iPad than a netbook.

What about the add-on keyboard, though? I sort of love it, but it is so very un-Apple to have a keyboard attachment. And all the dongles. And only a VGA output, not DisplayPort! It seems like the iPad came from an alternate dimension.

Productivity

If typing on the iPad's soft keyboard is even slightly faster or more comfortable than typing on an iPhone, they could have a productivity winner here. But I sort of doubt it's going to be comfortable enough to use for hours of typing at a time.

For emailing, attachment browsing, and the like, though, I think it'll be a pretty powerful little device. Its form factor is perfect for pulling out of a little executive bag to check mail or show off a PDF to a coworker.

The new cloud-based iWork looks amusing, but who really wants to switch from Office to iWork? Email and other web-based tech is still the most portable solution. On the other hand, a functional iWork is what convinces your CTO that you can use the iPad to display Powerpoints.

Screen Aspect Ratio

There was never going to be a perfect size, especially since movies are widescreen, but a single page of a magazine or book is decidedly not. Yet the aspect ratio, which is something close to 4:3 (if not exactly), surrounds widescreen movies with a lot of black, especially when you include the bezel. I would expect future iPad models to lengthen ever so slightly, but not much.

3G Access

250MB for $15 a month; unlimited for $30. No contracts. Unlocked SIM slot. Completely reasonable.

Of course, it uses AT&T, so if you're in NYC or San Francisco you're screwed. But it also means you could switch in other carriers' SIM cards if you like.

And the free Wi-Fi access in an AT&T hotspot—presumably only if you've paid for some AT&T access—won't hurt.

That the iPad is unlocked, though, also means that T-Mobile could potentially roll in with a 3G option for even less money.

Pornography

It's simple: You can hold something that weighs 1.5 pounds in one hand.

Relaxation

A few have mentioned how sitting down with an iPad may feel casual, less prone to send one into "work-mode". I can buy that—but that will also serve to delineate use-cases between laptops and iPads, making the iPad seem more like a toy.

Reading

Don't call it a Kindle killer. Books on iPad will probably be more expensive than Kindle's titles, at least at first. And there's nothing about the iPad's screen that will make it better for reading than, say, a laptop. But having a dedicated iBooks store? That's good for everybody, including iPhone and iPod touch users.

And for anything color—comics, children's books, magazines—the iPad will destroy what e-paper can do.

Multitouch

Here is the thing to know: When it comes to multitouch, consider the iPad the harbinger of all the interface tricks that will be coming to iMac and MacBooks in the relatively near future.

VoIP

It has a microphone. There's no reason to think it won't be able to do VoIP.

All in all, I think they've got a category-straddling winner here, but it's a bit of a gangly pseudopodal mutant at the same time. It doesn't kill the laptop or the PC quite yet, but you can at least see how Apple intends to choke the life out of those markets.

Don't like that? Better get to work on a better tablet.

Beloved Bloodsuckers

Who Has the Best Bikini Body?

Crushin’