Steve Jobs with Apple's new iPad
Photo: Jeff Fox

iBooks is Apple's e-book app, with a bookshelf interface that looks like a physical wooden bookshelf. The new iBooks store will sell books from five large publishers, including Penguin, HarperCollins, and others, with more joining soon.

The iBooks store gives details of the book, samples, and reviews. Tap the book you want to buy, and it pops up on the bookshelf. Based on a preview, it looks like Apple is increasing prices from the standard $9.99 for e-books.

Controls pop up and disappear with a tap. Tap right and left, or drag pages to turn the page. Photos, both black-and-white and color, as well as videos, can be included in the books. Fonts can be changed or made larger and smaller.

—Donna Tapellini

Apple iPad
Photo: Apple

Apple today announced the release of the iPad, its new tablet computer. Similar in functionality to the iPhone or iPod Touch, the iPad will be able to download applications from Apple's App Store, display books, newspapers, and magazines like an e-reader, and run word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software with iWork.

We'll be commenting further on the iPad once we get our hands on it, and our technicians will give it the full treatment when we get one into the labs.

In the meantime, check out our coverage from the Apple conference:

• iPad pricing
• iPad data plan
• iPad hardware and specs
• iPad as a newspaper and e-book reader
• iWorks office applications recreated for the iPad
• iPad and the App Store

Wow! Rumors put it at $999, but this is a big surprise. It's a 16GB version with Wi-Fi for $499. The 64GB version is $700. The most expensive, with 64GB and 3G, is $829. The iPad will ship in 60 days, with 3G models 30 days later.

A keyboard dock will also be available, as well as a case and a docking station.

—Donna Tapellini

Data plans for the iPad: $14.99 for up to 250MB of data a month. Even better, an unlimited plan is $29.99 a month. The plan is through AT&T, and you'll be able to connect to AT&T hotspots. There's no contract, and the plan can be canceled at any time.

—Donna Tapellini

All new versions of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers have been created for the iPad. (Each costs $9.99.)

Keynote provides templates for slideshow presentations that you access by tapping, including tables and charts. You move slides from one place in the presentation to another by dragging and dropping with your finger. Resize and rotate images with finger gestures. Tap or swipe to change slides during a presentation.

The word processor, Pages, brings up a keyboard with a tap. The keyboard can be enlarged or made smaller. You can scroll through multi-page documents with previews of each page, and when you move a graphic the text automatically and seamlessly rewraps.

Numbers lets you store a number of spreadsheets in one document using tabs at the top of a page. Tapping and dragging lets you move columns with your fingers. Calculations are also done with taps, and when you double-tap, a numeric data-entry keyboard pops up, or you can call up a formula/function keypad, text, or others.

—Donna Tapellini