iPad

Apple aficionados and first-adopters will have to wait a bit longer than anticipated to get their hot hands on the iPad. The tablet computer's debut has been moved back to April 3 for the U.S., AP reports.

MIT chemists cover the whiteboards and even windows of their with graphical diagrams of molecular bonds, but they need not rely upon dry-erase markers much longer. Their computer science colleagues have begun developing sketch-recognition for tablet computers such as Apple's iPad that can interpret stylus drawings of chemical bonds and element symbols for chemists, circuit components such as batteries or capacitors in an electrical engineering diagram, and even family trees.

Remember that groundbreaking Apple Super Bowl ad from 1984? The one where the woman throws a hammer at Big Brother, signifying a new era of freedom that would be ushered in with Macintosh? My, how times have changed. Here we are more than 25 years later and the despotic, all-knowing face up there on that giant screen now belongs to Steve Jobs—and Big Brother Steve is holding an iPad.

During yesterday's iPad event, which largely played out just as the rumors foretold, Apple did do something unexpected: they unveiled a version of the word processing, spreadsheet and presentation suite iWork redesigned for the iPad's 9.7-inch touchscreen. It's easy to write off iWork's inclusion as a minor perk only for business types only, but don't. The suite's fully-redesigned touch interfaces actually reveal more about Apple's vision of the future of computing than any other element of their new tablet. Here's why.

The iPad, one of the most anticipated gadgets in history, is here. And the stakes, clearly, are high: to my knowledge, this is the first time Apple has referred to one of their products as "magical." Here's what it's like to play with one.

Update: Here are our hands on impressions of the iPad. Our liveblog with all the details of the announcement is archived here.

Starting at 10 AM PST (1 PM EST), we'll be covering Apple's tablet unveiling event from San Francisco, with reality distortion field shielding equipped. Check back here shortly before then for words and pictures from the event, updating live.

Tomorrow, we'll be in San Francisco to cover Apple's introduction--should the fevered speculation be accurate--of a new tablet device with a ten-inch touchscreen running some version of the iPhone OS. With it, so the story goes, they are hoping to deliver printed media products digitally in a new way, along with music and videos and apps galore.

For Apple, it is a gamble; tablet-sized devices of the sort, other than perhaps Amazon's Kindle (a decidedly different beast), have yet to go mainstream. So the all important question: Do you want one?

Though whispers of an Apple tablet device practically predate Australopithecus, this week they’ve reached a fever pitch. It’s been reported by several news outlets that the supposed iTablet will feature a 10-inch touchscreen, both Wi-Fi and 3G data, and a custom ARM processor. It’s already been priced at $800 and even greenlit by none other than His Majesty Steve Jobs for a September release. Not one iota of this has been officially confirmed, but the prospect of a Mac Tablet seems more within reach than ever before.

This is not a good thing. If an Apple tablet is ever actually released, we should all be very concerned for the future of what most of us take for granted today: our digital freedom.