“Millions of our customers already use Amazon Wish Lists to store items they want to buy for themselves or receive as gifts,” said Gianna Puerini, vice president of Worldwide Design and Community at Amazon.com. “With Safari 5, we were able to quickly build the Add to Amazon Wish List extension that lets customers add items from any website to their Amazon Wish List with the click of a button.”

“We’re excited to continue working closely with Apple to bring visually compelling Bing experiences to Safari,” said Jeff Henshaw, general manager of Bing User Experience. “The Bing Extension for Safari brings Bing search intelligence to everyday browsing with Safari. When a user selects text in Safari, Bing instantly recognizes what they might need and pops up helpful, informative tips, from real time maps and driving directions to real time translations to direct web search results.”

“Using web standard technologies and Safari’s extension builder, we developed an MLB.com extension to give fans another way to consume up-to-the-moment baseball content, including live look-ins to games, right from the Safari toolbar,” said Noah Garden, executive vice president, Commerce and Sponsorship at MLB.com.

“Our extension for Safari is a great way for readers to get all of the latest breaking news and all the important stories, blogs and columns they want to see,” said Denise Warren, general manager, NYTimes.com at The New York Times Company. “While you browse other sites in Safari, our extension checks for updates and slides in new headlines and thumbnails, so you won’t miss a thing.”

“Creating our Twitter extension in Safari couldn’t have been easier,” said Jason Goldman, vice president of Product at Twitter. “By providing features like the ability to tweet about a page and view trending topics, we’ve created a simple way to deliver relevant, interesting content to people regardless of where they are on the web.”

The Safari Extensions Gallery is accessible from the Safari menu or at extensions.apple.com. Users can download and install extensions from the gallery with a single click, and there’s no need to restart the browser. Extensions can be automatically updated and are easily managed within Safari. Users can enable or disable individual extensions, or turn off all extensions with one click.

Safari Extensions are built with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript web standards, and can have all the power and functionality of advanced web applications. Every Safari Extension is signed with a digital certificate from Apple to prevent tampering and to verify that updates to the extension are from the original developer. Safari Extensions are sandboxed, so they can’t access information on a user’s system or communicate with websites aside from those specified by the developer. For increased stability, Safari Extensions run solely in the browser.

Safari 5 also features Safari Reader, which presents single and multipage articles on the web in a new, scrollable view without distracting content or clutter. The Nitro JavaScript engine runs JavaScript up to 30 percent faster than Safari 4.* Built on the open source WebKit engine developed by Apple, Safari 5 includes more than a dozen powerful new HTML5 features for creating media-rich experiences, like full screen playback and closed captions for HTML5 video.

Pricing & Availability
Safari 5 is available for both Mac OS® X and Windows as a free download at www.apple.com/safari. Safari 5 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard® 10.5.8 or Mac OS X Snow Leopard® 10.6.2 or later. Safari 5 for Windows requires Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista or Windows 7, a minimum 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor. Full system requirements and more information on Safari 5 can be found at www.apple.com/safari. The Safari Extensions Gallery is available at extensions.apple.com. The Safari Developer Program is free to join at developer.apple.com/programs/safari.

At the heart of the new Mac Pro’s performance are next generation quad-core and 6-core Intel Xeon processors running at speeds up to 3.33 GHz. These multi-core processors use a single die design so each core can share up to 12MB L3 cache to improve efficiency while increasing processing speed. These systems feature an integrated memory controller for faster memory bandwidth and reduced memory latency; Turbo Boost to dynamically boost processor speeds up to 3.6 GHz; and Hyper-Threading to create up to 24 virtual cores. The Mac Pro now comes with the ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics processor with 1GB of memory and customers can configure-to-order the even faster ATI Radeon HD 5870 with 1GB of memory.

For the first time, Mac Pro customers have the option to order a 512GB SSD for the ultimate in reliability and lightning fast performance. With the ability to install up to four SSD drives in the system’s internal drive bays, the new Mac Pro can provide ultra high-speed disk bandwidth and random disk performance, two times faster than the average performance of a standard disk drive.** Mac Pro also now features two Mini DisplayPorts and one dual-link DVI port. The additional Mini DisplayPort output allows customers to connect two LED Cinema Displays without an additional graphics card or adapter and the dual-link DVI port supports legacy DVI-based displays up to a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels.

Every Mac Pro comes with Apple’s innovative Magic Mouse and customers can also order Apple’s new Magic Trackpad as an option. The Magic Trackpad brings the intuitive Multi-Touch™ gestures of Mac notebook trackpads to the desktop. With its glass surface, the wireless Magic Trackpad allows users to scroll smoothly up and down a page with inertial scrolling, pinch to zoom in and out, rotate an image with their fingertips and swipe three fingers to flip through a collection of web pages or photos. The Magic Trackpad can be configured to support single button or two button commands and supports tap-to-click as well as a physical click. Magic Trackpad is available separately for $69.

Continuing Apple’s commitment to the environment, Apple’s desktop lineup is a leader in green design. The Mac Pro meets stringent Energy Star 5.0 requirements and achieves EPEAT Gold status.*** The Mac Pro enclosure is made of highly recyclable aluminum and the interior is designed to be more material-efficient. The Mac Pro uses PVC-free internal cables and components and contains no brominated flame retardants. The new Apple Battery Charger provides a convenient and environmentally friendly way to always have a fresh set of batteries for your Magic Trackpad, Magic Mouse and Wireless Keyboard. The Apple Battery Charger is available as an option for $29 and comes with six long shelf life rechargeable batteries.

Every Mac also comes with Mac OS® X Snow Leopard®, the world’s most advanced operating system, and iLife®, Apple’s innovative suite of applications for managing photos, making movies and creating and learning to play music. Snow Leopard builds on a decade of OS X innovation and success with hundreds of refinements, core technologies and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange. iLife features iPhoto®, with breakthrough ways to organize and manage your photos by who appears in them and where they were taken; iMovie® with powerful easy-to-use features such as Precision Editor, video stabilization and advanced drag and drop; and GarageBand® which offers a whole new way to help you learn to play piano and guitar.

Optional Apple professional applications include Aperture®, Final Cut® Express, Final Cut Studio®, Logic® Express and Logic Studio®.

Pricing & Availability
The new Mac Pro will be available in August through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers.

Dual-core Intel Core i3 and Core i5, and quad-core Core i5 and Core i7 processors set a new benchmark for iMac performance. The processors feature an integrated memory controller to access the system memory directly, allowing the new iMac to take full advantage of its faster 1333 MHz memory. New discrete ATI Radeon HD processors deliver incredibly smooth, crisp graphics for the most demanding 3D games, creative software and technical applications. iMac displays feature IPS technology to deliver a brilliant image across a wide 178 degree viewing angle. The SD card slot on the iMac now supports the SDXC format to handle the latest high-capacity storage cards. Customers of the 27-inch iMac have the option to order a 256GB solid state drive (SSD) as a primary or secondary drive. The iMac SSD supports up to 215 MB/s data transfer rates for faster startup and application launch times.

Every iMac comes with Apple’s innovative Magic Mouse and customers can also order the new Magic Trackpad as an option. The Magic Trackpad brings the intuitive Multi-Touch gestures of Mac notebook trackpads to the desktop. With its glass surface, the wireless Magic Trackpad enables users to scroll smoothly up and down a page with inertial scrolling, pinch to zoom in and out, rotate an image with their fingertips and swipe three fingers to flip through a collection of web pages or photos. The Magic Trackpad can be configured to support single button or two button commands and supports tap-to-click as well as a physical click.

Continuing Apple’s commitment to the environment, Apple’s desktop lineup is a leader in green design. The iMac meets stringent Energy Star 5.0 requirements and achieves EPEAT Gold status.* iMac features LED-backlit displays that are mercury-free and made with arsenic-free glass. iMac uses PVC-free components and cables, contains no brominated flame retardants, uses highly recyclable materials and features material-efficient system and packaging designs. A new Apple Battery Charger provides a convenient and environmentally friendly way to always have a fresh set of batteries for your Magic Trackpad, Magic Mouse and Wireless Keyboard. The Apple Battery Charger is available for $29 and comes with six long shelf life rechargeable batteries.

Every Mac also comes with Mac OS® X Snow Leopard®, the world’s most advanced operating system, and iLife®, Apple’s innovative suite of applications for managing photos, making movies and creating and learning to play music. Snow Leopard builds on a decade of OS X innovation and success with hundreds of refinements, core technologies and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange. iLife features iPhoto®, with breakthrough ways to organize and manage your photos by who appears in them and where they were taken; iMovie® with powerful easy-to-use features such as Precision Editor, video stabilization and advanced drag and drop; and GarageBand® which offers a whole new way to help you learn to play piano and guitar.

Pricing & Availability
The new iMac line is shipping now and available through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers.

The new, larger 27-inch LED Cinema Display features a beautiful 16:9 edge-to-edge glass display on an aluminum stand with an adjustable hinge that makes tilting the display almost effortless. The LED Cinema Display has vivid colors and exceptionally high contrast and uses a premium display technology called in-plane switching (IPS) to provide a brilliant image across an ultra wide 178 degree viewing angle.

Designed as a companion for any Mac notebook or desktop, the 27-inch display includes a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing, an integrated MagSafe charger to keep Mac notebooks charged, built-in Mini DisplayPort connectivity for video and audio input and a powered three-port USB 2.0 hub so customers can charge their iPhone® or iPod® even when they take their MacBook with them.

The new LED Cinema Display now includes a new ambient light sensor which automatically adjusts the display brightness based on external lighting conditions and uses only as much energy as necessary to provide an optimum viewing experience. Made with mercury-free LED technology, arsenic-free glass and highly recyclable materials, the LED Cinema Display meets stringent Energy Star 5.0 requirements and achieves EPEAT Gold status.* The new display contains no brominated flame retardants and all cables and components are PVC-free.

Pricing & Availability
The new LED Cinema Display will be available in September through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $999 (US). The LED Cinema Display requires a Mac with Mini DisplayPort.

iPhone 4 also features a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, HD 720p video recording, Apple’s A4 processor, a 3-axis gyro and up to 40 percent longer talk time.* iPhone 4 comes with iOS 4, the newest version of the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, which features Multitasking, Folders, enhanced Mail, deeper Enterprise support and Apple’s new iAd mobile advertising platform.

Pricing & Availability
iPhone 4 will be available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland this Friday, July 30.

iPhone 4 is currently available in France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) for the 16GB model and $299 (US) for the 32GB model. iPhone 4 will roll out to many more countries later this year and Apple will announce availability and local pricing for these additional countries at a later date.

*Battery life depends on device settings, usage and other factors. Actual results vary.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple is reinventing the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

The need to protect computing systems has become a critical thing for small businesses and schools lately because of increasing thefts and events of vandalism. According to an independent research and study, about 40% of iMac systems at schools and work places were lost due to thefts and vandalisms in 2009 (IS THIS TRUE?). While schools pay an average salary of $50k per year to a secondary school teacher, they are spending much more to replace computer installations in schools. Repeated vandalism has now become a regular phenomenon in the US, costing many millions to the schools and small businesses.

The CEO and Founder of the Compulocks Group, Gad Alexander shares, “We, at Compulocks and Maclocks, with our 27 years of expertise in computer locking solutions have introduced the NobleLocks innovative iMac security system that deters and frustrates the thieves and vandals. The iMac Plate Lock gives maximum security to the expensive Apple iMac systems- it locks the chassis and its internal components too, so the users can be at absolute peace of mind.

Our Apple custom computer lock features a very strong, yet a low-profile design. the lock is barely seen and it locks the chassis of the desktop making it just impossible for a lifter to tow it away. Its unique plate-lock design secures the iMac accessories cables as well. Because of the low-profile design the aesthetics of the system are barely disturbed. The lock setting doesn’t interfere with the system usage, and that is what you wish to see in your office environment. The lock is also easy to operate aiding the user to lock/unlock the iMac in just few seconds for maintenance.

The iMac plate lock security system also comes with Key-Alike option as well as Key-Different and master keyed option. It seems Compulocks is also offering lifetime replacement warranty on the iMac plate lock.”

When asked why Compulocks , Maclocks and Noblelocks have decided to come up with the product, the CEO, answers, “We have been dominating the PClocks, notebooklocks and laptopcarts market with our commitment to give the best computer security locking solutions to our customers, and the IMac Plate Lock is the result of the suggestions and feedback we have taken from our customers, who actually asked for a locking solution for the Apple iMac desktops. We believe our product will be perfect for Apple iMacs at schools, Universities, business communities and healthcare environment.”

Created with the unibody construction process pioneered by Apple, the new Mac mini features a compact aluminum enclosure just 7.7 inches square and 1.4 inches thin. A new integrated power supply eliminates the need for an external power adapter, reducing overall system volume by 20 percent and keeping cable clutter to a minimum. A removable panel underneath provides quick access for memory expansion. Mac mini is incredibly versatile, effortlessly connecting to existing peripherals such as mice, keyboards and digital displays, while the new HDMI output connects Mac mini to an HDTV and the new SD card slot enables easy transfer of photos and videos from a digital camera.

Inside its sleek, compact enclosure, the new Mac mini includes the fastest integrated graphics processor on the market today. With 48 processing cores, the NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor delivers up to twice the graphics performance of its predecessor, making Mac mini ideal for graphics intensive applications or visually rich games. Mac mini comes standard with a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 320GB hard and 2GB of RAM for $699.

With twice the graphics performance, the new Mac mini is still the world’s most energy efficient desktop.* The new Mac mini reduces power consumption by an incredible 25 percent to less than 10W at idle, less than half the power required by competing systems. Mac mini meets Energy Star 5.0 requirements and achieves EPEAT Gold status.** The new aluminum enclosure is highly recyclable and Mac mini uses PVC-free components and cables, contains no brominated flame retardants and features material-efficient system and packaging designs.

Mac mini comes with Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the world’s most advanced operating system, and iLife, Apple’s innovative suite of applications for managing photos, making movies and creating and learning to play music. Snow Leopard builds on a decade of OS X innovation and success with hundreds of refinements, new core technologies and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange. iLife features iPhoto®, to easily organize and manage photos; iMovie® with powerful easy-to-use new features such as Precision Editor, video stabilization and advanced drag and drop; and GarageBand® which introduces a whole new way to help you learn to play piano and guitar.

Mac mini with Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server fulfills all the server needs of a workgroup or small business including email, calendar, file serving, Time Machine® backup, Wiki Server, Podcast Producer and more. Mac mini with Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server uses less than 11W of power at idle, a fraction of the power consumed in comparison to typical entry-level tower servers.*** Mac mini with Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server is faster than before with a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, two 500GB hard drives now running at 7200 rpm, 4GB of RAM and supports unlimited clients for $999.

Pricing & Availability
The new Mac mini is shipping today and will be available through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers.

Safari Reader makes it easy to read single and multipage articles on the web by presenting them in a new, scrollable view without any additional content or clutter. When Safari 5 detects an article, users can click on the Reader icon in the Smart Address Field to display the entire article for clear, uninterrupted reading with options to enlarge, print or send via email.

Powered by the Nitro JavaScript engine, Safari 5 on the Mac runs JavaScript 30 percent faster than Safari 4, three percent faster than Chrome 5.0, and over twice as fast as Firefox 3.6.* Safari 5 loads new webpages faster using Domain Name System (DNS) prefetching, and improves the caching of previously viewed pages to return to them more quickly.

Safari 5 adds more than a dozen powerful HTML5 features that allow web developers to create media-rich experiences, including full screen playback and closed captions for HTML5 video. Other new HTML5 features in Safari 5 include HTML5 Geolocation, HTML5 sectioning elements, HTML5 draggable attribute, HTML5 forms validation, HTML5 Ruby, HTML5 AJAX History, EventSource and WebSocket.

The new, free Safari Developer Program allows developers to customize and enhance Safari 5 with extensions based on standard web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. The Extension Builder, new in Safari 5, simplifies the development, installation and packaging of extensions. For enhanced security and stability, Safari Extensions are sandboxed, signed with a digital certificate from Apple and run solely in the browser.

Pricing & Availability

Safari 5 is available for both Mac OS® X and Windows as a free download at www.apple.com/safari. Safari 5 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 or Mac OS X Snow Leopard® 10.6.2 or later. Safari 5 for Windows requires Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista or Windows 7, a minimum 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor. Full system requirements and more information on Safari 5 can be found at www.apple.com/safari. The Safari Developer Program is free to join at developer.apple.com/programs/safari.

FaceTime is as mobile as your phone, so you can see your loved ones and friends anywhere there is Wi-Fi. Using FaceTime is as easy as making a regular voice call, with no set-up required, and you can instantly switch to the rear camera to show others what you are seeing with just a tap.

Apple’s stunning 3.5 inch Retina display has 960 x 640 pixels—four times as many pixels as the iPhone 3GS and 78 percent of the pixels on an iPad™. The resulting 326 pixels per inch is so dense that the human eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels when the phone is held at a normal distance, making text, images and video look sharper, smoother and more realistic than ever before on an electronic display.

iPhone 4 is the thinnest smartphone ever—9.3 millimeters—with an all-new design and build quality like no other mobile device. The front and back are made of aluminosilcate glass, chemically strengthened to be 30 times harder than plastic, more scratch resistant and more durable than ever. The front and back glass have an oil-resistant coating that helps keep it clean, and encircling iPhone 4 is a highly finished stainless steel band made of a custom alloy that is forged to be five times stronger than standard steel.

iPhone 4 features a new 5 megapixel autofocus camera with a 5x digital zoom, a backside illuminated sensor and built-in LED flash that allows you to take amazing pictures even in low light and dark environments. iPhone 4 lets you record and edit incredible HD video and the popular tap to focus feature now works while recording video. You can use the iPhone 4‘s LED flash for both still photography and video recording. The new iMovie® app for iPhone lets you combine movie clips, add dynamic transitions and themes and include photos and music, and users can buy it for just $4.99 through the App Store right on their phone.

iPhone 4 is the best mobile device ever for games and entertainment, with access to tens of thousands of games and entertainment apps on the revolutionary App Store. Every iPhone 4 has a built-in 3-axis gyro that when combined with the accelerometer provides 6-axis motion sensing such as up and down, side to side, forward and backward and pitch and roll, making it perfect for gaming. Developers can access the gyro using the new CoreMotion API to make games and other apps that go well beyond what other mobile devices offer.

iPhone 4 comes with iOS 4, the newest version of the world’s most advanced mobile operating system. With over 100 new features, it includes Multitasking, Folders, enhanced Mail, deeper Enterprise support and Apple’s new iAd mobile advertising platform. With Multitasking, users can now instantly switch between any of their apps while preserving battery life. With Folders, users can easily organize their apps into collections by simply dragging one app on top of another. A folder is automatically created and named based on the category of apps selected. Users can change the name of any folder at any time. In addition, users can now customize their lock and home screens with an array of supplied wallpapers or with any of the photos on their phone.

The new iBooks® app will be available for iPhone 4 as a free download from the App Store and includes Apple’s new iBookstore, the best way to browse, buy and read books on a mobile product. The iBooks app will sync your current place in a book, along with any bookmarks, highlights and notes you have created, between copies of the same book on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch®. iBooks users can also now read and store PDFs right in iBooks. There are now over 60,000 books available in the iBookstore, and users have downloaded over five million books in the first two months.

More than five billion apps have been downloaded from the revolutionary App Store and more than 225,000 apps are available to consumers in 90 countries. Almost 100 million iPhone and iPod touch users around the world can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel.

iPhone 4 delivers an amazing seven hours of talk time on 3G networks, up to 10 hours of web browsing on Wi-Fi and up to six hours on 3G, and up to 10 hours of video playback and up to 40 hours of audio playback.** iPhone 4 is powered by Apple’s new A4 processor that provides exceptional processor and graphic performance along with long battery life. iPhone 4 features a second microphone and advanced software to suppress unwanted background noise for improved call quality when in loud places. iPhone 4 also offers 802.11n Wi-Fi networking and adds quad-band HSUPA to provide 7.2Mbps downlink and 5.8Mbps uplink capability.

Pricing & Availability
iPhone 4 comes in either black or white and will be available in the US for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) for the 16GB model and $299 (US) for the 32GB model in both Apple and AT&T’s retail and online stores, Best Buy and Wal-Mart stores. iPhone 4 will be available in the US, France, Germany, Japan and the UK on June 24 and customers can pre-order their iPhone 4 beginning Tuesday, June 15 from the Apple Online Store or reserve an iPhone 4 to pick up at an Apple Retail Store. iMovie for iPhone will be available on the App Store for just $4.99 (US).

Also on June 24, a new iPhone 3GS 8GB model will be available for just $99 (US). iOS 4 software will be available on June 21 as a free software update via iTunes® 9.2 or later for iPhone and iPod touch customers.

iPhone 4 will roll out worldwide to 88 countries by the end of September. iPhone 4 will be available by the end of July in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Writing a review for an iPad is a very hard task, especially after the wonderful reviews put in by Stephen Fry and Walt Mossberg, but here’s my attempt:

It’s such a brilliant device that I can’t imagine how I lived without it till now.

It is the electronic device I have been waiting so long for someone to invent for me.

It is a truly personal device. You can curl up with it in bed, you can carry it along with you to boring meetings, you can relax on the sofa with it, you could even carry it to the loo (though I haven’t dared to till now).

I had to wait a long interminable week after it was launched to see it getting delivered to me in all it’s glory. The un-boxing ritual that you undergo with most Apple products was hurried and frantic (but well captured for posterity), as I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it’s luminous screen.

The moment I switched it on, I had fallen in love with it for the umpteenth time.

All those glowing reviews not withstanding, I had been apprehensive that the moment would come and go and I would be underwhelmed. But the iPad had other plans for me.

Let’s go over the few things I can talk about in a coherent manner:

* Browsing - Like Steve Jobs said - It’s the internet in your hands. Believe the guy. Nothing can prepare you for the moment that you take it out and start browsing the web with it. The entire world ceases to exist. You find yourself lost in the interweb. The device itself functions as if it was created to make the web more personal.
All the normal sites you visit have no need to re-skin themselves for tiny screens anymore. Your sites render in their full versions, and are very usable from the get-go. The iPhone paradigm of tap to focus/zoom works as expected, but you don’t have to use it as much with the bigger screen. Scrolling, changing orientation etc. is so smooth and fast, you wonder how the device can do it while sipping minimal power.
On the negative side - when using multiple windows, it does annoy the hell out of you to switch windows and then revisit your previous ones to see them getting reloaded again.

* Apps - In sheer numbers, the apps store is disappointing, but there are more apps coming up as I write.
A few personal favourites are -

• iBooks (Free) is of course a no-brainer. The store-front and shopping experience is great, but the collection unfortunately isn’t. Apple says they are working on it. The reading experience is good (notice I did not say great). With the right levels of brightness, you can even read semi-comfortably at night with the lights off, though with the backlit iPad, it does strain your eyes a bit more than a Kindle would. This can easily be overcome, and I found myself enjoying the experience.
• With the app supporting the open ePub format, you can get non-DRMed books from multiple places to read on it.
• It also has some nice features like double tap to select, look up in dictionary, change the font, background light etc.
• Kindle (Free) - The bookstore with the most books in it is a must-have. The wide collection of e-books in their (unfortunately) proprietary format gives you the option to leave your tomes behind. The app though, is quite pedestrian. The features included are not enough, and it doesn’t seem like they tried to go any further than the Kindle device itself can manage.
• Amazon needs to rectify this fast. They have to realize the irony - the iPad is the best Kindle in the market. It is what the Kindle itself should have been.
• Epicurious (Free) - Huge database of recipes with the right search functions. For people who love to cook, this is a must-have.
• NYT Editor’s choice, WSJ, Bloomberg, NPR, USA Today (Free and paid upgrades) - Great news apps. Mostly US centric.
• Sundry Notes(was School Notes Pro) (Free) - Nice utility to jot notes, draw stuff, record memos etc.
• Tweetflow/Twitterific (Free) - For twitter fanatics, these should be good stream readers, as they allow for opening links in their own application, thus maintaining their state. I had tried Tweetdeck too, but found it too buggy in it’s initial versions.
• Games - Harbor Master, Table Checkers, Labyrinth, Sudoku Tablet, Air Hockey Gold (Free and paid upgrades) - These are the ones that have been able to amuse me for a week.
• Voice Memos for iPad - The essential recording utility which was surprisingly missing from the base OS.
• Comic Zeal ($7.99) - For anyone who has a large collection of CBZ/CBR comics, this is an easy choice. With iTunes syncing you no longer need to view compressed images anymore. You can see your comics at their original level of detail and can zoom in to admire the artwork.
• Marvel Comics (Free) - A way more better app than Comic Zeal in terms of the way it has been thought out. To be fair, they have the rights to all the original comics and can re-format them for any medium. So for the iPad, you have the never-before option of reading comics one panel at a time, to admire the artwork as well as preventing the misfortune of knowing the suspense as soon as you turn the page.
• and a few other notable ones - Offline Pages, Cogs HD, Evernote, Dragon Dictation, Air Video and IMDB

* Form factor, feel - The iPad looks slim and sexy, as do all Apple products.

It also feels solidly built, with no flimsy parts.

The biggest drawback is of course the weight. It doesn’t strike you as an issue until you have held it for a while. Especially for night-time reading. I guess Apple ended up compromising on the weight to provide the superior battery life. The weight of the device is essentially that of the batteries.

* Battery Life - 10+ hours is an understatement if you set the screen to glaring brightness. I have managed to get more than 14 hours regularly.
Many users have reported 11-12 hours of battery life with it’s Wifi on, video playing the whole time, and a mid-level brightness setting.
Moreover, the opt-in battery replacement program that Apple runs for the iPad is truly innovative. They will replace your iPad when it cannot retain it’s charge anymore.

* Limitations -
Flash free -
The much ballyhooed issue with Flash not being supported is not much of an issue for me personally, but I can see it being a huge issue for people whose lives are incomplete without games like Farmville. Major game developers (including Farmville’s creator Zynga) have said they are looking at creating iPad compatible sites, but the wait could be a long one.
Most of the sites hosting videos (including YouTube) have created flash-free versions of their sites.

For me, Flash has mostly been associated with intrusive ads, and I am not too upset to see it banished from my screen.

Virtual Keyboard -
Lots of people have apprehensions about using a virtual keyboard for all sorts of input. Though I can imagine it being a limitation for a phone sized device like the iPhone; for the larger screen that the iPad provides, the keyboard is surprisingly usable.

In portrait mode, I could do a hunt and peck to type quite fast, and with practice, I believe I can soon touch-type in the landscape mode.

Multi-tasking -
know, I know - someone’s going to talk about the multi-tasking and how it’s a pain to have only one application running at any point of time (except for the music app which can run in the background).

iPhone OS 4.0 is on it’s way to fix multi-tasking, but believe me when I say - The experience is nowhere as annoying as it is on the iPhone. With the larger screen, Apple has come up with a few tricks of it’s own to make it a trivial matter while doing normal stuff like browsing multiple windows.

* Accessories -

Apple doesn’t ship any accessories with the iPad, not even headphones!
The iPad Case accessory is something everyone should get. My only complaint with it is that it hides the great looking aluminium back of the iPad. It is also cumbersome to get the iPad in and out of the case. But the case does have a few essential benefits:

• It allows you to use the on-screen virtual keyboard in a comfortable fashion while sitting
• You can watch videos on the iPad by making a stand from the case
• Gives access to all essential buttons
• and most importantly, it protects your iPad from accidental damage and careless storage

I haven’t tried out the other accessories, but the Keyboard Dock or Camera Connection Kit (which has just started shipping) did not enthuse me.

I have an Apple wireless keyboard, and it was child’s play to couple it with the iPad. Since that keyboard is usable both with my regular iMac as well as the iPad, it was an easy choice to stay away from the keyboard dock.

Conclusion - It truly is an awesome device, and I can see it taking over the role of a laptop for a large number of users who use their laptops primarily to consume media. It’s a great device to use on the commute, boring shopping trips, and going anywhere that involves waiting, twiddling your thumbs.