After months of speculation, the wait is nearly over. All eyes will be fixed on Apple CEO Steve Jobs as he appears on stage at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to announce what most everyone presumes will be an Apple Tablet.

USA TODAY is at Apple's own state of the union, which starts at 1 p.m. ET. We'll set the scene and let you know throughout the event just what Jobs announces - and what it all means.

Among those spotted in the crowd: former vice president Al Gore and Intuit co-founder Scott Cook.

1:06 p.m. ET: Apple CEO Steve Jobs has just taken the stage wearing his customary black turtleneck and blue jeans. Jobs says the company just sold its 250 millionth iPod, while Apple stores have welcomed 50 million visitors in the last quarter.

1:12 p.m. ET: It's official. Jobs unveils the very thin iPad tablet computer. Jobs claims it will offer the best browsing experience you can have, like "holding the Internet in your hands."

1:14 p.m.: The device will include e-mail, photos, maps, built-in iTunes store and YouTube functionality.

1:16 p.m.: Jobs is demonstrating the iPad, visiting the home pages of The New York Times, Time Magazine and Fandango.

1:20 p.m.: Jobs offers a quick view of e-mail before moving onto photos. Photos looks a lot like the iPhoto app on the Mac. You can switch the device from portrait to landscape view. Users can also look at photo as albums. If on a Mac, users can get events, places and faces, as well as flick left or right through photos.

1:23 p.m.: Jobs is showing a slideshow of Paris on the iPad. Nice effects. As for managing your music, you can scroll through albums, tap on something you like to play a song. The device will include the iTunes store built in. No word on storage for the device or if Jobs is playing music from the "cloud" or the device itself.

1:28 p.m.: Jobs moves on to the calendar. Users can drag their finger over events to get a weekly or daily view. The Contacts application looks sharp. Jobs transitions to the Maps app. Viewing the Eiffel Tower, Jobs taps a corner to go to satellite view. Users can pinch the image to move in close.

Jobs moves from the Eiffel Tower to the event's current location in San Francisco. He types in sushi using the iPad's virtual keyboard and finds nearby sushi places, including up-close pictures of a local sushi restaunt called Sushi Boat. Jobs now shows off YouTube video, playing an HD video of a surfing dog. Looks surprisingly nice.

1:33 p.m.: "Watching it is nothing like getting one in your hands," Jobs says, before moving on to the iPad's technical specs. The device is 0.5 inches thin and weights 1.5 pounds, thinner and lighter than any netbook. It has a 9.7-inch IPS (high quality) display and full capacity multi-touch screen. The device is powered by Apple's own custom silicon chip.

The iPad will be available with 16 GB, 32 GB or 64 GB of Flash storage. It will also include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a speaker, microphone, compass and 30-pin connector to plug into iPod accessories.

As for battery life, Jobs says it last up to 10 hours. You always have to take battery claims with a grain of salt, but if that is close to being true, that is a big deal.

1:37 p.m.: Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iPhone software takes the stage to talk about the App Store. He says there are currently 140,000 apps on the store. "We built iPad to run virtually every one of these apps right out of the box," Forstall says.

1:40 p.m.: The apps will automatically scale up full screen when you tap "2x". Forstall is launching ESPN X Games SnoCross, an arcade racing game. Looks good. Users steer with the accelerometer. It looks surprinslgy smooth during the demonstration.

Users can hook the iPad up to iTunes and download apps they already have and they're good to go. Forstall says a developer that spends time modfiying applications can take full advantage of the touch screen display.

Apple has also enhanced the iPhone SDK (developers' kit), so developers can go to apple.com today to download. The SDK includes an iPod simulator, so developers can run iPad apps right on Mac during development. Every iPad will have access to the App Store built in.

1:45 p.m.: Mark Hickey of Gameloft appears on stage to demonstrate the iPad's gameplay mechanics with shooter Nova. Next up is Martin Nisenholtz of The New York Times, a long rumored partner), who says the device is the best of print with the best of digital all rolled into one.

From the front page (with condensed story views), you can click on stories - all in color - and sections, and save articles for reading lists that sync to the iPhone. Users can also tap to change the number of columns and resize text with a pinch, and there's video too.

In my opinion, it dominates the experience of reading a newspaper on a Kindle by a country mile. Still waiting on a price though.

1:55 p.m.: Steve Sprang appears next to show off the painting app Brushes. He's showing a gallery of New Yorker covers and other pantings. It looks cool. You can drag your finger across the screen to paint, and tap a play button to see a replay of your actions.

Next up is another rumored iPad partner, Electronic Arts, the top worldwide publisher of mobile games. Travis Boatman of EA shows off the Need For Speed racing game. Users can tap on a mirror to see what's behind you. Boatman is really cranking up the speeds on the game to show off the impressive technical capabilities.

Chad Evans of MLB.com, the official website of Major League Baseball, arrives on stage next to demonstrate their popular sports app. On the field, there's a game day pitch tracker to show the trajectory of every pitch thrown. Users can summon a baseball card for the player who is up at bat, and there's video from real games. Users can also view the box score, field, summary, field dimensions and lineup. You can watch games live with your choice of home or away announcers.

1:59 p.m.: Jobs is now demonstrating the iPad's e-reader, perusing a book on the iPad using a new app called iBooks. You can go into portrait view to see both pages if you like. The app will also include access to a store, where users can download e-books right on the iPad. Books are sorted by Apple's top charts list, The New York Times best seller list. Five of the world's publishers in the world, including Penguin and HarperCollins, will sell their books through the app. Navigating iBooks works similarly to iTunes and the App Store.

2:05 p.m.: Users can flip pages forward or back by tapping the screen, or drag pages with your finger. The app can display photos in color or black-and-white, as well as display video. Like Amazon's Kindle, you can change the font size. Users can also change the font itself.

2:16 p.m.: Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of marketing, comes up on stage to talk iWork, the suite of business apps for the Mac (spreadsheet and presentations, word processing). The iPad version will include a completely new version of Keynote (presenter), a new version of the Pages word processor, and a new version of the Numbers spreadsheet program.

Schiller demonstrates Keynote, which runs in landscape orientation. You can move slides around by holding and dragging it to wherever you want. Using multi-touch gestures, you can move a bunch of slides around. It has spendid looking animation transitions.

Moving onto Pages, users can turn it horizontal for a larger virtual keyboard. The sofware will have automatic text wrap around graphics. Schiller drags a picture of a giraffe to demonstrate how text wraps around the image. Neat stuff. With one tap, users can change from a one-column format to two columns.

The Numbers spreadsheet will add a host of templates, such as text, photos and tables. It can also bring up diff keyboards, such as text or a time-and-date keyboard. Over 250 functions and formulas are built into Numbers.

Schiller says each app will be available on the App Store for $9.99.

2:20 p.m.: Jobs returns with more details on the iPad. It can sync over USB with iTunes running on your Mac or PC, exactly like the iPhone or iPod Touch. So when you sync, you sync everything, and backups are synced back if you ever lose it.

Every iPad has WiFi built in, but there will also be models with 3G cellular wireless data. The iPad will feature two plans: up to 250MB of data per month for $14.99, or $29.99 per month for unlimited data through AT&T. The carrier is also throwing in free use of WiFi hotspots throughout the U.S., and will not require a wireless contract.

2:24 p.m.: Jobs says prices for the iPad will start at $499 for the 16GB, $599 for the 32GB and $699 for the 64GB. Prices for iPad with 3G technology will go for $629, $729 and $829 respectively. "When we set out, we not only had ambitious technical goals, but we had a very aggressive price (in mind)," Jobs says. "We wanted to put this in the hands of lots of people." Accessories will also be available for the device, including cases and a keyboard dock.

2:35 p.m.: Jobs concludes the event by saying the iPad "is our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price. The reason that Apple is able to create products like iPad is because we always try to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, to be able to get the best of both."

so youre getting one?

weee!

I'm seriously thinking of buying one for the kids. They mainly web surf and listen to music with the laptop. it will save me wear and tear on the laptop and give em something neato to show their friends.

i guess that's a good usage, positioning the itab as like a mini home computer, at half (or third) the price of a laptop. it'll be slick and intuitive enough.

prior to this, would you have considered getting them an inappropriately named itouch?

but for some reason larger items like the laptop, xbox, the house, they seem to take good care of.

Now listen to me goddammit because I'll only say it once: day/month/year makes more sense.

i guess that's a good usage, positioning the itab as like a mini home computer, at half (or third) the price of a laptop. it'll be slick and intuitive enough.

prior to this, would you have considered getting them an inappropriately named itouch?

How?

FUCK YOU, DAD.

Day < Month < Year

Still no flash support...

Is that a definite thing? I heard they want this to be able to play facebook games so it would have to have flash support. There's a new version out made for devices like this. I don't know why it wouldn't be included.

adding flash to the iphone / itab is a relatively simple process; likely something that took a longer time to remove than it would be to add. a special deal was made with youtube to feature their videos on the phone, and that will likely be the same case with facebook.

if flash were allowed, iphone / itab users would have access to thousands upon thousands of free games, applications, and gadgets across the internet that they wouldn't be able to charge 99 cents a piece (and keep 40 cents a piece) for.

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That's what I've read at other places as well. It would also put more pressure on their network that's already struggling.

if google's android truly embraces flash (not just flash lite) like they claim they will, it'll be interesting to see which is a wiser overall plan: working a free market to attract a larger audience, or taking control over what you allow but maximizing your profits per user

if google's android truly embraces flash (not just flash lite) like they claim they will, it'll be interesting to see which is a wiser overall plan: working a free market to attract a larger audience, or taking control over what you allow but maximizing your profits per user

an italicized "just" rob? have we really come to that?

Wireless sync. The iPad is not a Mac. That means it doesn't run the full iTunes client, so you can't share music from another computer over your home network. Instead, like an iPod or iPhone, you must physically connect it to the computer on which your music is stored, then wait for the music to travel over the wire. This is, frankly, absurd. If you want me to use the iPad to listen to music in my home, don't make me walk over to my computer and attach it every time I want to load some new tunes. Wireless sync would also be great for syncing other material like pictures, videos, and apps. How hard can it be? Microsoft's Zune player has had wireless sync for three iterations and more than two years.

Cloud-based music service. Even if the iPad had wireless sync, the most affordable model has only 16GB of storage. This isn't enough for most music lovers' digital collections, especially if they're going to use the iPad for other functions like electronic books and photos. So how about taking that Lala acquisition and using it? Instead of having to load music onto the iPad itself, I could sync it from my computer to Lala's online music locker service, then stream it over the Web directly to my device. Bye-bye, storage limits. Best of all, every time I update my music collection, it's updated everywhere simultaneously. This is such a no-brainer I'd be stunned if Apple doesn't make it available shortly after the iPad launches.

Music-sharing with third-party apps. There are some surprisingly sophisticated DJ apps for iPhone, like TouchDJ and DJ Mixer, that let you play two songs at the same time and mix them together like a mulitrack DJ set-up. These apps would be much easier to use on the iPad's 9.7-inch screen. But they all share one big shortcoming: they can't just play songs that you've already loaded onto your device. Instead, you have to re-load songs into the DJ apps, either from a sync application running on your computer or over a Web server. This isn't the fault of the app designers--it's a limitation that Apple places on the iPhone and iPod Touch. I hope Apple figures out a way around it soon.

Queuing. I like to play DJ. As one song plays, it sparks associations with other songs. It would be nice to be able to load these other songs into a "now playing" queue. The Zune's had this feature since its inception, but I can't do it on the iPod Touch or the iPhone--instead, I have to wait for the current song to end, then start up a new song. (And no, I don't want to do this with playlists on the computer and then sync those playlists to the device. That misses the entire point of spontaneity.)

Decent speakers (and amp). Naturally, the first thing I did with the iPad was check out its music playback. I could barely hear it, even with the volume maxed out. It's true that the room was crowded with gadget fans scrambling for their first look at the device, but even so, the speakers sounded no louder than the iPhone's. But this isn't a phone. It's also not a Mac, where music isn't the primary focus for most users. It's a consumer electronics device. It would be great if I could set it up in my living room or bedroom without having to attach it to another device. Peripheral makers might complain--iHome does great work creating audio accessories for the iPhone--but if this is truly going to be a new product category, Apple should treat it like one. Alas, I'm going to have to wait for v.2 for this feature.

Word from Apple is out -- so get your credit cards ready. The iPad will be launching on Saturday April 3rd (and on the shelves, er... display tables at Apple retail stores), but you'll be able to plunk down cold, hard cash for it in just a week. Pre-orders will begin on March 12th for the US version (non-3G) for that April street date, with the 3G version coming in late April along with iPads for eager buyers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. Says our man Steve Jobs: "We're excited for customers to get their hands on this magical and revolutionary product and connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before." Remember, it's magic. US pricing will be as follows (just in case you need to figure out how many piggy banks to smash):

* 16GB WiFi only -- $499
* 32GB WiFi only -- $599
* 64GB WiFi only -- $699
* 16GB WiFi + 3G -- $629
* 32GB WiFi + 3G -- $729
* 64GB WiFi + 3G -- $829

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Especially if the terrorist cats get involved.

"those children died that november."

i find it unfortunate that, as computer-killer-ish as the ipad is, it still requires a computer to do so much -- including to initially set up.

even beyond that logic, if an ipad even just a few other small changes (flash capability, projector hookups, DVD slot, or even the ability to connect wirelessly to specific printers...

The thing is that there are some people (senior citizens being a good example) who don't need a "computer" for anything but reading email, viewing media and surfing the net...

even beyond that logic, if an ipad even just a few other small changes (flash capability, projector hookups, DVD slot, or even the ability to connect wirelessly to specific printers, which i can't believe it does not -- any one of these) it'd essentially become the "meeting device." it's perfect for sales people and advertisers presenting on the go, cheaper, lighter and smaller, and doesn't have a brazillion other programs and features running on it to slow it down, catch malware, drive up price, etc.

it's become more and more common to see them used for business purposes like that in nyc, thus i think it very much so has the potential for being a "computer killer"