[Bonn89]

$499!!

[Robo]

$499! Apple owns the world.

[nikstar101]

$499!! Starting price. Wow good show Apple

Well $829 for mine then, what ever that will be in the UK

[torifile]

$499?!? Damn. My Kindle is going to be sold very soon.

[zsummers]

Originally Posted by ezkcdude We don't know the price yet, do we?

Originally Posted by St Bonney $499!!

Sold! (assuming 3G isn't more than 100+ more).

[CitizenTony]

Wow, $499!

[709]

Holy fuck.

[PB PM]

Wow, good price. Maybe my next phone wont be an iPhone after all.

[billybobsky]

Originally Posted by 709 Holy fuck.

Heh.

[luxuryreplica]

$499 16gb
$599 32gb
$699 64gb

[torifile]

Huh? More for 3G?

[Robo]

WiFi: 16GB $499, 32GB $599, 64GB $699. 3G models are $130 more for each.

Six models at launch. Apple is practically Sony these days

[psmith2.0]

Holy shit, even the top-end 64GB caps out at $699!!!

NOBODY would've expected this. From Apple, no less (who could've easily priced it at $999 and never blinked).



Awesome. Just awesome.

They're gonna sell like crack-laced pancakes at those prices! I was hoping for $799 (but fully braced for $999)...for entry level!

So, yeah...wow.



Keyboard dock...dammit, I owe 709 $5!



This thing just got super cool. They were holding out on us that first hour...

[alcimedes]

and pricing on the 3G models are stupidly high

$629
$729
$829

How does 3G add $130 to the cost, unless they're working out some subsidized shit with carriers in order to do the no-contract thing.

[ezkcdude]

Reasonable prices...

[BuonRotto]

$499 for the low-end!!!!! Assuming now $599 and $699 going up the memory tiers. Whoa, there. 3G adds $130 to any model. Kind of complex way of doing it? I would have thought they would add 3G into the top tier or maybe the top two. I expect this to change in a year when they track sales and see what it's worth to people for the next gen model.

[zsummers]

So: 629 + 24 months of 250/MB at $15 = $990. Sold!

[Xaqtly]

More for 3G because there's no contract I'm assuming. Still $829 for the top end 64GB version with 3G is not too horribly bad. Not great though.

[faust]

Starting at $499 and no contract?

I have to say that I love this man

[BuonRotto]

$829 is only $30 more than I expect for the top end with 3G. Really not bad, though I think the pricing scheme is too complex right now (at least for Apple, but hey, if they only had you forced to go with 3G, people would want more options so all this is to say that Apple still can't win!)

The dock is most excellent. It will of course cost a bit too much.

Is the dock attached the keyboard though? The viewing distance may be awkward. I dunno. I'll have to try one.

[Moogs]

Originally Posted by alcimedes and pricing on the 3G models are stupidly high $629 $729 $829 How does 3G add $130 to the cost, unless they're working out some subsidized shit with carriers in order to do the no-contract thing.

I think you just answered your own question but if we were thinking $800-1000, this seems pretty damn good to me. No contract hassles is a big deal. I don't want ot deal with AT&T billing, ever. Smart move.

[kieran]

$499 is a great price point. Getting under $500 was the obvious goal.

I just can't believe they did it.

I might have to start putting some money away to grab me one of these.

[psmith2.0]

Well, that's the neat thing. At $499, it's not so damn expensive that, 12-18 months from now, if/when a better, faster, larger-capacity iSight-equipped Rev. B appears, people won't feel so bad about stepping up (that would be tough to do on a $800-1,000 product, like I thought it would be).

So that's a nice aspect too. And it certainly makes for an an awesome "hand-me-down" product (the year-old Rev. A model goes to the kids or spouse or even a relative or friend). $499 is pretty much in "update/replace every 12-18 months" territory, IMO. For many people, anyway. Especially if you can get a relative or friend to pay a couple hundred for it (and then you're about halfway there for a new one).



See? It's all good...

[Dorian Gray]

Guys, the price guarantees this thing will be a success. It doesn't matter what its limitations are at $499. In 2002 lots of people paid $499—which was worth a good deal more then—for a clunky, monochrome-screen iPod with a 10 GB hard disk. It played MP3 files, which people copied from someone who had figured out Napster.

The iPad has a 9.7-inch screen with a friggin' IPS panel, a handful of radios, near-unlimited apps (and unimaginable ones to come from thousands of developers), a 10-hour battery life, inimitable Apple cool... It's Sci-Fi stuff, except even your mom can use it - and probably wants to.

[psmith2.0]

Originally Posted by Dorian Gray Guys, the price guarantees this thing will be a success. It doesn't matter what its limitations are at $499. In 2002 lots of people paid $499—which was worth a good deal more then—for a clunky, monochrome-screen iPod with a 10 GB hard disk. It played MP3 files, which people copied from someone who had figured out Napster. The iPad has a 9.7-inch screen with a friggin' IPS panel, a handful of radios, near-unlimited apps (and unimaginable ones to come from thousands of developers), a 10-hour battery life, inimitable Apple cool... It's Sci-Fi stuff, except even your mom can use it - and probably wants to.

Best Post of the Thread.

You nailed it.

[Mugge]

Originally Posted by Dorian Gray Guys, the price guarantees this thing will be a success. It doesn't matter what its limitations are at $499. In 2002 lots of people paid $499—which was worth a good deal more then—for a clunky, monochrome-screen iPod with a 10 GB hard disk. It played MP3 files, which people copied from someone who had figured out Napster. The iPad has a 9.7-inch screen with a friggin' IPS panel, a handful of radios, near-unlimited apps (and unimaginable ones to come from thousands of developers), a 10-hour battery life, inimitable Apple cool... It's Sci-Fi stuff, except even your mom can use it - and probably wants to.

+1

It's not what this thing can't do, it what it can do. The iPad is just as unable to replace the PC/Mac as the netbooks. But for it's intended purposes it's way better than lugging a notebook/netbook along.

[Satchmo]

Originally Posted by Dorian Gray Guys, the price guarantees this thing will be a success. It doesn't matter what its limitations are at $499. In 2002 lots of people paid $499—which was worth a good deal more then—for a clunky, monochrome-screen iPod with a 10 GB hard disk. It played MP3 files, which people copied from someone who had figured out Napster.

I'm not so sure it's a slam dunk. Personally, I think it's a great price (I even predicted it would be around that price )

But the economy is a whole lot different than it was in 2002. There's a whole lot of people out of work today. Unemployment (US) back then was only around 5%.

[zsummers]

Originally Posted by Wrao Well. I am one of the few(bite me) people who actually predicted that the iPod would be as big of a success as it is. When I saw it I knew that everyone would want it regardless of the price. It was exactly the type of thing that MP3 players needed to be. The iPhone was easier to bank on being a success since by then Apple had already gone mainstream. But, still, the reasons for why the iPhone succeeded are still very similar to why the iPod succeeded. Both platforms took existing concepts and made them "better". iPad, is kind of a new thing, and for that reason, I have a harder time grasping how it can be successful. We all knew mp3 players were eventually going to take over from CD players, so when the iPod came along as the best mp3 player, it just made a lot of sense. Likewise, we all have cell phones, and we all knew that they are only getting more and more advanced and capable, so when iPhone came along being almost like a full-functioning computer in phone form but without 'teh suck' it made a lot of sense. There isn't really anything analogous to this with iPad. In fact, if anything the exact opposite has existed. Where tablet pcs have tried to exist for decades, always failing due to... well, just being kind of pointless/redundant/weird. It's not a market that has been waiting for a champion, it's a market that doesn't even really need to be there in the first place. All that said, the $499 entry point is hot, and that will definitely grab more sales than it will scare people away. Heck, even the $699 price point isn't repulsive. I don't think this product will revolutionize much or be much of a game changer for any particular market or industry. But, it is really neat for what it is.

Education, education, education, education.

I really think it may be a game-changer for educational use. The presentation didn't do a good job highlighting the possibly uses (the "liberal arts" street sign was almost inexplicable, given that Steve Jobs didn't talk about textbooks), but I think the iPad will succeed on campus way in a meaningful way that no other device today can touch.

[zippy]

This is a great product for families. I don't want to spend anything approaching $1000 for a kid to have their own Mac. And I don't want to drop $300-400 on a piece of junk Netbook running an OS that is highly susceptible to malicious software and hand it over to the very people in the house that are in most need of protecting.

Enter the iPad. It does everything my kids really need to do with a computer: email, web, basic document creation (grade school and middle school grade English don't require a lot of bells and whistles), movies, music, games and whatever other apps someone invents that would be handy for them.

And it gets them off of my iMac.


My biggest gripes:
The 3:4 ratio on the screen. I thought Apple was past that years ago - what gives?
Lack of camera - either front or back, but especially front facing for iChat/Skype. I really thought that was a no brainer.

[torifile]

At $499 I could see myself getting one just because it could replace my kindle* making it really about $250 or so. That's right in the zone where I'd consider a cool new gadget. Add in that all my iPhone apps will work with it. As it stands now, I use my iPhone for surfing and posting rather than pulling out my MBP even if it is only 10' away. Why? Because I sit in front of my MBP all day and I don't want to do it at home.

I think it would be very relaxing to use vs. using a laptop just to surf around.

* what are the odds that Amazon sells it? They don't stock any of Sony's readers. I wonder how they'll view it.