T: Frantic Steve Jobs Stays Up All Night Designing Apple Tablet.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
After supposedly forgetting about the announcement until the last minute, Jobs has described gluing nine iPhones onto a cafeteria tray and calling it Apple's new product.
: NPR's Laura Sydell samples some of the reaction.
LAURA SYDELL: Apple CEO Steve Jobs certainly didn't play down all the hype.
STEVE JOBS: We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary product today.
SYDELL: Jobs and a team of other presenters went on for over an hour and a half about the virtues of the new iPad. Here are some of the basics. It's got a 9.7- inch touch screen. It's got a big virtual keyboard. The iPad connects to iTunes. iTunes will now have a bookstore, and the iPad is a lovely color eReader. There was no major new technology. It got a big ho-hum from some analysts.
JAMES MCQUIVEY: The iPad had the opportunity to create a completely new consumer device category and it didn't.
SYDELL: He has this fantasy: Imagine you are in Paris with the family. You want to send photos to grandma back in New Jersey. McQuivey was hoping grandma could turn on her iPad and - voila, there would be pictures.
MCQUIVEY: So the people across multiple generations are going to say I want an iPad because it helps connect me to my family and my friends in a way that I can't right now. And this device does it.
SYDELL: Not everyone is quite as disappointed as McQuivey. Gartner analyst Michael McGuire points out no one was terribly excited about the first iPod.
MICHAEL MCGUIRE: It grew. They iterated it quickly. And I think we might be looking at that same kind of a cycle.
SYDELL: The first iPads won't hit the market for another two months; however, Apple has released a software development kit so that other companies can create new applications. In that time, McGuire things the right application could make a difference.
MCGUIRE: You could look at this as the first stake in the ground, if you will, as opposed to, well, it didn't meet all of the hype.
SYDELL: Laura Sydell, NPR News, San Francisco.