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Apple introduces New iPad tablet computer for $499: Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the company’s much-anticipated iPad tablet computer Wednesday, calling it a new third category of mobile device that is neither smart phone nor laptop, but something in between.

The iPad will start at $499, a price tag far below the $1,000 that some analysts were expecting. But Apple must still persuade recession-weary consumers who already have other devices to open their wallets yet again. Apple plans to begin selling the iPad in two months.

Jobs said the device would be useful for reading books, playing games or watching video, describing it as “so much more intimate than a laptop and so much more capable than a smart phone.”

The half-inch-thick iPad is larger than the company’s popular iPhone but similar in design. It weighs 1.5 pounds and has a touch screen that is 9.7 inches diagonally. It comes with 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes of flash memory storage, and has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity built in.

Jobs said the device has a battery that lasts 10 hours and can sit for a month on standby without needing a charge.

Raven Zachary, a contributing analyst with a mobile research agency called The 451 Group, considered the iPad a laptop replacement, especially because Apple is also selling a dock with a built-in keyboard.

But Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey said he does not believe the iPad offered enough additional features for consumers to justify buying yet another gadget, or to call it a new category of device.

In an e-mail, he criticized its lack of social features, such as ways to share photos and home video and recommend books.

Sitting on stage in a cozy leather chair, Jobs demonstrated how the iPad is used for surfing the Web with Apple’s Safari browser. The CEO typed an e-mail using an on-screen keyboard and flipped through photo albums by flicking his finger across the screen.

When it comes to keeping its future devices secret, Apple is a master at it. Just take a look at all the hype surrounding their rumored tablet PC and new iPhone for 2010, if you are to believe all that you read then the iSlate as it is known will be launched in March, and a new iPhone will launch in April or May.

There are so many questions left unanswered, and we hope that Apple will answer all of them at their press event on January 27. The Apple Tablet PC will either be called the iSlate or iPad; we reckon the former sounds better.

Then there is the 2010 iPhone, we are not certain if this new phone will just be called “iPhone 4G”. The smart money is that 4G will be included, not because it will offer 4G support, but because it is the 4th generation of iPhone from Apple.

The Mac community is waiting with bated breath for this week’s expected Apple tablet announcement, but according to some quantum theorists, Mac communities in nearby parallel universes have been playing with Apple tablets since the Reagan administration.

This past week, Frog Design released pictures of the “Bashful” tablet, which was on the drawing boards in 1983, but never made it to the shipping stage. The Bashful looks like the top half of a PowerBook Duo combined with a keyboard stolen from an Apple IIc; a stylus rounded out the Bashful’s user interface.

Some explanation of why this is mind-bending may be useful for those of you who don’t remember the 1980s. (And there were many good reasons to forget that decade; we actually believed terrycloth and polyester were suitable materials for clothing.) In 1983, the Apple Lisa cost nearly $10,000 (somewhere between $20,000 and $40,000 in today’s dollars), and the Macintosh and Apple IIgs were still in the future. The Apple user experience was defined by what we had on the Apple II+ and Apple IIe, where “80 column cards” were an advanced technology which bumped high-resolution graphics from 280 by 192 pixels to 560 by 192 pixels.

The rumor mill for the next generation iPhone 4G is heating up yet again. According to a tweet posted by Eldar Murtazin (editor in chief of Mobile Review) on his twitter account, Apple has contacted Foxconn regarding orders for the next-gen iPhone. Foxconn is the manufacturer which Apple uses for their various products like the iPhone, Mac Mini and iPod line.

Last month, we informed you about a report from PinchMedia Analytics in which developer Pandav of iBart (a public transportation guide for the San Francisco train system) had a very pleasant surprise to learn. His app was installed and used on a device that identified itself as “iPhone 3,1″. It may be noted that exactly in the same time frame last year, Apple was discovered testing its iPhone 3GS (which is now identified as “iPhone 2,1”) in the San Francisco Bay area.

All these rumors are surely hinting towards a possible summer 2010 release of iPhone 4G with a faster processor, hopefully with atleast 5 megapixels camera, support for multi-tasking (perhaps?) and other improved functions.

New tablet-style computer that Apple is widely expected to launch on Jan 27. Any move in the ebook market by Apple would pose a serious challenge for the likes of Amazon, which makes its own ebook reader, the Kindle, and Sony, which also has a range of ebook reader devices.

Sources close to the negotiations say that HarperCollins will be allowed to set its own prices for the electronic titles, and that the digital downloads will include “extra features”, thought to include video, author interviews and social-networking applications. Apple will take a percentage of sales.

Other publishing companies, including newspaper and magazine groups, are also reported to have been in discussions with Apple about making digital versions of their content available for download through the rumoured new touch-screen device.

It remains unclear whether the ebook downloads would be handled by a stand-alone Apple ebook store, or whether they would simply be added to the existing iTunes library of movies, TV shows, music and apps.

Apple is holding an event on San Francisco on Jan 27, at which it is widely expected to take the wraps off a tablet-style computer. It is thought the device will look something like a larger version of the iPhone, with a 10in screen and multi-touch support.