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Apple iPad: Official photos

Here's Apple's official press shots of its brand-new tablet PC, the iPad. There's the inevitable pretentious Jony Ive video too. Altogether now: Oooh! Aaah!

Flora Graham
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After dropping the tablet bomb on us tonight, Apple's showing off the iPad in a sweet selection of official beauty shots.

You can also hear the iPad's attributes described in the dulcet Chingford tones of product designer Jony Ive, in a video on the Apple Web site.

If you can survive its soft-rock theme music, the video gives a good glimpse of the iBook store and other apps, as well as the Apple chip that powers the whole thing with up to 10 hours of battery life.

The photos show off the tablet PC's 9.7-inch screen and waif-like 13mm waistline. Click 'Continue' to check out Apple's mastery of balancing really thin things on their edge.

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Although the iPad supports apps developed for the iPhone, you'll have to get one of the iPad apps to take advantage of the big screen's full resolution. Luckily, there are already a couple ready to go, including Facebook and EA's Need for Speed Shift.
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The New York Times app promises to bring newspapers to the iPad that look more realistic than on other ebook readers and mobile phones.
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The Wi-Fi-only version of the iPad doesn't have a 3G antenna or a SIM-card slot.
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The 3G version of the iPad costs $130 (£80) more, and you can spot the little window that the 3G elves look out of on top.
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Edge on, you get a sense of the iPad's slender 13mm width.
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You can use it as a coaster! No, don't do that.
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It looks good on a white background -- but would you buy it? Let us know in the comments.
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Multi-touch gave the iPhone a big advantage over its touchscreen rivals, and the iPad takes this intuitive, gesture-based feature to new heights.
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There are docks with or without a keyboard to keep your iPad propped up as a digital picture frame or a pseudo-laptop.
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The iPad's specialised case is another way to keep things on an angle.
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Apple's ornery proprietary connector socket means you'll need to use an adaptor to plug in a normal USB cable like the one you use to transfer photos from your camera.
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Apple has produced new versions of iWork so that making spreadsheets, documents and presentations on the iPad won't make you want to kill yourself.
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We love that books are a killer app for the iPad, although we're not so sure about the retro-styled bookcase in the iBook app. Virtual rooms just remind us of Microsoft Bob.
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Flipping a page with the flick of a finger could be cool, and we like that we can see our contact list and a single contact simultaneously -- but we don't like how contacts in the address book are shown like pages in a virtual book. We prefer the straight-up iPhone address book, which doesn't pretend to be something it's not.

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