After years of rumours, Apple announced today the Ipad tablet for release in 30+ days.

It is a half inch thick and a mere 1.5 pounds.  The screen is 9.7 inches (1024×768) and is a capacitive touchscreen IPS LCD display.

Running on a 1ghz Apple A4 chip (remember the purchase of P.A. Semi company?) the tablet can even run existing iPhone applications. Older apps will be able to show in a small middle section or zoomed.

They have designed some new GUI functionality to lessen the need for multiple pages.

There will be several models available with 16 / 32 and 64 GB of storage and 802.11n WIFI, as well as 3G WIFI support as an option at purchase time.

Battery life is said to be 10 hours straight, with a month on standby (sleep).

Apple cut a deal with 5 of the largest book companies and introduced iBook – an ebook application and integration into the iTunes store.

Apple also announced new iWorks for iPad productivity applications.

There will also be an optional Keyboard Docking station for those who wish to type faster, also noted are a Dock and a slipcase.

Currently it doesn’t seem to have Adobe Flash support.  i wonder if it ever will?

The OS is said to be version 3.2 and the SDK is available at Apple’s site as of today.

The pricing will be $499 U.S. (16GB) / $599 U.S. (32GB) / $699 U.S. (64GB) with the option of adding 3G for $130 U.S. per model.

• Note that there is no cellphone functionality.  There also seems to be no multitasking in there at this point.