Yesterday was the day – the day that everyone has been waiting for for years, the day everyone just knew that Apple was going to unveil their entry into the tablet market. They didn’t dissapoint: Steve Jobs walked on stage an announced the Apple iPad, a 10-inch tablet that Apple claims is their “most advanced technology in an magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.”

Watching the furor leading up to the event was remarkable – people have been crowing about the “upcoming Apple Tablet” for years, and even now searching Google images for “iPad” yields a number of the mockups and designs that have been posted on the Web for years while the rumbling built up to a fever pitch while fans and detractors alike started frothing at the opportunity to get their hands on or similarly detract senselessly any new product line that Apple introduced. They weren’t dissapointed either – watching the reaction from the people who simply expected far more than they ever should have (and subsequently blamed Apple for letting them down) and then watching the reaction from the people who otherwise hated Apple but warmed up to this particular product was an amazing thing to see.

You would have thought people were expecting Apple to unveil a cancer cure if you considered the hype beforehand, and it was natural that a lot of those people were let down. The typical Apple bashing began and the cracks at the name “iPad” are more than justified, but here’s the truth of the matter: the iPad is a solid product for what it is – a giant iPod Touch that stands as Apple’s first volley in to the tablet market.

There are tons of tablets out there – traditional laptops folded into single panel devices that are thick, generally bulky, and only applicable in certain situations (schools, doctors’ offices and hospitals, etc) that clearly consumers aren’t interested in. This trend of the “consumer tablet” has only recently surfaced, and considering what I saw at CES earlier this month, the market will be flooded with tablets of all shapes, sizes, and configurations by year’s end – not just the iPad.

The iPad looks like it could be an interesting netbook replacement: Apple made a point of showing off its media capabilities, a version of iWork that you’ll be able to load onto the iPad to do word processing and spreadsheet management, as well as gaming. Since the iPad is essentially a large iPod Touch (and let’s be clear about that – I don’t say that flippantly, it really is a large iPod Touch. If you love your iPod Touch, you’d love the iPad. If you hate the iPod Touch or iPhone for its limitations, you’ll find those same limitation in the iPad.) it’ll run a modified version of the iPhone OS, for which Apple released the SDK yesterday.

There’ll be tons of apps, no doubt, and tons of games, tons of eBooks, and I imagine that because of its color screen and interface that reading comics and documents on it will be fantastic. I see a lot of people comparing it instinctively to the Kindle or the Nook, which I think is a poor comparison: the iPad is a tablet, not an eReader, and the whole point of the consumer tablet market is that they’re more than just eReaders; they’re simply different classes of product, although all tablets will likely have some eBook reading functionality. One consumes the other, but they’re not the same. Speculation is flying about whether the iPad will put Amazon’s Kindle into its grave, and frankly, I highly doubt it. People who love e-ink displays will stick to the Kindle and the Nook, and people who don’t care about that can swing either way depending on what they really want in a product.

The price is right, with Wifi only models coming in at 16GB for $499, 32GB for $599, and 64GB for $699. Wifi and AT&T 3G will run you 16GB at $629, 32GB at $729, and 64GB at $829. Everyone was expecting a $1000 price point, and Apple beat that pretty well. The wifi version looks most attractive to me personally, but that’s because AT&T is horrible where I live, and I think most people’s experiences with the iPhone being tethered to AT&T may wave them off of the 3G models as well. (which also come with a 2 year contract, mind you, and even though Apple says they’ll be “unlocked,” the 3G radios will make them impossible to use with other GSM carriers like T-Mobile.)

That being said though, criticism of the iPad is more than justified. Since it’s a big iPod Touch (or iPhone, since you’ll be able to get it with AT&T 3G built in at a higher price point), you suffer all of the limitations that the iPhone OS has; meaning no multi-tasking, no background apps, no Flash support, and only apps that are supported by Apple’s walled-garden iTunes App Store.

The iPad also has no video out, no USB or expansion ports, no choice of carriers (it’s AT&T for 3G service or nothing), no camera, and no expandable memory or replaceable battery. The fine folks at PC Mag have an excellent roundup of things that are notably missing from the iPad.

The 30-pin dock connector we all know from our iPods and iPhones will be available though, and it’s likely the iPad isn’t designed to serve as a stand-alone device: it’s supposed to be at least somewhat tethered to a computer for updates, data syncs, and app installs. You’ll likely treat the iPad like an iPod Touch or an iPhone – you only hook it up to a computer as often as you need to based on the way you use it. A number of vendors have already come out with cases and peripherals for the iPad that use the 30-pin dock connector and the new iPhone SDK, although the product itself won’t ship for another 60 days at least.

In any event, the ridiculous furor over the iPad has finally started to dissipate, and the people who love Apple and hate Apple are settling back into their respective camps after another product announcement where they all tried to claim impartiality in their criticism or support. Even so, the iPad looks like it could be a strong product as long as the price stays right and the app support is there. There are some serious and notable weaknesses though, ones that Apple’s competitors in the tablet space are likely already scrambling to take full advantage of.

Regardless, hands-on impressions of the iPad confirm that it is what Apple is good at: a solid, attractive, easy-to-use, and powerful piece of consumer electronics. It will likely sell well, but if anything the most exciting thing about the iPad is that it sets the stage for even stronger products in the future. I’m more excited about what an iPad v2 or v3 could bring to the table than the iPad itself.

[ Apple :: iPad ]

If you know me, you know I’m a huge fan of products that do more than one thing; solve more than one problem. If you know me you also know I’m dead set against bulky belt-clips for mobile phones that do nothing but make your precious phone easier to steal and let the world know what kind of device you have. Seriously, I even wrote an article over at our sister blog The Classy Geek about the fact that if CES 2010 taught me anything, there’s no excuse to walk around with a belt clip for your phone.

To that end, the fine folks at Malcolm Fontier were kind enough to send me one of their newest products, the iMojito, a combination wallet and mobile phone holster, that’s designed to not only be stylish, but also keep all of your important items like your phone, your ID, your credit cards, and a little bit of cash even, securely tucked away in your pocket without looking like you’re carrying a massive weight in your pants pocket. I really liked the iMojito, and I’d reccomend it not just for people who have iPhones, but anyone who’s tired of carrying a mobile phone case and a bulky wallet and wants to lighten their load. Read more of my impressions behind the jump.

Continue reading Hands On with the iMojito from Malcolm Fontier!…

Now that you have an HDTV, you may be interested in a Blu-Ray player to make full use of it. Trust me, you may be watching HDTV from your cable/satellite company, or even picking up some HD channels over the air, but nothing beats the full 1080p resolution and bright colors from a solid Blu-Ray disc.

However, there are hundreds of Blu-Ray players on the market, how will you choose one? Here’s a handy guide that will help you pick the right player, make sure you’re getting all the bang for your buck and the extended features that will keep your player going strong for years into the future. It’s not like there’s only one or two players in the market that are worthwhile like there were a couple of years ago – there’s several to choose from!

Besides, if you get too confused and caught up, you can always just snag a Sony PS3 – it’s a game console and a Blu-Ray player, and it’s a pretty solid one, too!

[ PC Mag :: How to Buy a Blu-Ray Player ]

The shot above I took at CES 2010 in Las Vegas at the Panasonic booth – they were showing off their “world’s largest HDTV,” which took the shape of a 152-inch Viera Plasma made from what they call the “mother glass,” the same glass from which all of their other plasmas (including the one in my living room) is cut.

This puppy is a one-off and you can’t just head out to the store to buy it, but if you are in the market for a new HDTV or interested in replacing an older one you already have, you’ll definitely need to take some knowledge with you to Best Buy or when you’re shopping around online. The fine folks at PC Mag have updated their quintessential guide to buying an HDTV with some new tips, features you should keep an eye out for, and some of the buzz around 3D TV from CES this year.

Among the tips? Picking the right location for your panel, picking the right resolution for your viewing distance, ways to get the best image quality out of them (hint: calibration!), and more, including some Super Bowl-worthy HDTVs reviewed by the PC Mag staff.

[ PC Mag :: How to Buy an HDTV ]

Timebeat, or more appropriately, [ timebeat ], is incredibly reminiscent of the early days of the Web when people were making very abstract and artistic sites that may not necessarily serve a proper purpose, but were certainly inspiring, interesting, and evocative.

Timebeat is a flash-based clock, and when you visit it shows you the current time down to the pulsing heartbeat, which ticks every second. The numbers swivel and turn around multiple axes. The whole thing is incredibly hypnotic, and you could sit and watch it for ages.

Thankfully, if you love it as much as I do, you can even download a screensaver of timebeat that works under Windows and MacOS.

[ timebeat ]

Everyone has probably heard about the Boxee Box by now, but it was up there as one of the coolest things I saw at CES this year, and I had a chance to speak with Casey Pugh (creator of Star Wars: Uncut, a crowdsourced project to re-shoot Star Wars scene by scene with fans in place of the actors!) about the Boxee Box, it’s really interesting remote, and the way the Boxee Box works.

The Boxee Box was amazing to use, the interface was really clean and easy to use, and CES was the first time a lot of people had a chance to actually play with the Boxee Box, which has been anticipated for months but released and unveiled for the first time in action at CES. The Boxee Box is clearly a media extender, and while it doesn’t have storage of its own, it can reach out across your home network and out to the Internet to pull in music, movies, and other content that you own or have rights to watch and bring it in to your HDTV effortlessly.

When you watch that content and you like what you see, you can rate it using the Boxee software, share what you’re watching and what you thought about it with your friends, and do it all without inturrupting the media you’re watching. The D-Link hardware and the NVidia chipset under the hood makes for a really powerful set-top box as well, and the fact that it can play just about any audio or video codec or format you throw at it helps as well.

Boxee is a completely open platform as well – the software is still available for you to install on any Mac, PC, or even XBox you choose, and speaking with Casey he pointed out that Boxee has no plans to close off the software just because there’s a hardware platform on the market that comes with it too – so you can still roll your own Boxee Box, but if you don’t want to, you can buy one.

The remote was also interesting: on the front it works just like any remote – complete with a d-pad and selection buttons, but on the flip side it has a full QWERTY keyboard for typing in updates to your social networks, writing short reviews for the media you’re enjoying, rating things you see, and searching your media library without having to click down a hundred times to find something you want to watch. All in all, the Boxee Box was as impressive in action as it is to read about, and I’m seriously considering getting one.

Check out a video I shot while playing with the Boxee Box:

And head over to Boxee.tv for more information on the box and details on how to get one:

[ Boxee - Boxee Box by D-Link ]

When I happened by all of the gaming peripherals at CES, one of the more fun booths I dropped by were BoomChair and PlaySeat. I had a better feeling about PlaySeat, but more about them when I get their press kit in the mail so I can write more about their products.

BoomChair on the other hand, was also a lot of fun – they released a number of new game chair models that all look pretty exciting, especially if you’re the type to sit in front of your huge screen TV on the floor with your controller and you’re looking for a seat that works pretty much like a peripheral for your console. BoomChair’s gaming seats are those comfy rocker-style seats on the floor that plug in to the audio output and in some cases the controller port for your consoles.

BoomChair’s products are those kinds of gaming seats with speakers built-in that are designed to rest on the floor and be comfortable to sit in for long gaming sessions – the speakers tend to be in the headrest and give you the feeling of surround-sound without having to wear headphones, so if someone is moving around behind you, the speakers in your chair will let you know. Depending on the seat, they can even plug into your console to give you the force feedback (vibration, rumble, etc) you would normally get with your controller.

One of the big moves BoomChair made this year at CES is to pick up some of those chairs from the floor where they traditionally sit and put their audio systems into standing chairs on rollers and wheels that can double not just as console gaming chairs that can sit in front of your TV, but also that you can roll over to your desk and use while you’re sitting at your PC if you choose. BoomChair’s newest products are in the image above: the Sky Lounger, the Stealth, the E-Tec, and the Admiral. All of the new ones will run between $200-$250 each. Some of BoomChair’s previous models are a bit more affordable if that’s too steep for you: some under $100. Some of them are sold out, so you’ll want to contact BoomChair directly if you’re interested!

Additionally, BoomChair also unveiled a completely different product at CES this year called the Rock Show – a series of speakers and a microphone that you can plug into any audio device that will automatically turn your favorite songs into a karaoke light-show. The Rock Show even auto-mixes the music so the vocals come off louder when you start singing, and will flash the lights on the speakers in time with the music. If you want, you can even plug in the Rock Show to your console and it’ll work while you’re playing Guitar Hero or Rockband, flash the lights in time, and give you a little more audio oomph when the person you have on the microphone starts singing. I watched some people playing Guitar Hero while using the Rock Show, and it definitely adds a little star power to the game.

[ BoomChair ]

One of the booths I was drawn to because of their personable and interesting press releases was Otterbox; mobile phone case manufacturers extraordinaire. Don’t get me wrong, there were dozens, if not hundreds, of mobile phone and mp3 player case manufacturers at CES this year, but Otterbox has been known to make really well designed and high-quality mobile phone cases.

So when Otterbox sent out a press release stating they’d be releasing a new line of cases on Friday the 8th, I perked up and listened. I happened past one of their booths on Friday afternoon and spoke to a rep there who clued me in that Otterbox had some big plans for mobile phones that have made waves in the industry lately but don’t have cases from Otterbox. (we were talking about the Motorola Droid, which I own, but he couldn’t give specifics in advance of the announcement)

Sure enough, Friday night Otterbox unveiled the Tandem series of Palm Pre cases, a dual-body case that fits the Palm Pre quite snugly, makes it feel comfortable and protected, but doesn’t stop the Pre from sliding open so you can use the keyboard or type on it. Otterbox also announced some new cases for its existing supported products, namely the iPhone/iPod Touch, Blackberry phones, and a variety of HP, HTC, and Samsung mobile phones, but the Tandem made waves.

Saturday I stopped by a different Otterbox booth and managed to speak to a rep who owns a Palm Pre and had a Tandem case on it, and the rubberized feel made the device feel solid in your hand and less likely that it would slide out of wet or sweaty fingers, but the case didn’t hinder the slider action for the Pre whatsoever. The Tandem comes in two pieces; one shell for the back of your Pre and one shell for the front that fits around the edges of the case so you can continue to use the screen without issue. It really is remarkable.

Now then, if Otterbox would hurry up and release a case for my Motorola Droid, I’ll be a happy geek!

[ Otterbox :: Tandem Series for the Palm Pre ]

I was actually really eager to pop by the HD Radio booth at CES, and was really impressed with some of the things the folks working behind the scenes on pushing HD Radio further into the mainstream marketplace. The after-market head units and radios for cars that were on display surprised me not just by the variety and the technology available in them, but also by the sheer number. There are tons of bedside radios, iPod and MP3 player docks, and portable audio players that support HD Radio, far far more than I thought were at all available.

The other amazing news from CES is that there are a host of auto manufacturers that are lined up with the HD Digital Radio Alliance and ready to begin offering in-unit stock stereo units that support HD Radio, either standard or as an upgradable option. This is the real key for the HD Radio Alliance – this and educating the public on exactly what HD Radio is. (hint, it’s not “High Definition,” it’s “Hybrid Digital.”) As soon as people wind up having HD Radio tuners in their cars and on their music players and next to their beds without really knowing that they have them, and then start using them, they won’t know how they lived without them.

In relatively well populated areas (like mine, in the Washington DC metro area) we have a ton of HD Radio stations, especially from colleges and universities that play great music selections, and public radio stations that may play their top-rated programming on their main over-the-air channel but will play some more in-depth or alternative content on their HD channels. Chances are you have HD Radio channels in your area that you’d probably love if you could tune to them – you just need the right tuner, and the HD Digital Radio Alliance is working to make sure one is in your next car or included with your next portable music player (The Zune HD, for example, has an HD Radio tuner built-in!)

It’s still a grey area whether or not people have a handle on what HD Radio really is, and it was the big thing I was thinking while I walked around the HD Radio booth at CES, checking out some of the new vehicles that will land on auto sales lots with HD Radio tuners built-in. The technology is out there, the stations and the content is out there too – the real uphill battle will be educating people. I really stress this point because even as I was leaving the HD Radio booth, I overheard two people also heading out of the booth talking to each other about HD Radio: one was explaining to the other what HD Radio was, and was completely incorrect. The Alliance has a pretty steep learning curve to overcome.

[ HD Digital Radio Alliance ]

I happened past the Ion booth while I was at CES, and was pretty impressed with some of the new gadgets and goodies they had on display this year. Granted you had to fight to get the attention of an ION representative at the booth, and I didn’t bother fighting that fight, but their gear spoke for itself. Some of ION’s new releases include some vintage-looking turntables that can record vinyl directly to CD or to you computer via USB, and some more updated, modern looking turntables (like the one above) that do similar things.

ION made its name by being one of the first companies to make USB turntables and USB cassette players to help people get their old analog media into a digital format that’s inevitably more portable and will last longer. (when all those cassettes degrade, you’ll have those old mix tapes your old sweetheart gave you digitally on your computer, and hopefully backed up!)

ION brought some new products to the table this year though, including the Discover Keyboard and Discover iType, both keyboards for your iPod Touch or your iPhone – the former a music keyboard that you just dock your iPod Touch or iPhone to and use it to make music, and the latter an actual QWERTY keyboard that you can dock your iPod Touch or iPhone to and it’ll let you type out e-mails, text messages, notes, and all in all type on the phone without having to use the on-board keyboard.

In the music vein, The Discover DJ is a full set of mini-turntables with an integrated mixer that plugs right into your Mac or PC via USB and lets you mix your music collection on the go with a tiny pro-style setup. I saw a lot of products like this at CES this year – mini DJ setups that allow you to drop tunes, beatmatch, and get some professional mixing and effects using the music collection on your laptop – all in a package that you could slip in a laptop bag. Eventually, performance DJs won’t have to carry around large mixers or CD mixing gear. A couple of iPods, a laptop, and a tiny set of decks like the Discover DJ, and you’re set. Personally, I’m looking forward to it – I just need an ION turntable to rip all of my vinyl to mp3, and I’m on board!

Check out all of ION’s CES product releases below:

[ ION Audio - CES 2010 Releases ]