Apple iPad liveblog

17.46: Engadget's liveblog also reports that the on-stage setup is a table and a chair. A clue to the preferred environment for using the tablet? In separate news, Stephen Fry appears to have bagged backstage access.

17.49: It's also worth remembering that tonight may not just be about the tablet. We may get a reveal of the iPhone 4.0 software - rumoured to at last allow apps to run in the background.

17.53: Apple is playing lots of Bob Dylan songs in the venue, apparently. If the tablet is capable of wiping the memory of that Must Be Santa video from my brain, I'll buy two...

17.56: Minutes away from the start of the event now. Last-minute speculation on the name? iSlate is still the narrow favourite ahead of iPad, although iBook has been creeping up on the inside this week too.

17.59: I still have a lingering affection for 'Magic Slate', mind...

18.02: Steve Jobs takes the stage - we're on! He trails tonight's new product as "magical and revolutionary", but there's going to be some updates on existing products first.

18.03: Apple has just sold its 250 millionth iPod. It now has 284 stores that attracted 50 million visitors in the last quarter. There are now 140,000 apps in the App Store. Jobs also reminds the audience of Apple's $15.6 billion of revenues in its last financial quarter.

18.06: Jobs says Apple is "a mobile company", and has some smack talk for rivals. "We're the largest mobile device company in the world. Larger than Sony, bigger than Samsung, and by revenue, it's even bigger than Nokia."

18.08: Tonight's device is about whether "there's room for something in the middle" of laptops and smartphones. But Jobs says it has to be better at some key things: Browsing the web. Doing email. Enjoying and sharing pics. Watching videos. Enjoying music. Playing games. Reading ebooks."

18.10: The name is... iPad! And it looks like a big iPhone, as many of the recent leaks suggested. Jobs says it'll offer "the best web experience you've ever had".

18.12: Jobs races through some of the uses, showing an issue of the New York Times, email windows, a big calendar app, iTunes Store, and YouTube HD.

18.15: Steve Jobs settles down in the armchair to demo the tablet's apps. A 'missing plug-in' icon while surfing the New York Times website appears to show that the tablet DOESN'T support Flash. As you'd expect, its browser is a version of Safari.

18.19: The device's interface is distinctly iPhone-esque, complete with a pop-up virtual keyboard designed to be typed on using fingers rather than thumbs - i.e. like a regular keyboard.

18.21: The iPad also has more photo-browsing features than the iPhone, including a slideshow, and the ability to associate photos with places on a map.

18.23: The iTunes Store is built into the iPad as with the iPhone. He shows it off by previewing yet another Bob Dylan song. Apple usually has a musical guest at the end of its product launches. Could it be...

18.25: The iPad has beefed-up calendar and contacts apps too. One interesting aspect is that it's using Google Maps - dispelling rumours that Apple was going to dump Google in favour of its own in-house mapping service. For now, anyway. It also supports Google Street View. ME angle: this presumably means tablet app developers will be able to tie into the Google Maps APIs just as on iPhone.

18.28: TV shows and movies can be watched in landscape mode. No news yet on whether Apple has persuaded the broadcasters to sell individual episodes for $1 each, as was rumoured this week.

18.29: Specs - 0.5 inches thin, it weighs 1.5 pounds, has a 9.7-inch display, full capacitive multi-touch, and it runs Apple's own 1GHz A4 chip, with between 16GB and 64GB of flash memory storage.

18.30: It supports Wi-Fi (802.11n) and Bluetooth, and has an accelerometer and compass inside (good news for iPhone developers), while Jobs promises 10 hours of battery life - "I can take a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo and watch video the whole time" - and more than a month of standby time.

18.32: Wow, this is big: the iPad will run all iPhone apps, without the need for modification. Apple is 'pixel doubling' to run apps full-screen, although they can also be run as small windows in the middle of the screen at their original resolution.

18.33: Apple's Scott Forstall has taken over for the apps demonstration, kicking off with Facebook. So this isn't a new version of Facebook coded for the tablet - it's just the existing iPhone app, upscaled. This means that more than 140,000 apps will be available for the tablet on day one.

18.35: And people buying the iPad will be able to sync their existing app library onto it. However, Forstall says developers can also "spend some time modifying their app" to get the most out of the iPad and its display.

18.37: A new version of the iPhone SDK is being released today with the necessary tools.

18.39: Gameloft takes the stage to show off its N.O.V.A. first-person shooter game at this point, with the ability for players to move the virtual D-pad and controls around the screen, to wherever they're most comfortable.

18.42: The New York Times is the next app to be demoed - apparently its iPhone app has been downloaded more than three million times. "We think we've captured the essence of reading the newspaper. A superior experience in a native application". It looks like the print version, but videos can be embedded in stories.

18.43: ME angle: hopefully this will encourage newspapers and magazines to think hard about what a tablet publication should look like, rather than just shoving the print edition across. More multimedia and interactivity, including comments...

18.46: Brushes is also shown - an existing iPhone image manipulation app, complete with contextual pop-up menus. These look like being one of the key features for developers working with the iPad, as they've been in most of the demos so far tonight.

18.48: More games - EA takes the stage to show off a tabletised version of Need For Speed Shift. "Building for the iPad is a little different," says EA's Travis Boatman. "It's kind of like holding an HD display up to your face. It's really cool."

18.49: The game looks spectacular. ME angle: Will iPad hand a further advantage to publishers with console-born graphical clout? That said, I wouldn't bet against an upscaled Flight Control being a huge hit for iPad.

18.51: MLB.com is the final app demonstration, having created a new app for the iPad that crams a lot more live data and visualisations onto the screen. The app can also pull in live full-screen video of matches.

18.54: Steve Jobs returns to show off the tablet's dedicated e-book reader application. It's called iBooks. It uses a virtual bookshelf as the interface - very similar to an Android app whose name escapes me.

18.56: Launch partners include Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Hachette. The iBooks store looks very much like iTunes, with titles in the demo retailing for anywhere between $7.99 and $14.99.

18.58: iBooks lets users change the font (for example from Times New Roman to Baskerville) - book designers will have a fit! The store uses the ePub format, which is used by several other stores - possibly meaning users will be able to import their existing e-books in those formats. But not Kindle e-books.

18.59: Jobs moves on to another native app for the iPad: a new version of Apple's iWork suite, complete with a whizzy new user interface.

19.02: The suite offers word processing, spreadsheet creation, presentations... The interface is a mixture of contextual menus and drag'n'dropping.

19.12: Steve Jobs returns to the stage, saying "Isn't it great?". He also explains that the iPad syncs via USB with a PC, in the same way that an iPhone or iPod does. That's how users can get their existing iTunes and App Store downloads onto the device, as well as contacts, calendar dates and bookmarks.

19.14: Some models will have 3G. Apple has negotiated monthly data tariffs for the device in the US - $14.99 gets users up to 250MB of data, while $29.99 will get them unlimited data. And that's with... AT&T! Including free use of its hotspots. And this isn't a long contract - it's prepaid, and activated from the iPad itself.

19.16: iPad 3G models will be sold unlocked, using new GSM micro SIMs. Jobs said Apple hopes to have international operator deals in place by June. "We're going to start on that tomorrow."

19.17: An update to the apps thing: Gizmodo has spotted that Jobs says the iPad runs "almost all" the apps on the App Store. That possibly just means it won't run apps that haven't been updated for the 3.0 software?

19.18: The big question now is how much will the iPad cost - presumably there's 3G and non-3G versions, with the different flash memory sizes.

19.19: Pricing starts at... holy cow! $499. "When we set out to develop this, we had ambitious tech goals, but we had aggressive price goals," says Jobs.

19.20: Specifically, with Wi-Fi only, the 16GB model costs $499, the 32GB model costs $599 and the 64GB model costs $699. Adding 3G will add an extra $130 to all those prices, so $629, $729 and $829 respectively.

19.21: The Wi-Fi models will ship in 60 days time, while the 3G models will ship in 90. That's late March for the Wi-Fi models and late April for the 3G ones then - although presumably the latter won't ship in Europe until June, judging by Jobs' earlier remarks.

19.22: There's also some accessories, including a charging dock that turns it into a photo frame, and a keyboard dock that adds a physical keyboard.

19.25: But what does Stephen Fry think, you may be wondering? He's there: "God the device is beautiful".

19.26: Engadget has just pointed out that there's been no mention of apps running in the background or multi-tasking. The device does have a mic, so I'm wondering about Skype and other VoIP apps.

19.31: Jobs is back on stage, and says that Apple has now shipped more than 75 million iPhones and iPod touches.

19.34: I'll let Steve have the last word: "This is a magical device, at a breakthrough price... We've always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts -- we want to make the best tech, but have them be intuitive. It's the combination of these two things that have let us make the iPad."

Stand by for more analysis and reactions to the device on ME.