UPDATE 10:16: This is hilarious. Apparently their liveblog died at 10:02, then this hastily hacked-together non-ajax page stopped updating at 1:08. They said it's called the "iPad", which'll make for some interesting typos, but as far as we know they've just erected an Internet-proof bubble dome around the venue.

Oh wait, there it goes again.

UPDATE:

1:18 PT - DM: Now looking at photos. You can turn in portrait or landscape and flick through the photos, just like on the phone. Grabs metadata from PC or Mac. If you're on a Mac, you can also get events, faces, and places from iPhoto. Look inside any album just by pinching it open. Scrub through them with a little bar at the bottom.

1:19 PT - DM: Events, Faces, and places. Shows a big map with pins in it. Tap and hold on the pin and see all the photos there. Tap on it to open the photos. There are built-in slideshows, so yo can bring up slideshow options and pick your transition. Just starts playing music and then flips through the images.

Um. I hope there's more to it than this. Why do I have this odd deja vu sense that for some reason they're showing off how to do slideshows just because they've been showing off how to do slideshows since 2002? How many people actually need to see that many slideshows?

Okay, granted, it's all new apps that take advantage of a) multitouch and b) large screen; so in that sense it's a repudiation of the interface norms of iPhoto and AppleTV and the original iPod and the like. Still, that's an odd thing to lead off with. Wasn't everyone's skepticism about this thing over whether anything could provide more genuine utility than a netbook designed around full OS functionality (albeit with cramped dimensions)? How is making this a purpose-built casual infotainment device going to answer those critiques, especially if it costs more than typical netbooks and tablets?

UPDATE:

10:43 PT - DM: Next up is Brushes. (This has gotta be the perfect title to show off the iPad). Steve Sprang comes up to show it off. Artists of all skill levels have used it to produce images for all sorts of venues, including print. Gallery includes a handful of original iPhone paintings. Tap to edit any images. Tap to show up palettes or other tools. All the brushes from the iPhone are avaialble, adjust size, spacing, and opacity. Pinching lets you zoom in up to 32 times. By tapping and holding, you could actiavte eyedropper. Just drag across the screen to paint. Can undo if you need to. On the iPad, it's going to support in-app playback of your painting. Very cool. Brushes will be available at product launch.

Okay, that's more like it.

Really, it sounds like the bulk of the launch is a giant suite of apps. The iPad itself is just an iPhone with the dimensions on the component order form muddled with. The big news is all the software development everyone's apparently been doing—both Apple and the third parties.

How long till all these apps get jailbroken onto the native Mac OS X platform?

UPDATE: $499, huh? No, I did not expect that.

That's less than the iPhone debuted for. And with a considerable amount more going for it. But arguably less too, since you can't exactly put it in your pocket. And I hope it comes with a good slipcover.

UPDATE: Well, okay, the hardware is noteworthy too: this is presumably what the hardware geeks will be digging into for the next round of prognostications. Will Apple be aiming to bring all chip development in-house someday? Do they see Intel as imposing unwelcome constraints on the Mac architecture? Or do they see their non-Mac markets as increasingly more important than desktop computing, to the point where that's where they're most concerned with concentrating their IP?

UPDATE:

Is it just me, or are they tossing the word "magic" around a lot lately?

UPDATE: Mark says, "I'll probably stick with my iPad nano."

UPDATE:

No Flash, in case anybody harbored any hopes.