So the hype is over but will it save news

Measuring 9.7 inches diagonally, weighing 1.5 pounds and with 10 hours of battery life, just about every paper has a picture of Steve Jobs holding up the new Apple I-Pad,there has been living blogging and live twittering and live just about everything else.

So was the hype worth it? Are we looking at a publishing revolution or simply an enlarged I-Phone?

Here is some of the comment

the best feature is iBooks, the e-book reading software that knocks Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader into a cocked hat.
Novels are beautifully presented, lined up on a virtual bookshelf, complete with sleeve art.
The pages of the books resemble proper printed pages, with a sense of texture and authenticity to them. Turning pages is achieved with a swiping gesture, or a single tap in the right-hand margins.

says the Telegraph

It is the book angle which has excited the pundits.As the Guardian reports

The iPad would help "attract millions of new readers to the world's best books", said John Makinson, chairman of the Penguin Group.

And as the New York Times says

publishers have agreed to a business model that gives them more power over the price that customers pay for e-books.

But are it's consequences far more reaching?

PCs will be around as expert devices for the long haul, but it's clear that Apple, coasting on the deserved success of the iPhone, sees simple, closed internet devices as the future of computing. (Or at the very least, portable computing.) And for the average consumer, it could be.

reports Gizmodo

For a good round up of all its features I suggest looking at Mashable's comprehensive guide

We have a bit of wait to see the product in the UK.“We hope to have our international deals in place in June/July time - we’re starting on that tomorrow,” Steve Jobs told journalists during the launch.

For journalism,its effect will become clear only when news organisations start to discuss business models with Apple with the same gusto as book publishers.

If they can concoct a method of sharing revenues,this product may be give journalism a much needed boost.

Although as Steve Yelvington writes

It's certainly no savior for newspapers. What are you going to do, kill your website and sell your "publication" in the App Store? Nonsense. The iPad doesn't change the economic equation. You aren't prevented from selling your content by lack of technology and tools; you're prevented by a lack of market demand. And the demand isn't there because people have, at their fingertips, far more alternatives than the human brain can process -