Ladies and Gentleman. I give you… the Apple iPad. That’s right, across the pond at a dedicated event to show off their latest creation, Apple have officially lifted the lid on the Apple tablet. Yes after giving a brief overview of the companies excellent financial performance, making the bold claim that Apple are a bigger mobile device manufacturer than Nokia, Samsung and Sony and giving a brief trip down memory lane, Apple’s talismanic CEO Steve Jobs announced what we’ve all been waiting for in the shape of the iPad.

Whilst this news is hardly a surprise (come on, we all knew it was coming right?), it’s still hot off the press and so full specs and product images are literally being revealed as we type. So, who better to hand over to than Mr Apple himself, Steve Jobs, to outline what they have in store for the iPad. Speaking to the eager crowds gathered at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, Jobs commented “We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a magical and revolutionary product today…SO all of us use laptops and smartphones… the question has arisen; is there room for something in the middle. We’ve wondered for years as well — in order to create that category, they have to be far better at doing some key tasks… better than the laptop, better than the smartphone.”

“What kind of tasks? Browsing the web. Doing email. Enjoying and sharing pics. Watching videos. Enjoying music. Playing games. Reading ebooks. If there’s gonna be a third category, it has to be better at these tasks — otherwise it has no reason for being. Now some people thought that was a netbook — the problem is that netbooks aren’t better than anything! We think we’ve got something that is better. And we call it the iPad. So, gonna give you a little overview. It’s very thin — you can change the homescreen to whatever you want. What this device does is extraordinary. You can browse the web with it. It’s the best web experience you’ve ever had.”

“So that’s browsing the web. Let’s go to email. Now if I want to send a message, I hit compose — up pops this gorgeous keyboard. Next, photos… this is what photos looks like. I can look at everything as a list of photos. I can tap on it…You get the idea.”

Well Apple have finally lifted the lid on the Apple tablet or the iPad as we’ll all have to get used to calling it now. Can they do the same to mobile computing as they have done to the mobile phone industry? You wouldn’t bet against them. We’ll stay with the Apple event to give you more breaking news as and when we get it but for now just let your imagination run wild as to the possibilities of the iPad…