BREAKING STORY: Apple has announced the iPad, its much-rumoured Apple tablet device. It will feature a 1GHz processor dubbed the "A4", and it is an in-house processor. The screen is not a 10-inch, but it is close to it - a LED-backlit 9.7-inch IPS display; and is only 0.5-inch in thickness and weighs only 1.5 pounds.

The device will also feature Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 and an accelerometer so you can turn it around in landscape mode like on the iPhone. Apple claims that it has a battery life of 10 hours.

Like predicted, it will use the iPhone OS; but it will have some modifications, including the dock being similar to Snow Leopard and a background image. Applications can use the big screen as the iPad SDK has been released alongside the iPhone SDK, and iPhone apps can be used on the iPad, either in full screen or in the same screen size as the iPhone, but you would see black borders around it.

The iPad has come out with redesigned applications as well because of the big screen, with the iTunes stores and music app looking like their desktop counterpart. Photos will include Faces and Events that is on iPhoto, while YouTube HD will now be added on their dedicated application.

Also announced was that the iPad would become an eBook reader, rivalling the Amazon Kindle. Called "iBooks", the bookstore will feature five partners at launch - including Penguin and HarperCollins. Apple has also made iPad versions of their iWorks suite, with full document creation and editing tools. They will cost $9.99 for each part of the iWork suite - meaning that you would have to pay about $20 for both Keynote and Numbers.

The iPad will include 3G, after Apple came to a new deal with AT&T. Models with 3G will have a higher pricing, plus will have to pay either $14.99 for 250MB and $29.99 for an unlimited plan. All are unlocked. International 3G plans will be announced shortly in June/July.

The new device will cost $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB and $699 for the 64GB. The 3G models will start at $629 for 16GB, while 32GB will be priced at $729 and 64GB to be priced at $829. The device will come out in 60 days - or two months approx - for the non-3G iPads, while the 3G models will ship out in 90 days.

Turns out, when you're going to keep a product a secret, its best not to let your partner's executives or CEOs ruin the surprise. In an interview with CNBC, the CEO of publishing company McGraw-Hill admitted that the company has made books that would be heading for the Apple tablet; while also revealing that it will have the iPhone OS - so now you can play Tap Tap Revolution on a 10-inch screen (that's going to be one big orb that you have to press).

McGraw: Yeah, Very exciting. Yes, they'll make their announcement tomorrow on this one. We have worked with Apple for quite a while. And the Tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system and so it will be transferable. So what you are going to be able to do now -- we have a consortium of e-books. And we have 95% of all our materials that are in e-book format on that one. So now with the tablet you're going to open up the higher education market, the professional market. The tablet is going to be just really terrific.

You can watch the video below, and its somewhere around the 2 minute and 50 second mark.

Source: MacRumors

Apple has beaten Wall Street expectations after posting its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2009. The Cupertino-based company posted a overall profit of $3.38 billion, or $3.74 per share - an increase of 50 percent from the same time last year. As well, its overall revenue was up - $15.68 billion from $11.88 billion from last year.

In its product lineup, Mac and iPhone sales increased, while sales of the iPod fell. Apple sold 3.36 million Macs, a 33 percent increase from last year's quarter; while the iPhone saw a 100 percent increase from the same time last year, selling 8.7 million units. It sold 21 million iPods, a decline of eight percent.

"If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it's surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company," CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. But Jobs has hinted on a "major new product that we're really excited about" that is to be launched this week on January 27/28 (Melbourne). He has also hinted that there could be more product releases in the year.

Looking ahead of the first quarter of this year, Apple's Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said that they expect Apple could have $11-$11.4 billion in revenue and an earnings per share in the range of $2.06 and $2.18.

EXCLUSIVE/RUMOUR MILL: According to a Telecom NZ sales representative, the iPhone is coming to Telecom. It is unclear if it is the 3G iPhone or a next-generation iPhone. While the XT Network has been out since the launch of the 3GS, it is unclear why it has taken almost a year to come.

However it may have something to do with Telecom NZ offering a "iPhone Plan" consisting of a $600 account credit while not being an offical carrier. The source was not willing to say anything else other than the iPhone is coming to Telecom NZ.

The Vatican has made some attempts in making a presence online - including having their own YouTube channel - but the Pope has issued a new message ahead of World Communications Day that tells priests that they should embrace social media and start blogging - yes, you heard that right.

"God’s loving care for all people in Christ must be expressed in the digital world not simply as an artifact from the past, or a learned theory, but as something concrete, present and engaging," Pope Benedict XVI wrote. "Our pastoral presence in that world must thus serve to show our contemporaries."

His new message could see priests uploading images and videos on services like Flickr and YouTube, while writing blog posts and having podcasts or vodcasts. Some American ministries that focus on youth have already embraced social media.

The trend has already been embraced by Father Bob McGuire, who has a blog and two podcasts - one from the Podcast Network and another from Triple J. He also has a MySpace and Facebook profile and a Twitter account, where over 3,000 follow his tweets.

However, just don't expect your priest to write messages that may or may not contain their deepest darkest secrets, or posting drunk pictures of themselves on Facebook - which they do not do, hopefully - or playing Farmville. The decree by Pope Benedict XVI has warned that priests should be used be spread the Gospel in their parishes and/or diocese.

"Priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart, their closeness to Christ," Pope Benedict XVI said on the matter.

A Chinese Newspaper has written a critical editorial about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about her speech about the freedom to access information on the Internet. The newspaper, the Global Times, labelled her speech as a "disguised attempt to impose its values on other cultures in the name of democracy".

"The online freedom of unrestricted access is, thus, only one-way traffic, contrary to the spirit of democracy and calculated to strengthen a monopoly," the newspaper wrote in its editorial.

"The online freedom of unrestricted access is, thus, only one-way traffic, contrary to the spirit of democracy and calculated to strengthen a monopoly. These facts about the difficulties of developing nations, though understood by politicians like Clinton, are not communicated to the people of Western countries. Instead, those politicians publicise and pursue their claims purely from a Western standpoint."

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So, since we are heading towards a long weekend, why not post some gadget-craving blog posts, since we've been a bit slow on the gadgets news since CES (and trying to get back into the habit of blogging). We turn our attention to this All Spark from Transformers  - wait, what? Isn't that supposed to be fictional? Turns out, it's real but not what you expect it to be.

A gamer known as GivinTats has decided to make his own All Spark from the movie Transformers as a case mod for his Xbox 360. Plus, its fully functional. Granted, these are from 2007 - when the first movie came out - so don't hold your breath if he still has this with him. Still, its a wickedly cool mod. More images below.

Source: Hawtymcbloggy

The European Union has given its approval to Orcale's purchase of Sun Microsystems, the owners of several technologies like MySQL and Java, after finalising its investigation that was opened in September of last year.

The investigation was launched to see if it would be an impediment of "effective competition" within the European Economic Area (EEA), a free-trade agreement within the European Union and three other states - Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. It was mainly focused on the database market, as fears arose that Oracle's ownership of Sun and MySQL would pose a threat to competition and the open-source database leader could be in jeopardy when Oracle took ownership.

"I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned. Oracle's acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalise important assets and create new and innovative products," Neelie Kroes, the Competition Commissioner said in a statement.

In the statement, its investigation found that MySQL and Oracle are not "close competitors" despite competing in the database market and that the openness of MySQL allowed forking (branching off the MySQL base code) to compete with MySQL. It also took into account Oracle's announcement that it will still release MySQL under the GPL open source license, and showed that PostgreSQL - a credible alternative to MySQL by many users in the open source world - could likely replace the competitive force that is exerted by MySQL.

During the investigation, effectively delaying it, Sun has been losing money - estimated to be around US$100 million per month - as its customers move to IBM and HP.

With the EU approval, along with the US Justice Department's approval of the deal, China and Russia are set to approve the deal, meaning that the deal could close very shortly.