Apple Tablet Is Latest Attempt by Steve Jobs to 'Shock and Awe' - This article by Connie Guglielmo and Amy Thomson for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

Apple Inc., trying to expand beyond the Macintosh, iPod and iPhone, introduced a tablet computer with a touch screen, Web browser and e-mail functions.

The iPad can display full Web pages and has a touch-screen keyboard that's almost full size, Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs said today at a company event in San Francisco. He demonstrated the device by showing the Web site of the New York Times and visiting movie-ticket site Fandango.

The iPad is "so much more intimate than a laptop, so much more capable than a smartphone," Jobs said. Jobs, 54, has spent the past decade transforming the maker of the Mac personal computer into a consumer-electronics juggernaut. The iPad builds on the digital media and mobile technology behind Apple's market-leading iPod players and the iPhone, and will challenge dedicated e-book readers from Amazon.com Inc. and Sony Corp.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, fell $4.18 to $201.76 at 1:22 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares, which more than doubled last year, rose to a record $215.04 earlier this month on anticipation of the new gadget.

The device can display maps from Google Inc. and has calendar and address book functions. It lets users display thumbnail views of photos.

Apple could sell as many as 4 million tablets this year, Katy Huberty, an analyst with Morgan Stanley, told investors earlier this week. Toni Sacconaghi, at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., predicted sales of 3 million devices in the first year, based on a selling price of $750.

Eoin Treacy's view Technology is easy to get excited about. The idea of having all my books on a handy slate is alluring since my home ran out of shelf space a while back and I have yet to get around to putting more up. However, I worry about the potential eye strain from reading a screen and I imagine battery life is another concern shared by many. The promise of solutions to some of these problems is engaging but let's see it working before getting caught up in the hype. How this new product is received could be pivotal for Apple's share price.

Apple has been one of the darlings of the technology industry since the launch of the iPod and subsequently the iPhone and remains one of the sectors better performing shares. It broke upwards from its base last March and trended consistently to test the 2007 peak near the psychological $200. It has since lost momentum and the current range has a number of internal downward dynamics, the most recent of which was last week.

The current action may be no more than a ranging mean reversion towards the 200-day moving average as resistance is encountered in the region of the prior high, but the failed upside breaks suggest that ample supply currently exists above the market. Therefore, a move to new highs sustained for more than a few days is needed to reaffirm the overall uptrend, while a sustained move below the mean, currently in the region of $175 would indicate more conclusive topping activity.