Well, let's get back to one of our top stories now and that's Apple's new iPad.
The company unveiled it on Wednesday, and Apple executives call it "stunning."
The next-generation tablet comes with a high-definition display and 4G wireless technology.
The base price is the same as the previous iPad, which is US$499. Well, the new iPad will hit stores in certain countries on March 16.
John Abell, the New York bureau chief of Wired.com, joins me now live from CNN New York to talk about it.
John, are you impressed with the new features?
Yeah, I am. I mean, it is a nice upgrade. It is more powerful. It's got a pretty screen. It's got another camera.
It does HD video. It doesn't have Siri though. It doesn't have the personal assistant, and I was really hoping for that.
But it does have some sort of a voice mechanism, doesn't it, to help you take memos?
Yeah, it has a dictation function, which is similar to the one on the phone.
Within from you certain applications you can hit the space bar and speak and it will take dictation.
But Siri is the personal assistant which does all kinds of things, looks things up for you, sets reminders and the like.
And I was really hoping it would appear on this iteration of the iPad.
Now it is 4G, this new iPad that's coming out.
Not all countries have 4G and in Australia it apparently won't work with the 4G there because it's a different frequency.
So, do you think this might be a handicap in certain countries?
Well sure. I mean, it's a handicap in the United States. I mean 4G is not everywhere. It's hardly anywhere.
I'm in New York City and if you cross the street you don't have 4G. But look, it's an emerging standard.
It's a terrific bring-your-own-Internet standard of data connectivity because you can't always be in a hotspot. So it's a good start.
It's good that Apple has finally adopted the standard that other tablets and other smart phones
-- notably none of the iPhones have it yet -- have already adopted.
It's a good thing. It's a start.
Now the research company IMS just came out with a forecast yesterday that said the iPad, the new iPad that we'll see in March,
will actually capture 70 percent of the tablet market this year.
That's pretty incredible if it turns out to be true. Do you think there is any rival close to closing the gap with the iPad?
I don't think there's any rival that will really close the gap in the foreseeable future.
There have been a lot of contenders from the traditional hardware makers like Hewlett-Packard and Samsung and Research in Motion.
None of them have captured the public's imagination.
However, Amazon and Barnes and Noble, two content companies -- they sell books and stream movies and the like --
have partnered with hardware manufacturers to come up with the Amazon Fire, which at $200 is a great deal,
and the Barnes and Noble Nook Tablet, also $200.
This will capture some of the lower end of the spectrum that's 60 percent less than the iPad and does a lot of the same things.