When the iPad was launched this year as Apple’s current flagship product, many raves and rants countered all the hype of its release. But did you ever wonder WHAT is the iPad? Here are some cool facts about this hand-held gizmo.

Originally, Apple was going to the name the iPad as the “iBook”. Interesting enough, it is highly held in comparison these days with the e-book readers such as the Kindle.

The iPad measures 9.56 inches long, 7.47 inches wide and 0.53 inches thick weighing 1.6 pounds. It has a 9.7 inches multitouch full color IPS display with a built-in accelerometer giving it the capability of automatically adjusting orientation. It runs at a speed of 1 GHz with an iOS of 3.2.2 Apple A4 System chip.

Did you know that one application averages at a cost of .99 but it takes more than a month to build a single application?

Steve Jobs designed the iPad to be free from pornography by excluding it from the App Store besides the fact that it does not support Adobe Flash. This pushed pornography sites to change their video formats from Flash to iPad-friendly formats like H.264 and HTML5.

Safari is the most commonly used application while Apple.com is the most visited website.

Despite the flaws in terms of connectivity, one can easily sync his/her iPod Touch or iPhone with the iPad.

With all the restrictions on this piece of gadget, users will be happy to know that jailbreaking is possible allowing unauthorized Apple applications and programs to be downloaded into it. But if you are thinking about it, just keep in mind that jailbreaking will void the warranty on the product.

Despite the widely accepted belief that the iPad was modeled after the iPhone, Jobs admits that the iPad concept came first. It was originally called the Safari Pad project. However, he decided to put off its creation and develop the iPhone instead due to battery life issues. No wonder many describe it as an enlarged iPhone considering that all applications that work on the iPhone works with the iPad.