Apple searches for a market with blank sheet of iPad

In the end it was that rare thing: an Apple announcement shorn of surprises.

There was Steve Jobs, the man in black and denim, looking pretty well for a bloke who has endured more speculation about his health than Fidel Castro. Check.

There was the iPad, looking a little like a magnified iPhone as if it might star in a popcorn movie called Someone Just Shrunk Steve. Check.

There were the deals with publishing, media and entertainment firms wondering if they had just been sold a pup by the weird guys from tech. Check.

There was the announcement-to-shipping wait while the Mac flock pondered what to do to fill in the long, waking, aching hours until April brings the merciful rain of available product. Check.

There of course were the backdrop tunes of Bob Dylan, the provider of the musical soundtrack to Jobs’ life, singing songs written in Jobs’ pre-teen youth, when IBM owned the world and there was not a computer on any desk in the world. Check.

If you were looking for an angle, there was the pricing, starting at half the gloomy prognostications of $1000 devices, and there was the battery life, promised to survive a 10-hour video marathon if your brain can take it. The use of a PA processor presumably contributes to that capability but it will be interesting to see at what cost to performance on applications that hammer the CPU. It was also interesting that Apple pushed the iPad as ideal for games, entertainment, books and business. A cynic might suggest there was less than broad agreement on target markets.

No details on European carriers, natch. This show will run and run.