I took a break from Sundance coverage to follow the Apple iPad announcement on Twitter and to check out Engadget’s live stream. For all the talk about the iPad (which some consider to be an unfortunate name…) saving old media and print, the focus of Steve Jobs’s presentation was solidly on the device as a large-screen multi-media device. Games from Electronic Arts were unveiled, a YouTube HD native app was demo’d and new versions of iTunes and IWorks showed scaled-up, enhanced versions of those apps. (Filmmakers, take note of all of this…) And, yes, in the middle of the presentation there was a demo of iBooks, an online bookstore, and the iPad’s abilities as an eReader. (Happily, it uses the open source ePub format, so look forward to seeing Filmmaker on it soon.) The pricing is much more aggressive than anyone previously thought: $499 for 16GB of flash memory, $599 for 32GB and $699 for 64GB. (Comes with WiFi; add $130 for 3G service… through AT&T unfortunately, although you can buy it without a service contract.) For me, because I’m not wild about touch keyboards, there’s a cool physical keyboard add-on. Available in 60 days. I’m a little more impressed than I expected to be and also happy that the hype bubble has been quantitatively eased and I can get back to work…

The demo is below. (You’re welcome, Apple.)