Screen and input

he iPad's (first two generations) touchscreen display is a 1,024 by 768 pixel, 7.75×5.82 in (197×148 mm) liquid crystal display (diagonal 9.7 in (246.4 mm)), with fingerprint- and scratch-resistant glass. Steve Jobs said a 7-inch screen would be "too small to express the software" and that 10 inches was the minimum for a tablet screen.^[54] Like the iPhone, the iPad is designed to be controlled by bare fingers; normal, non-conductive gloves and styli do not work,^[55] although there are special gloves and capacitive styli designed for this use.^[56][57]
The display responds to other sensors: an ambient light sensor to adjust screen brightness and a 3-axis accelerometer to sense iPad orientation and switch between portrait and landscape modes. Unlike the iPhone and iPod Touch's built-in applications, which work in three orientations (portrait, landscape-left and landscape-right), the iPad's built-in applications support screen rotation in all four orientations, including upside-down. Consequently, the device has no intrinsic "native" orientation; only the relative position of the home button changes.^[58]
There are four physical switches on the iPad, including a home button near the display that returns the user to the main menu, and three plastic physical switches on the sides: wake/sleep and volume up/down, plus a software-controlled switch whose function has changed with software updates. Originally the switch locked the screen to its current orientation, but the iOS 4.2 changed it to a mute switch, with rotation lock now available in an onscreen menu.^[59] In the iOS 4.3 update, released with the iPad 2, a setting was added to allow the user to specify whether the side switch was used for rotation lock or mute.^[6]
The original iPad had no camera; the iPad 2 has a front VGA camera and a rear-facing 720p camera, both capable of still images (but these are only taken at a low quality 0.3 megapixels) and 30fps video. The rear-facing camera has a 5× digital zoom for still images only. Both shoot photo and video in a 4:3 fullscreen aspect ratio, unlike the iPhone 4, which shoots in a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. Unlike the iPhone, the iPad does not support tap to focus, but does allow you to tap to set auto exposure.^[60] The cameras allow FaceTime video messaging with iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4, and Snow Leopard, Lion, and Mountain Lion Macs.