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Mac tablet rumor: True or just hot Air? E-book boost ahead?
July 26, 2008 | 9:51 am
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By David Rothman
At ABC News and many other places, talk keeping growing that that Apple might unleash the iTablet or something with a similar name.
Blogging for ZDNet, Jason D. O’Grady, who published this image from SpyMac, is adamant: "Mystery solved."
Mike Cane, our iPhone-lovin’ friend, is probably blowing a loud horn and yelling at the top of his lungs in gleeful anticipation of what he himself calls the iPod Air.
That said, Arnold Kim, publisher of MacRumors, isn’t so sure about a tablet popping up too soon, having told ABC: "I think there is a tablet in the works, but it’s a question about when the market will accept it."
The Dream
Whoever is right, here’s what MacDailyNews said earlier: "Think MacBook screen, possibly a bit smaller, in glass with iPhone-like, but fuller-featured Multi-Touch. Gesture library. Full Mac OS X. This is why they bought P.A. Semi. Possibly with Immersion’s haptic tech. Slot-loading SuperDrive. Accelerometer. GPS. Pretty expensive to produce initially, but sold at ‘low’ price that will reduce margins. Apple wants to move these babies. And move they will. This is some sick shit. App Store-compatible, able to run Mac apps, too. By October at the latest.”
Whatever. One thing I won’t by put off by is the talk that the touch interface won’t work, and besides, don’t people need keyboards? Ugh, haven’t USB and wireless been invented? And can’t you rely on a keyboard and mouse for most of your work? But for reading and plain surfing when you’re lazing back on the sofa, a touch interface is definitely the way to go. You could even use a wire stand or other means to prop up the sucker when you were in a desktop/laptop mode instead. Shades of the original TeleRead proposal! As a loyal e-booker, I’ll root for the tablet rumors to pan out.
Technorati Tags: iTablet,iPod Tablet
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Comments:
Yeah, you’re right about that, David! It makes ZERO sense for Apple to do a full-blown OS X touch device when iPhone OS is damned well suited for something not larger than, say, the Sony Reader!
I’ll say it again: Putting a touchscreen on a Mac is *not* a Product Transition. I’ve laid out my case. You think anyone will give me the freakin credit or even remember, when it happens? No, but they’re all fond of stealing my material!
BTW, typing this at the Apple Store Soho. Ha!
And that SpyMac thing is so obviously freakin fake!!
i hope it’s 100% true. if it is, i’ll be first in line.
While I hope it’s true. I am also remembering that a Mac Tablet, touchscreen Mac, etc… has been a persistent rumor since back in the days that there were two MacWorlds per year. So while the rumors may be eventually true – they hold the same use for me as a broken analog clock. Yes the clock is right twice a day, but that doesn’t help tell you when it is right
I scream about this at my own blog now too:
http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/07/26/youre-all-wrong-its-the-ipod-air/
Okay, throw another speculative log on the fire. A few month back Apple Insider ran a feature about an Apple patent filing that would go a long way to fill the gap between the MacBook and the iPhone/iPod:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/17/apple_exploring_dual_sided_translucent_touch_screen_panels.html
In a nutshell, it depicts a transparent, two-sided, touch-sensitive panel that serves as a cover on a laptop-sized device. In the closed position the device would behave like an over-sided iPod Touch, but with the power of a full-sized Mac under the hood. When open, the panel would drop down and have a keyboard image projected into it (either a QWERTY keyboard or a custom keyboard for a specialized application.) Haptic technology in the panel might provide tactile feedback for these virtual keboards.
Is this the “product transition” that’s coming this summer? I’m not placing any bets, but I’ll place a first-day order if it is. (Aside to Mike Cane: if/when Apple announces a product like this, I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts they call it a MacBook Touch, not an iPod Air.)
BOO on backwards-to-Mac-compatibility. Boo on an optical drive, too.
Here’s my take on Apple’s POV in making a tablet:
Design it to be a gadget first, then a platform.
Bluetooth, WiFi, and WiMax radios, but nothing else. Give the cell networks the Floppy Drive treatment and get this century started.*
It should launch just like the iPod and iPhone did… closed.
Give people a year to get used to what the tool itself can do. Don’t even hint that you are even considering letting apps on it. It’s a gadget.**
Resist the urge to “kitchen sink” it. Go the other direction. Cut features until it hurts.
No USB 3.0, no ExpressCard 2.0, only a dock connector.
Build in apps that wouldn’t work in a keyboard/mouse paradigm. Leave the “desktop metaphor” behind.
As for text entry, don’t we have a patent for a two-thumbs-in-the-corners-of-a-large-touch-tablet keyboard design? I swear I saw one about two years ago, long before iPhone was announced.***
As long as it’s responsive and gets OK battery life, it’ll sell.
—- (End of Speculation)
But I don’t have any “inside” info.
– Tedious
*That’s why we call it THE internet. One network, indivisible. Hey Cell Networks! Stop treating SMS and MMS like their bits are heavier or something and cost more to transmit. It’s a digital phone. All it does is send and receive bits. Ditto your radio tower.
**The Developers will piss and moan, but not a peep about an SDK until Macworld. I mean it this time!
***It had two modes. A “qwerty” and a new Apple-specific layout (or maybe it was just one I’d never seen). Anyone know how to search for Apple-specific patents from 2 years ago?
Apple has been developing this kind of thing, along with other gizmos, right along. There is a difference between what they can make in a lab, and what they can manufacture, at a decent price, with a decent (Apple-size) margin, … and that people will buy.
There were rumors for some years about an Apple PDA also…then around 2003 or 4, Steve Jobs admitted they had been developing such a thing, and he had just killed it. (This was when the PDA market was just starting to dwindle and die. Smart phones took over, and Apple went on to make the iPhone.)
An Apple tablet/slate would be larger than an iPod Touch, with bigger screen, larger storage, probably faster processor and GPU chips, bigger battery. Start with the iPod Touch price, and double or triple it. Now you are starting to see the Apple Tablet selling for around $1000US, and you begin to see the problem. Sure, Apple can make it, but how many will they sell at this price?
I agree that they are probably doing this as part of the iPod family, not the Mac group of computers. And I would say that Apple’s main aim for such a thing would be as a media player, to playback 16×9 iTunes movies. So it would thus need wifi to stream the content, and must handle h.264 codecs, which are brutal on processor chips — so it would probably need hardware decoding built in.
An optical drive kills battery life. Even a hard drive hurts, but NAND flash memory is so costly, the iSlate would probably use a 1.8″ hard drive.
An accelerometer lets it play all the iPhone games and use all those goodies in the app store.
Remember that as far as running full-bore OSX goes, even an iPhone can run OSX, through an app that lets you control your mac. Likewise this iSlate would make a cool remote control for your mac, AppleTV, and even smart house.
As for the transparent screen thing, or even the other non-Apple trick of putting the touch-sensitive surface on the back and showing you where your fingers are ‘through’ the device, these seem like too far in the future for this fall or January MacWorld.
The PA Semi chip that is in development, and is said to be the reason Apple bought that company, it won’t be available in all probability before late 2009, probably 2010. That means it’s much more likely that this iSlate would be using partner Intel’s Atom chips and chipsets, and Atom is in short supply right now. That may be another reason Apple is holding off on this.
Either way, I’m hoping and looking forward to whatever Apple comes out with.
On that Atom shortage: Apple could be the very reason for it. What, you don’t think Intel wouldn’t give Apple priority? Damn straight they would!
I must now do a blog post about this! Will credit you for stirring my mind up. Thanks.
Thanks, pond. Done:
http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/07/27/is-intels-atom-cpu-shortage-due-to-apple/
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