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Speculation About An Apple Tablet
worm eater writes "The Register reports that Apple has filed for a European design trademark on a tablet computer. El Reg speculates that this could may make Apple Expo Paris more exciting that previously thought. Could this be the tech that finally brings the Mac desktop, iPod, and AirPort Express (and let's not forget the iPhone) together into the media household of The Future? (Of course, we've heard speculation about this before.)"
Soon you can have iPorn streamed directly to your bathroom?
I suggest checking out Meedio
but it seems like patents for a tablet style PC could easily be applied to the next generation iMac. It's likely that it's an all in one design with the components behind the lcd.
See here: http://www.thinksecret.com/ and here http://www.appleinsider.com/.
The new G5 based iMacs are reportedly designed so that the CPU is attached to the monitor - which looks remarkably like a tablet. We'll know in 2 weeks.
Speaking of the new G5 iMac, ThinkSecret has a report that confirms this, along with supposed specs for new 17" and 20" iMacs.
Not quite! I'm a big fan of PDAs and portable computing. I've owned many PDAs, including Newton Messagepad 110 (which Apple gave me when I was working at Adobe), but before that I had a Tandy 100 and an HP 100 both of which pre-dated the Newton by quite a bit.
Best Buy can have you arrested
Yeah, but look at the existing G5's. They require a LOT of cooling, and that sketch does not look like it could hold a G5 at all. Unless Apple has some extremely advanced liquid cooling they are putting in it.....
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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Tablets are dead. Even Micro$oft may be getting out of the tablet business. Laptops outsell tablets a hundred to one.
l et_mac/
http://engadget.com/entry/8312965763231519/
I think this new screen is for the new iMac.
It is wireless.
It may detach from the CPU/hard drive.
It is aluminum (in colors?).
It has the full OS X.
It may be small like the old Macinosh Classics.
Here are the links:
http://www.mymac.com/showarticle.php?id=-750
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/13/apple_tab
http://www.thinksecret.com/news/imacg5specs.html
Roger Born
writing.borngraphics.com
That would actually be more like a 350-degree fold, all the way around. The clamshell iBooks had a hinge that could rotate through about 160 degrees; the screen and keyboard were nearly in the same plane at its widest.
(It just occurred to me that I'm misinterpreting you, and you mean the screen could rotate around the vertical axis, so it would point out away from the keyboard without having to be bent over backwards...)
If this is in fact a wireless monitor, for the imac or otherwise, it's isn't a new idea. Microsoft came out with a reference platform to do exactly this, see viewsonic's version, but unfortunately they cost a ton. It'll be interesting to see if apple goes down the same route.
I would be pretty cool to have an imac with a detachable wireless monitor, but the imacs are supposed to be 17" and 20" neither of which is particularly portable.
They're slightly more expensive than a Dell, but not by any great amount. When you consider how much faster they run, and their performance, it is hard to recommend a non-apple laptop to anyone who isn't an MS addict. Their desktop hardware is a little insane, but their laptops are well priced IMO.
This coming from a person who has never owned an apple (aside from my ipod) and who spent last year working tech help for my university and repaired hundreds of laptops from all brands (but apple) for people.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa fe=off&q=apple+penmac&btnG=Search
I was there. It was cool. There were lots of variations and one that went into production and was sold in Japan, briefly, before it was pulled for fear of competing with Newton.
Both can learn. The cursive mode was what is now known as Calligrapher and Transcriber (by ParaGraph and Microsoft). The Print was the Newton Recognizer, now known as Inkwell and present in every copy of OS X.
My Systems
The Viewsonic models are not Wireless Monitors no matter what they try and tell you. I sell them, they are WinCE based (most of them) PDAs. They let you control a Windows XP machine from a Terminal inside of WinCE. Basically, they are Wireless Dumb-Terminals.
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
I've been using Stylistic tablets for quite some time now and really like the tablet form factor, though it does indeed suck for data entry without an external keyboard attached (not a problem, has standard PS/2 and USB). I dropped my 2300 off the side of my bed with no real damage, and my 3500 off my desk at work without even a scratch. Built right, there's no reason it shouldn't have at least the survivability of a laptop, if not moreso. Actually, because the screen has a (relatively) durable digitizer in front of it, there's some extra protection for the screen. Also, a common point of failure in many laptops seems to be the various ribbons and such in the screen hinge, which is completely eliminated with a tablet. Even the older ones do still command a price premium, though not much. The Stylistic 3500 I use daily is good enough for most everything.
http://jksalesinc.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPa th=26_51_80&products_id=217
$330, and comes with a crapload of accessories. Heck, many early Slate form-factor tablets were barely more powerful than that thing (400MHz P3). Oh, and the Stylistic and Point lines were some of the first Tablet PCs, coming soon after the Toshiba Dynapad T-100, the FIRST tablet PC, 11 years ago.
Also, someone got Windows XP Tablet PC Edition running on the old Stylistic 2300, a Pentium MMX 233 box (below the minimum requirements for DESKTOP editions, but XP Pro's been run on an underclocked 20MHz Pentium for shits and giggles). Since the 3400 is above the requirements of XP Tablet, it should run it.
Well, first of all Wacom is not necessarily the best company to go to for touch screens. Yes they are a decent company but there are many, many more suppliers of this technology. A quick Google search reveals many. I'm not in the field of computer system component integration but I'm certain that a company like Apple could easily find a decent partner at a decent price.
Now, just a quick look around reveals LCD screen overlays costing from around $90 to $110 for a 12.1" screen. I didn't find out what quantity you would need to purchase to get those prices but I'm pretty sure that a major PC manufacturer like Apple could easily get those prices and probably much better because they are dealing in quantity.
So I feel that I can stand on my estimate of a $100 increase, more or less, in price for an Apple laptop with a touch screen over an Apple laptop without a touch screen. All things being equal it is at least a decent ballpark estimate of the costs.
Sapere aude!
Well, if it's running OS X, it'll definitely have InkWell. InkWell is the name for the handwriting engine in OS X. It is based upon Rosetta, the GOOD handwriting engine from the Newton.
This is why there'll never be a source release of Newton OS.
Apple (actually then-CEO John Sculley) coined the very term. And while I suppose all this is up for debate, the Tandy 100 and HP 100 aren't exactly what people would consider a "PDA". Even though the Newton was a little too big (or at least that's the prevailing notion), it is generally considered to be the first PDA, not to mention that technically, it really *is* the first PDA, since Apple invented the term "PDA" itself.
You could build a non-pressure sensitive tablet PC, heck, maybe someone has. You couldn't sell it as an Apple. Graphic designers will buy Apple tablets with Wacom parts like chocolate bars. Digital sketchbook done right, yay.
I'd love a tablet. I don't care about the high price right now, I don't care about the lower cpu power. All I care about is that the current tablets run Windows and are made by insane PC firms. You just can't rely on the sleep functionality in Windows laptops.... not until someone you know has been using the specific model you're going to buy for three years and has had no problems.
Uhh my powerbook has a 4200RPM drive... so do most laptops with higher than 15 minute battery life...
My other car is first.
I've been using a tablet for the past year (acer travelmate c110). We're a High School, all the students have laptops (some tablets last year, all tablets for incoming students this year). It's a convertable model, and haven't seen any more damage related trouble than a conventional laptop. Unless it's in a weird configuration (screen offset 90 deg and the like), there isn't much difference. The 'slate' stile of tablets are insane, but more because you can't effectivley protect the screen. This is unrelated, but they're not that much more expensive (at least from acer). When we worked the numbers, the tablet ended up costing about as much as a laptop with the same processor/ram, and a gaming GPU. We couldn't see any academic reason to give them killer 3d graphics, however the tabletPC's have been amazingley useful. We've finally got non-geek kids choosing to bring/take notes on their computers.
There are Tablet PCs running Linux already, as well as Apple Powerbooks and iBooks running Linux. So there seems to be a fair chance that an Apple Tablet PC might run Linux, too.