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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.)"
I would LOVE to have a wall mounted tablet running iTunes for my home stereo.
This is probably the design for the scrapped Apple PDA Jobs talked about. Also, take a look at the pictures the Register has.... on one of them it looks like the so-called tablet has a connector similar to the one found on a iPod, which leads me to believe this was the scrapped PDA
One of the early designs for the iBook was a design in which the screen could fold 180 degrees. In that position, the keyboard would be deactivated, and the screen would act as a touchscreen. Which is actually a pretty neat idea.
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...and price it right. Given a large enough selection of eBooks to buy/download, they could take the lead on a very large untapped market.
Apple has always been good at making high-quality consumer-grade electronics (iMac, iPod, etc.) and I think a quality eBook reader would do more for them than a "tablet".
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
I don't think this patent is for a tablet or handheld device. As the article states, Apple's iPod already is a great information carrier. However, this patent with, along with Apple's work with a 'wireless monitor' company may be a portable monitor, which connects to your home PC.
I think it would be cool to be able to carry around a tablet-esque device and pen that allows you to do things with your computer. Maybe there will be universal remote functionality and other new features. Just speculation...
-- n
Are there any tablet users out there with experience? I'd think that dropping any tablet would cause catastrophic damage to it.
The same could be said with a laptop, I suppose, but laptops seem to have OK survivability.
Its not for a tablet Mac or a Videoplayer Mac.
Its for the new iMac!
Here is a great article speculating that the new iMac to be released in 19 days in Paris, is to be a miniature iMac, sort of like the old color Classic Macintosh.
http://www.mymac.com/showarticle.php?id=-750
Its small screen will conect wirelessly to the Internet, the Ethernet, via the new mini Apple wireless hub. It will also likely have a small keyboard and mouse to go with it.
Since its supposed to be with an aluminum body, perhaps it will come in mini iPod colors too.
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I was thinking that this device could use a light version OS X--iTunes plus music store, email, web-surfing and maybe some kind of photo management. How difficult would it be for Apple to incorporate the option of streaming video from your cable box with the aid of Airtunes?. This could also take care of that small issue of the PC market share people are always taking about.
No, not a tablet. I'm imagining an LCD screen for your Mac/iMac that detaches from its stand and can be carried around the house. Wireless video voodoo. Not intended to be a standalone computer but just a portable display with touchscreen. Needs Wifi and a Mac nearby. You can use it as a remote for AirportExpress, as a 'non-portable laptop,' i.e. it doesn't leave the house, usually. Maybe you can take the screen over to a friends house or to work and log into a Mac there with it. Hmmm....
Obviously, Steve Jobs is better at this than I am (or I'd be making one dollar a year plus a few benefits), but this would not seem like a clever move.
The question for me is, does Apple have enough clever ideas to make a tablet computer really work?
AirPort Extreme for wireless networking. Rendezvous for zero-configuration connectivity to stuff like AirPort Express. Bluetooth for use with an optional keyboard. Inkwell for real-time handwriting recognition. A voice-driven interface that surprisingly few people take advantage of. And so forth and so on.
Yeah, I think Apple does have enough clever ideas. What they don't have is miniaturization technology. They could certainly build a table about the size of a closed PowerBook, but they couldn't put a G5 processor in it. From a marketing point of view, I think it would be hard to sell any new system with a G4 processor, just from the point of view of customer perception.
That's not to say I wouldn't take one.
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I honestly don't understand why it would be that much more expensive than a regular laptop. The only things different are a hinge that flips around and an overlay which goes on the screen. The flip-around hinge is really just a redesign, that should be a trivial cost, and the overlay is proven technology that has been in use for years. I can't see the overlay costing much more than an extra hundred bucks. That doesn't add too much to the cost when you are talking about a $1000+ machine.
I could easily see Apple taking a 12" iBook, changing the hinge and putting on a touch-sensitive overlay. They already have most of the software to use the tablet in place with Inkwell.
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Early this year I would have bought a powerbook except that I wanted a tablet. Why? Because I hand draw diagrams to prepare my work and because I don't like typing notes at meetings.
Tablets do for handwritten work what word processors did for typing. Yes it's a niche, not everyone uses hand drawn notes, diagrams, etc... but it's also not a niche that's going away. A tablet computer is much preferable to lots and lots of paper notepads.
As for price... well, I need a notebook too for programming and got a combination tablet/notebook, it cost the same as other good notebooks like IBM T41 and the Powerbook with similar specifications EXCEPT the display, which is more low resolution. That is... the tradeoff was between higher resolution and the ability to write on the display... fair trade. (fwiw, keyboardless tablets seem useless to me... but they might make sense in hospitals, for delivery people, that sort of thing)
Another reason to get a tablet from Apple besides the fact that this tablet is the only reason I have to run WinXP is I suspect Apple will smooth the edges... the interface in XP Tablet is not really as pen freindly as it could be.
I hope they do this. But having said all that... Jobs has vowed not to before... he loathes the Newton experience (so I hear anyway)... so I'm not holding my breath.
-pyrrho
If this is a tablet computer equipped to do a network boot of OS X through 802.11g, would it be possible to have the unit work as some sort of a thin client without a hard drive? Perhaps rather than a unit working independently of a computer, it would be a thin-client supplement for a desktop or laptop. I've always wondered if this could be done, because I presume that it would lengthen battery life and could be very thin in design. I would love to see a tablet computer that simply looked like a detached screen of a powerbook without all the buttons and extraneous shapes the Tablet PCs have. That may be possible by excluding a hard drive, CD/DVD drive, and keyboard from the unit.
I recall reading something that may have been a hint about this alleged product. Here's a quote from AppleInsider...
yeah, I recently sat on the train next to a guy coming back from VA. He was so into getting a tablet. I was like "wtf do you want one of them for"
he explained to me how he's in law school and is given much of his research paperwork and books in PDF form. He wants to be able to mark them up and take notes on them in class, and since he sometimes gets the PDF on a CD when he walks in door, he doesn't have time to print out the 100 pages or so.
Also, he was bitching about crappy PDF reading software that's a pain to take notes on. Sure the comment feature in acrobat is nice, but it's not really suited for taking notes in real-time.
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There have been two waves of tablet PCs in the industry: The original with Go, etc back in the early to mid 90s and the recent wave that fell flat on it's face.
This history makes it a rather risky move for anyone to enter that market. I just don't see Apple making this move. I see them sticking with their excellent laptops.
Now I do see them considering more integration between computers and the iPod. Apple may well license iPod technology to other vendors than Motorola (for their upcoming iTunes compatible phone). Before too long 4gb of memory in a cell phone is going to be commonplace and that's what the iPod mini has now. I think Apple's deal with Motorola shows that Apple knows they won't be able to sell the hardware forever, so they've taken steps to move the technology beyond that.
I think an iPodPhone is a great idea. One less gadget to forget to grab on my way out the door in the morning. I don't see Apple making the phone, though, so count out your dreams of an iPhone. An iPod-white SonyEricsson T630 with 8gb of memory sounds great to me, though! Talk about a big selection of MP3 ringtones!
Bingo! Graphics people are the target market for this gizmo, not suits who want to take notes. This is why Windows-based tablets fail, Windows still doesn't really 'get' creative graphics. The killer app for the tablet Mac is Alias Sketchbook Pro which recently became available for the Mac.
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Why would anyone buy a tablet when they could buy a laptop? Think about it. You're stuck with a clumsy interface that is barely usable. It's fine in places like hospitals, but that's a specialized market with specialized applications---specifically, the need to take notes in an environment where putting a laptop on a desk is not always possible, and the need to be able to guarantee that those notes can be stored centrally so they never get lost. Those aren't common characteristics of general-purpose computing, nor are they needs that most people would care about.
If they were cheap enough, they could be useful as a replacement for carrying a note pad to class for school students, or for businesspeople to carry to meetings. However, as long as the interface is less efficient for taking notes than typing (and by its very nature, writing is almost an order of magnitude slower than typing), there must be some other significant advantage to outweigh that huge efficiency loss.
I can think of two possible advantages that could outweigh the loss in efficiency: portability and cost. Portability... well, make it as thick as a pad of paper. No hard drives that thin? Well, there's a problem. Besides, if you can make a tablet that's super-thin, you can make a laptop that is equally thin, so there's no advantage. Cost? Well, it can't be cheaper than a laptop, you say? Okay, no advantage there, either.
When I can buy a tablet PC for the same cost relative to the price of a computer that a Palm costs now, it will make sense. Until then, it's just a cute toy that costs way too much to be useful. That said, my ideal tablet PC wouldn't be a PowerMac G5 or a Pentium IV. It would be a Palm or a Newton, with the addition of an iPod-size hard drive (say 20 gigs), only wider and not as thick. Limited OS, designed for one main purpose---to serve as a note pad. Synchronize it with your computer using bluetooth or something. Use it to carry files back and forth to class, too, if needed. Maybe even make it so that you can run normal applications (slowly) so you can show your professor your work instead of printing it out. In other words, something that would cost maybe $150-ish and if it broke, it wouldn't be the end of the world.
That said, as long as tablet computing is a more fragile, more cumbersome, laptop-priced device, it's an eye-roll, IMHO.
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I agree. I bought a 12" iBook 7 months ago, and chose it because I couldn't find a comparable PC laptop any cheaper (and it was simpler to just get Mac OS than to get Linux working with arbitrary PC laptop hardware).
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