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Asus Insider Claims Apple Tablet Is Real
CaptainCrunchyApple writes "According to cnet.co.uk the oft-rumoured Apple Tablet PC is actually very real, and on its way soon. CNET claims to have spoken to an anonymous tipster at Asus who claims to be working with Apple to produce the tablet. 'We're guessing it'll be based on Intel Core architecture, a tweaked version of Leopard, and have all the multi-touch, CoverFlow goodness we've seen in the iPhone and iPod touch. All this begs the question: Can Apple turn the Tablet PC into a success when previous attempts have failed? The short answer is 'yes'. Any company that can make a mobile phone with no buttons, no picture messaging, slow Web access and no video capture into the most desirable phone on the planet can easily make tablets popular.'"
Shame that they've been pretty useless for everyone but graphic artists so far eh? The summary is a little overoptimistic about Apple's ability to sell something - lack of picture messaging is hardly a problem when you have email, and nobody uses picture email anyway. The only real missing tech on the iPhone was a lack of 3G (and of course a sliding keyboard :P I find that a lot better than taking up space on-screen). Anyway, it's all well and good making cool gadgets, but unless they actually have a purpose then they won't really sell. Unless someone needs a tablet then they're not just going to go 'oh I should really get that new iSlate/iTab/iCandy'! If it's marketed as a portable video player however, then its use will be more clear cut and it could do well I spose..
which is totally what she said
Does it have motion sensing like an iPhone? Could you reboot the thing by shaking it up and down like an etchasketch? How about drawing by moving the thing around? Now, just because somebody has one of these things in a lab somewhere doesn't mean it's a realistic product. Lots of strange things hiding in labs in this world.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
I got a Razr because it was cheap, and a good phone. A lot of phones are similar in quality. They cannot hold a candle to the iPhone when it comes to the software interface. I am not an Apple fan boy, and I would GLADLY give up my Razr right now if the iPhone were available to Verizon customers. Do you know clunky its software is, compared to Apple's? If you think the iPhone sucks because it has a few missing features, then that's fine, but you clearly haven't paid attention to how bad a lot of the alternatives are.
Actually, until they became hard to get in the >= 14" market, tablets were great for the nearsighted (the swivel screen, add an external keyboard/mouse, and it is perfect for that crowd).
But, that isn't a crowd much larger than the graphic artists...
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
One of the plants at the company I work for makes very good use of Tablet PCs amongst the production floor supervisors.
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True, true - Apple does like to punish those leaking future product details, especially when it's a company they work with. Yikes, Asus!
I'm going to guess you haven't actually used a modern tablet-PC with OneNote2007. HP's offering in particular uses a magnetic stylus so you can put your hand on the screen and write very reliably during into OneNote or any other application that requires lots of writing. If you accidentally mark it you just turn the stylus over and use it as an eraser automatically just like with a pencil. OneNote makes it easy to convert all your notes to text. You can even do it after the fact. Combined with Penflicks you have yourself a powerful interface that is surprisingly intuitive. My experience with it resulted in 100% accuracy when converting my crappy handwriting. That was of course after a half hour of training it.
Tablet-PCs aren't a failure by any means, specific implementations of them have, Microsoft sucks at producing hardware as I'm sure you already know. I doubt it's a surprise although I've never seen anything called a Microsoft Tablet-PC unless you're referring to the XP Tablet PC or Vista Tablet PC edition. Both are very high in quality with Vista being a rather large improvement in this regard.
The tablet situation
First, he said, tablet computers were not a big enough market for Apple to spend its limited resources chasing. And even if the market grew, it would not reach a size to be of interest. The form factor was all wrong. Apple was more interested in defining markets than trying to catch other companies that were busy trying to create a market for questionable products. Still, some of the NIH scientists pressed the issue. Steve's follow-up answer was the most impressive I had heard him give.
First, he said, the wireless bandwidth for huge images, plus the security needed to successfully do what NIH wanted, was just not on the horizon. (Apple staff had been notably fuzzy earlier in the briefing about wireless standards after 802.11b.) Plus, tablets' screen resolution was nowhere near that required for NIH's high-quality medical images. Finally, any product designed to work in the medical field would attract significant liability. The hint was that Apple wasn't interested in anything with that kind of potential liability. That pretty well shut down the issue.
So, no tablet. But NIH at the time had more than 2,000 BlackBerry users. The NIH CIO wanted Apple to push RIM for better compatibility. Tough: Steve basically said it was another niche product, and that while there would be convergence of computing and phones, the BlackBerry was not that product. He did not see that compatibility as an area where Apple should spend any effort. So what will the converged product - what is being called the "iPhone" (even though that's a Cisco trademark) - look like? He said the really converged, ubiquitous devices would have to fit in your shirt pocket, and be better than either a phone or a computer by itself. From:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jan/04/newmedia.media
Since this article ran, Apple has demonstrated two technologies that might change that answer a bit. 802.11n networking approaches the speed needed to work with high-resolution images wirelessly. And Apple is now sourcing LCD screens with very high resolution--the iPod nano screen has about 200 pixels per inch, which is quite close to the resolution of printed photos.
However I'll believe it when I see it. The big question with tablets has always been data entry, and thus they are closely linked with handwriting recognition in the marketplace. Handwriting recognition has been an almost total market failure, so tablets have been an almost total failure. Perhaps Apple will try a full-size onscreen keyboard. Or perhaps they will leverage the new super-thin iMac keyboard technology and do a pull-out or flip-down physical keyboard. Or perhaps most likely is a slight modification of the MacBook product to include MultiTouch...either a touchscreen display or (as hinted in patents) a second, MultiTouch screen replacing the touchpad.
The big question is software. They just released a new OS that will need support. They are already committed to providing and supporting an SDK for the iPhone. And they are undoubtedly working quickly to update applications like the new iMovie, and produce new ones for the iPhone. Apple typically does not release new categories of product without new software to support/drive sales. I have no doubt people at Apple are experimenting with tablets. But I do not believe we will see one released anytime soon.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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Hell Segmentation fault
Asus is the OEM for the MacBook. Would Apple screw over their supplier for their most lucrative product over a leak? Stay tuned...this could get gnarly.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I always thought the AppleDisplayScaleFactor setting was pretty interesting. It, combined with the vector-based interface of Leotard could work really well with multi-touch. Essentially they have the framework in place to scale any application - in the same way you can scale photos on the touch. I really think a sufficiently powerful tablet could genuinely change how we interact with our computers. I just don't think I am ready to write up a dissertation on such a thing... but that's not the point if it, is it?
"Someone refresh my memory..."
When I worked at Apple, ATI announced that they were making cards for the iMac, the PowerMac, and "something else" which was the Cube, before Steve announced that the cube was a real product. I spent all morning removing all referenced to ATI from all the websites in all languages. That was a fun morning.
1.) Has a slate only option for sale (I have a motion M1300 and I love it more than the convertibles because of the writing surface, also it gives out very little if any heat)
2.) Has a wacom with passive stylus behind the screen instead of a touch screen interface or the both with the option to disable the touchscreen by changing a setting. (Another feature that I like from the M1300)
3.) Able to have a windows os installed too and accessible through boot camp.
I would be happy with that. Although it would also be nice if they waited for the AMD fusion or A processor with the graphics processor on the same CPU die, but that can happen when they have a later hardware update.
They (ATI's marketdroids) announced they had new graphics cards in a new line of G4 Powermacs that were being Steve-noted the next day. (and may have even revealed some specs) All mention of ATI (including a demo, IIRC) got ripped out of the keynote.
Apple was nVidia-only for more than a few months after that. Don't steal the Steve's thunder.
--
"I have also mastered pomposity, even if I do say so myself." -Kryten
I know a few people who make their living simply trading stocks. They don't consider themselves "stock traders" by profession, just people who invest well enough that they move to a different city every couple of months so they can see the world.
Anyway, I occasionally run into them at Starbucks, because where there's wifi, there's an office. The interesting thing about this group of guys is that they all use tablet PCs (IBMs I think -- they're black and don't look cheap like a Dell) to track their finances (which they constantly do).
I don't know if there's something about tablet PCs that is useful to the financial+mobile set, but until it was mentioned above, I never considered tablets would be useful to artists and designers.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."