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.'"

Comments

Re:I just don't see it...

[Vancorps]

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.

Previous thoughts from Jobs about tablets

[snowwrestler]

Steve had not been forewarned about the tablet question, but it became obvious he had given the topic serious consideration. He listed a number of reasons why Apple was not interested. And they provide some of the best insights into why Apple does or does not do a product.

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.

Re:Previous thoughts from Jobs about tablets

[sootman]

Yup. Having worked with several tablets--which I love as a gadget, and they're really great for a few purposes, like walking around doing inventory with a customized web-app--the single biggest problem is data entry. Basically it comes down to this: how do you enter data on a device that you're supposed to hold in your hands? And I'm not talking about writing the great American novel on one. Unless you're doing nothing but opening, closing, dragging, and dropping files, you can't use a computer in any meaningful fashion for very long without doing some kind of data entry. With tablets, Palms, and even the iPhone, once you get past a couple hundred characters, you realize how excruciatingly slow it is. Even poking out a URL, switching between letters, numbers, and punctuation, you can't help but think "if I were at a desk, I'd already have this page loaded."

• Voice recognition mostly sucks, and even if it worked fine, I don't want to be talking out loud to my computer most of time--not in the office, not in public.
  
• Voice recognition is also out for anything that must be character-perfect: web addresses, email addresses, even renaming a file--miss a period and you'll be renaming it again.
  
• Pen-based input is OK, accuracy- and speed-wise, but still nowhere near what you can do with a keyboard.
  
• A chord keyboard would be ideal--they can be faster than conventional keyboards--but you're not gonna see something that complicated on a mass-market consumer product from Apple.
  
• An iPhone-like virtual keyboard is obviously an option, but unlike the two-thumb operation of an iPhone, you'd be limited to poking with one index finger while you hold the tablet with your hand.
  

Which leads to the conclusion--as soon as you set the tablet down to use a conventional mouse and keyboard, it becomes equal to a regular laptop in all regards except it's slower, has a smaller screen, and is more expensive. Apple's last big flop was the Cube, which had the same specs (CPU, RAM, HD) as a PowerMac, was less expandable, and cost $200 more.

What I really want Apple to make is what I would call the "MacBook Elite": 2 pounds, 10- or 11-inch screen, Core Duo, no HD or optical drive, 1 or 2 GB RAM, 16-32 GB solid-state storage, very thin, and 12-24 hours of battery life. (Yes, I know there are PCs that more or less match these specs, but I want OS X and the industrial design from Apple.) You could use it as a basic standalone computer or you could sync it up with your desktop just like an iPhone. Obviously it wouldn't be the center of your digital life (especially in terms of mass storage of media and media creation) but it would be so good at so many other things.

AppleDisplayScaleFactor

[pancakegeels]

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?