Apple Tablet Rumors Again (Still?)

LSU_ADT_Geek writes "With a conventional netbook clearly out of the question, researchers for Piper Jaffray said Thursday there's mounting evidence to suggest Apple next year will introduce its own take on the market in the form of a tablet-based device that will sell for $700 or less."

Comments

Cool story bro

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like the apple wheel

Please stop these non-news rumours

[tsa]

Rumours are not news. They belong on Digg. Please please /., try to keep the quality of the post high and avoid speculation like this. It makes the site so much more worth reading.

Re:Please stop these non-news rumours

[causality]

Rumours are not news. They belong on Digg. Please please /., try to keep the quality of the post high and avoid speculation like this. It makes the site so much more worth reading.

It was clearly labelled as a rumor: "Apple Tablet Rumors Again (Still?)". If it weren't, I'd have a much easier time seeing your point.

Sure, you could say that the holy absolute purity of the rest of Slashdot is forever tainted by the stain of the word "rumor" in this story but, eh, have you SEEN the rest of Slashdot? I think it'll be alright.

Re:Please stop these non-news rumours

[ChunderDownunder]

Agreed, calling this a rumour is even stretching it a bit. Paraphrasing the article:

Apple bought a chip manufacturer. The iPhone is too small to surf the web and needs a real keyboard. All the cool kids have portables with 10" screens. Wouldn't it be cool if my Macbook had the iPhone's multi-touch input? My Apple shares are idling due to the global financial crisis; I better start some badass rumour to spur on the fanboys. It's Apple, they haven't introduced some magical product for a while now.

Re:Please stop these non-news rumours

[LSU_ADT_Geek]

Please begin metamoderating news submissions in firehose if you don't find the quality of submissions to your liking, but it did bubble its way up because someone else thought it wasn't a bad idea to talk about.

I can digg it.

[BlueKitties]

I could definitely see something like this heading our way; While I'm not a Mac fan myself, they do seem keen on making "nifty" products (e.g. the iPhone, iMusicPlayers, etc.) If they do make something like this, it will probably have unique features (maybe a camera that lets you interact via hand motions, facial expressions?) Still, this seems fairly realistic.

I'd go for it, if...

[rindeee]

If they integrated all of the cool functionality (multi-touch screen, etc.) from the iPhone as well as the full OS X base (iChat w/video, real app support, etc.); I'd be all over it. I don't want an iPhone for this kind of stuff, nor do I want to carry around my MacBook (as I do now out of necessity). A tablet would be the perfect compromise for my needs.

Re:I'd go for it, if...

[TinBromide]

Sell it to verizon to be subsidized some what like their HP netbook, give it unlimited wifi, and apple may have killed its iphone. Granted you can't stick an itablet, inote, isheet? into your pocket, but it takes what a lot of people view to be the compelling reasons to buy an iphone (always on internet, nifty apps, nifty user interface). I'm sure someone would hack skype or some other voip solution to work for it, then you could make free calls from anywhere, and it wouldn't quite be as redundant as making voip calls from your iphone.

Re:way

[ilblissli]

come now troll, you are aware that their cheapest notebook is 1k right? and you are aware that tablets are typically MORE expensive than a comparable notebook that doesn't have tablet functionality right?

Newton 2

[Onyma]

I knew I kept my Newton for a reason... now I can be snotty and say "Oh yeah, I had one first" when it becomes popular. Now where did I put it...

Seriously as said above I can't see it selling that cheaply but I really did love the Newton despite its quirks. I still believe it died because it was just a little too far ahead of its time. Palm drove the last nail in its coffin with a smaller, lighter, more practical device. I would be interested to see what Apple could come up with for a tablet now with their focus on touch egonomics and a decade+ of hardware advancement.

3rd party conversion

[OzPeter]

There is already a company that does conversions of Macbooks to a tablet format, so the idea is not unprecedented and there must be a market for it.

Axiotron Modbook

Note that I am not connected with Axiotron nor do I own a Macbook

Re:3rd party conversion

[fm6]

If there's an active platform that can't run Linux, it must be very arcane. And Macs are hardly arcane. Nowadays the hardware is not that different from a PC.

I have a Motion tablet that runs Vista. That OS is every bit as bad as its reputation, but I put up with it because it's the only tablet OS with decent handwriting recognition. If I could similar software for Linux, I'd switch tomorrow.

And yes, I know about PenReader. Despite its claims, it does not handle handwriting. You have to draw out the letters one at a time. Easier to use an on-screen keyboard.

Mounting evidence

[93 Escort Wagon]

That evidence being, apparently, the increasing number of analysts who all parrot "Apple may be making a netbook"?

Don't get me wrong - I'd love to see what Apple might come up with - but there are plenty of Mac rumor sites already available.

I'll go with "untrue"

[pla]

Apple next year will introduce its own take on the market in the form of a tablet-based device that will sell for $700 or less.

Put simple - Tablets suck except for a very few niche uses... And even for those few uses, netbooks do the job cheaper and more conveniently.

So put simply, I'll consider this a completely bogus rumor, since Apple has better sense than to revive a dying-for-a-good-reason technology. They may have a few failures in trying to predict the next cool toy, but haven't made the mistake of recreating retro hardware since the Lisa.

Now, I mentioned netbooks above - It wouldn't surprise me at all to see Apple try to jump into that market (though they will no doubt ignore the "sub $500" as a defining characteristic of that class of device). Perhaps (though by no means certain) even with a flippable screen, giving users the option of using it in notebook-style or tablet-style mode. But an outright straight-up tablet, not going to happen.

Re:I'll go with "untrue"

[Anonymous Coward]

... since Apple has better sense than to revive a dying-for-a-good-reason technology. They may have a few failures in trying to predict the next cool toy, but haven't made the mistake of recreating retro hardware since the Lisa.

Perhaps, like the iPod, they're going to actually create the next big technology? Or, being positioned where they are in the industry, they may have figured out how to do it right and create a tablet/hybrid which actually catches on ... (yes, entirely speculative, but hey, so is the original article, eh?)

Re:I'll go with "untrue"

[alen]

laptops are becoming the next desktop. tablets and netbooks are nice to carry around with you.

carrying a laptop around is like going out with a baby. you need to take a bag of junk with you. a netbook or a tablet with nice battery life you just throw in your bag that you take with you anyway. and for the millions of people that commute on public transit it will be a nice way to pass the time. bigger screen to read books, better hardware for games, and you may be able to do some work and sync your docs.

what a tablet or netbook needs to do is not have a boot up time. my wife's iphone is always on. if i want 10 minutes of net time i don't want to waste 5 minutes of it waiting for a netbook to boot up

Re:I'll go with "untrue"

[Neil Jansen]

The only reason I can see Apple doing any kind of tablet would be to get in on the eBook market. Just like the App Store, it would integrate directly into iTunes and make them even more money. That's the sort of stuff that fits Apple's style.

Re:I'll go with "untrue"

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you've obviously never used a tablet, I figured I should offer the perspective of someone who has. Mine's convertible, but lives in tablet mode 85% of the time.

In point of fact, not only is it useful, but the idea that a netbook could substitute is laughable.

Why? I take a lot of meetings. In the 8 months, I've accumulated 1000+ pages of notes. With a tablet, they're searchable, organizable, and can contain embedded scans of the business cards. Much more convenient to write, especially while standing or sitting without a table.

Why else? I read a lot of PDFs, many running hundreds to thousands of pages. Nice to read, flag, and annotate them on a long screen, and to have them all in one place. Netbook? No thanks. Printouts? Lots to carry, and I hate wasting the paper for something I might not need again and only need to read quickly. Plus you loose searchability on your annotations. Sure, reading on a computer isn't ideal, but I have often found the tablet solution to be a good choice.

What else? Marking up word documents w/o re-writing them can be easily done with a pen.

Other useful features ... paging through docs with your fingers, multi-touch interface to google earth and stellarium.

Of course, it doesn't run linux. :(

Finally, it cost $750 (refurb) ...

Re:I'll go with "untrue"

[tlhIngan]

They didn't create the portable music digital music player. They did create a market for a very sleek-looking higher-end one with its own proprietary locked-in store, which now sells un-DRMed music like everyone else was already using.

Actually, the iPod got to where it is by basically being the right device at the right time:

* Space - it had a lot of it. (Competitors had more, though)
* Size - it had a lot of space for its size (The Creative Nomad was bigger than a contemporary CD player. The iPod was much smaller - slightly thicker than a pack of playing cards). Other MP3 players in the same size had a pitiful handful of songs at best.
* Speed - Parallel port, serial port, USB1.1 suck for filling space. Great if you're only dealing with 128MB of memory, but lousy when you want to actually fill in gigabytes and have it take a reasonable amount of time. Firewire was the only option at the time.
* Market - MP3 players were niche at the moment. MP3-CD players were the item to get, but they're big (see size), and cumbersome (burning a CD... and having huge books of MP3 CDs to pick one to play). Apple got in early and rode the wave as MP3 players started getting mainstream (no doubt helped by Apple's marketing making everyone want one).

Apple released the iPod at the right time with the right combination of features that people wanted - a small player that holds a decent quantity of music that doesn't take all day to transfer. MP3 players were still pretty niche when the iPod was released (MP3s weren't, thanks to Napster, but people were listening via their computers). Apple got in during this time - either by luck or pure business savvy. A few years later and the iPod may have been the next Newton as the market gets flooded with new entrants.

The iTunes store came *MUCH* later (2003-ish or so), by Apple dragging the kicking and screaming music industry into it.

The problem is, netbooks are already mainstream, and the race to the bottom has stopped more or less because the bottom has been reached. Instead, now we see netbooks clamoring for the low-end laptop market with larger screens and higher prices. At best, Apple would be another competitor in the high-end netbook market, but probably not a very worthy one (it *IS* Apple, and they don't have the iPod advantage). Unless Apple comes up with something "must have" that redefines the market (at least that's Apple's strength... finding the few things that make people go "why didn't I think of that"?).

Re:I'll go with "untrue"

[kaizendojo]

Put simple - Tablets suck except for a very few niche uses... And even for those few uses, netbooks do the job cheaper and more conveniently.

Put simple - that's why you're posting on /. instead of working for a company like Apple. They've already proven that tablets - which is what the iPhone essentially is, just in a smaller form factor - don't suck, and millions of consumers agreed. Tablets with a user interface done right, that is. This is not just a move to come up with a cool new toy, this is an acknowledgment of a growing market replete with a built in catalog of available applications that users actually want. And as a bonus, they can expand to users who want a Kindle but expect a but more for their bucks than just a reader. And I'm damn glad, since I put my Dad into the stock early and it's going to be my inheritance some day.

Re:I'll go with "untrue"

[KylePflug]

No, but it pretty much made them saleable. If you remember back to the dawn of the MP3 era, everyone either had a small (like 128 or 256mb, tops) flash-based mp3 player, maybe with a few memory cards (I went threw several Rios before my first iPod). Almost nobody actually bought HDD MP3 players.

Apple pulled off the look, synchronization, and most importantly the interface - I'm entirely convinced that the clickwheel is what killed the competition, just like the multi-touch is what is saving the iPhone.

If they can do this with a tablet - combining active digitizers and capacitive input to get natural input and good handwriting recognition - and combine it with a slim bluetooth keyboard, they have a real shot at making an integrated device that goes for the Kindle/iTouch/netbook markets all at once. I'm of the opinion that it should not run OSX as we know it - I don't think the form factor is right. Give it the backbone of OSX and the ability to run those apps, but it needs a new front-end to replace Finder. The reason Tablets haven't worked before (I've owned three) is because they are pen-input devices built around a mouse/keyboard input operating system. Apple gets interfaces; I don't see them making that mistake.

Re:way

[mr_mischief]

Their take on a Netbook as a tablet:

ARM processor, runs stripped-down iPhone OS, has a touchscreen, plays media, runs a couple apps at a time.

Sounds like a next-gen iPod Touch. The current one costs $230 to $399 on Apple's own website. A little bigger, and it's Newton: TNG.

heres a picture of it.

[onionlee]

Here's a picture of it

Re:Why clearly?

[ChunderDownunder]

Apple slammed netbooks as being junky.

What would be sweet...

[wandazulu]

Apple's said they don't want to do a netbook, and when people think tablet, they think of a standard tablet-based laptop.

My personal theory is that it would be a Kindle-sized iPhone, though probably without the phone part (so I guess a Kindle-sized ipod touch). With the features of the next version of the os that's publicly known, there's no reason why you couldn't use the iphone interface to do anything you'd do with a netbook. Any apps that you might expect on a netbook would likely be written and sold in the app store pretty darn quick, like a basic word-processing app. If you couldn't stand to use the on-screen keyboard (which presumably would have bigger buttons for the bigger screen), then use a bluetooth keyboard.

That, as far as I can tell, would solve (to me, anyway), both the netbook *and* tablet issue.

Re:no way

[cayenne8]

If $700 is a lot of money to you for a tablet sized/functioning computer...then you are not in the demographic that Apple is marketing to.

What the Apple guy told me

[SteveFoerster]

I work for a university, and Apple recently sent a guy to talk to our faculty about the future of technology. During question time I referred to the possibility of a Mac tablet so I could try to gauge his immediate expression. No clue from that, all I had to go on was his response that Apple is obviously aware that people are talking about the possibility of a Mac tablet, and they'll come out with one as soon as they can do a good quality one for less than six hundred bucks.

Of course, he also said our computer labs were obsolete, which was bullshit, so who knows what to believe.

Re:What the Apple guy told me

[Kell Bengal]

Interestingly, Apple sells laptops, not classrooms.

And why do people still pay attention to analysts?

[divisionbyzero]

Almost every bit of information they have is second or third hand (a guy heard from a guy who heard from a guy). They are barely one step above a rumor site. Most of them don't have the expertise to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Industry Analysts who look at industry trends and give advice to executives can be useful but analysts for financial institutions (e.g. Gene Munster for Piper Jaffray) that are making specific predictions about product introductions have a (not so) hidden agenda. Get people to buy now on optimistic news and dump later when it proves to be bogus. Remember, they make money in both directions.

Re:no way

[mabhatter654]

I'm sticking to an extra large iPod Touch. Right now the Touch is a stripped down iPhone and really there's not a lot of reason to buy it. Now that 9-10" 10x6 displays are dirt cheap, now would be the time to build an iPod Touch out of one. It would be bigger, but the Touch electronics and battery are really small.... it would be like the screen of current netbooks. Toss in the standard mini webcam and mic (again practically free now) for taking audio notes and using pictures. They'll be unlocking bluetooth in the gen 2 Touch soon, so for a 10" screen hopefully they'd open up the Apple keyboard for input.

Apple is committed to iPhone and the app store right now. I can't see any device smaller than a Macbook running the desktop OSX. They are also looking to roll their own chips now, so again hitting the low power tablet factor they don't have to share is definitely how they roll.

Re:way

[mabhatter654]

it would be one with apps that are USEFUL and not junk!

Tablet PCs never caught on because there's only 2-3 apps DESIGNED for tablets not made by Microsoft. The majority of apps on tablets in the real world I've seen are just VB programs for data entry with little benefits on a tablet versus a laptop.

Apple has the app store and it has multi-touch apps that all do cool stuff with the hardware... Tablet PC had a 7 year run all by itself and nobody stepped up with the must-have apps. A 10" iPod Touch, with access to all the iPhone/Touch apps existing right now, would take off. Not to mention the new apps that might work on an iPhone but really need more real estate.. like editing photos or web browsing.

Hardware wise, the current Touch probably supports a 10" screen in hardware so it would be really cheap and easy for Apple to release this. Rumor has also been that iPhone OS 3 has support for bigger screens and requires UI resolution independence so apps made for an iPhone or Touch will look correct on bigger screens.

Oblig,

[PCM2]

* Space - it had a lot of it. (Competitors had more, though)

And no wireless. Lame.