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Apple Tablet Rumor Wrap Up
Since the Apple event is this afternoon, and the submission bin overflows with Apple Tablet rumor stories, I'm putting up a few of the more choice links here so we can all speculate for the next few hours. A McGraw Hill CEO confirmed the tablet on CNBC last night, basically saying it is a big iPhone that has content agreements with publishers. Another blogger wrote in with a expectation list for the event, and technologizer had a nice history of fail in the world of tablet computing. Feel free to add your own rumor, speculation, and exhausted eye rolling below.
I'm excited, cause this is going to really shrink down the pile of magazines on my toilet tank! I love how Apple can always class up everything I do in life.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Was the McGraw-Hill guy one of Apple's planned leaks, or is he going to start waking up, sweating bullets, to 3AM phone calls from Steve Jobs?
"Terry, you have shown all the subtlety and restraint of somebody who sells dead trees for a living. Know that your pain shall be equalled only by my serenity."
At this point the line goes dead. Terry will never know if this is because Steve is fucking with him, or if it is just AT&T's shitty service disconnecting Steve's iPhone.
Apple will today announce a partnership with Taco Bell to deliver tacos wirelessly through the new iTablet. This will prove to be the final nail in OLPC's coffin as the west moves to end world hunger via electronic food distribution.
Also it will wash the dishes.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Depends on what you want. If this device is essentially a big iPod touch, and has a good online store for e-books, this is exactly what I want. A device that will let me read a book, listen to music, watch a movie, and browse the internet. I really wanted a kindle but the thing is a unitasker with an e-ink screen and that doesn't work for me. I don't want this to do coding or write documents. This will be much more convenient to carry than my MacBook.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Apple is earning too much from the App Store
I take it you missed yesterday where Apple disclosed in their financials that they don't make a profit from the app store directly, only through increased hardware sales?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Correction: Apple at least rethinks usability properly. Microsoft bungs hundreds of millions at "usability" & we end up with the stupid ribbon... Pah!
Do you really think the ribbon was anything to do with usability? As far as I can see, it was about having a patentable UI element that OO.o and its ilk couldn't copy.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Lock-in. Ten years ago, would anyone have predicted that products like the iPhone or the Kindle could possibly have any success at all? Back then, it looked like there was a trend toward more freedom, and new products would be competing to be more open and usable than one another.
Somehow, in the last decade, the personal computer market has accepted (in the sense of people actually spend money on some of the products) that personal computers don't need to be totally open to developers; that personal computers can use the same development model as video game consoles, and some people (maybe a minority, but a big enough niche to make a profit and get a SHITLOAD of publicity) will actually buy them.
So what's new here? Well, look at the tablets of the past: they were programmable by the Little People. They were personal computers in the old sense, where when you bought one, you totally owned it, and you could even start a software business on one if you wanted to, with no limits to what you could do. Not this time. This time it's going to be closed up, have a centralized app store that only sells approved products, and yet people are considering it newsworthy and even predict some success.
This isn't some obscure wackjob company that you can safely laugh at by default when they try to commit atrocities against hackers; it's Apple. The atrocities are there, but not the laughter. The mockery will be there, but tinged with a very real feeling of fear and bitterness. This fucking piece of shit just might still be in the news the day after tomorrow. And that's sobering. We're nearing the end of the personal computer revolution that took off about 3 decades ago. We're seeing Apple destroy something that they played such an important part in creating. That's news. First it was the handheld, now it's something bigger. In a few years: the desktop?
Lock-in. MS Office is pervasive in schools and in business, and a drastically different interface makes it harder for users to shift. True, for a short term the Ribbon is pushing some users who have the choice away from MS Office, but I think that MS are planning to ride that out and by agressive deals with schools, colleges, governments, etc get people locked in.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
I have it on the authority of no less than 5 people closely related to the project that the new device will do no less than end world hunger, rebuild 3rd world nations, fix the energy crisis and the economy, and help those poor drowning polar bears whose homes have melted away....
But this next piece of information you will not hear from any reputable website, as they are too afraid to publish it:
It will do no less than make unicorns shit rainbows
You can quote me on that.
"If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet"