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Asus Joins Tablet PC Race
WrongSizeGlass writes "Reuters is reporting that netbook pioneer Asustek Computer Inc. has become the latest technology company to jump on the tablet PC bandwagon. The device will be called the Eee Pad, will run on Intel or ARM chips, and use Microsoft's Windows operating system. 'The Eee Pad can display Adobe Flash for the full web experience, has a USB port and a camera,' Asus Chairman Jonney Shih said. Asus did not release pricing details or a potential release date, and did not provide further details on the format or a launch date for the new app store."
I'm not a fanboy, but that's not exactly true. Yes, most of their devices do have a lot of stock components, however apple does do a lot of custom ASIC's in their products and supposed the new CPU is an apple modified version of teh ARM Cortex... so they do do their own hardware as well.
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There are already tons of Windows tablets with both a digitizer based stylus and multitouch. Apple just cheaped out on their touch screen.
And all of these are being built in the same factories overseas, contracted out from a few people. The actual LCD in your HDTV is made by either LG, Sony, or Samsung, no matter what the branding on the outside is. These are mixed with different technologies under the hood, circuit boards, etc, and sold by different brands. Sometimes a TV will come off the line and be slapped with stickers from multiple brands, or will be custom built to a particular brand's specifications.
Apple is no different. They contract out manufacturing to different factories overseas, with parts from some and other parts from others. They always invest a lot of time and effort into unique software interfaces. Sometimes, as with Firewire, they help develop and push hardware standards. They also create custom casings, motherboards, and hardware configurations. In the case of the iPad they helped develop the custom processor underlying the entire thing.
Apple participates in the realities of world manufacturing, just like everyone else. They can actually do this a lot more since they abandoned the rarer PowerPC platform and moved to X86, which specifically saved on the custom manufacturing. That's how it is done. To deride them for manufacturing this way would be like singling them out for making products with plastic, or shipping hardware in large cardboard boxes.
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