August 17, 2009

The Mac Tablet

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

The rumors are hot and heavy that Apple will soon be introducing a tablet computer. It’s the point now of “when” as opposed to “if.”

The Tablet PC computer has been out for a while now. They’re successful, which surprises me; I would have thought the technology dead.

If you’re a PC geezer like myself, you’ll probably remember (albeit vaguely) something called Pen Windows. It was actually called Windows for Pen Computing, and it was designed for the tablet PC of the mid 1990s.

What? You don’t remember any tablet PCs from the 1990s? Join the club.

Only recently has pen computing worked well, and the platform is the Tablet PC. Even then, of the hoard of laptop variations out there, the Tablet PC takes up only a small slice of the market. I suppose people don’t feel that the extra cost and higher price is worth the ability to forego the keyboard and draw directly on the laptop screen.

Despite the tepid acceptance of the Tablet PC, every Mac Fanboy in the universe is drooling with anticipation of the Mac Tablet or Apple Tablet or iPad or whatever they end up calling the thing. I can see why, too: Apple does more research than PC manufacturers when it comes to making technology do really cool and useful things.

I’m speaking of Steve Jobs’ Apple, not the John Sculley Apple of the 1990s that brought us the ill-fated Newton computer.

Jobs is really tuned into the heads of the high tech gadget lover and user. Either that or he hires or listens to people who are tuned in. The result has been a slew of highly anticipated products that sell like hell.

I predict one day, “Selling like pancakes” will be replaced by “Selling like iPods.”

Because of Job’s penchant for producing products people prefer, and forgetting Apple TV for a second, I believe the Mac Tablet will be a success. That’s because it will probably be more than a tablet version of the MacBook and more than a larger iPod.

Yes, the Apple Tablet will be full-screen touch screen. It will be wireless. It will play music and videos. It will feature applications like the iPod Touch and iPhone. What else? That’s the guesswork.

There are Mac Fanboys excited that the tablet will debut next month. September is typically the time when Apple introduces new iPods and updates the iTunes software. If the Apple Tablet is geared along those lines, then it would make sense to announce it then. But if the new machine is anything more, then look for it to appear during the Worldwide Developers Conference in January.

2 Comments

  1. Actually, the moment I saw the Kindle from Amazon, I knew some company is going to do something similar for more “popular” applications and I suspected it would be Apple (Jobs was dismissive about people reading books – but not dismissive about the technology).
    However, I see a stumbling block being the wireless internet connection – Amazon (currently) does not have a monthly or annual charge, mainly because the browser is extremely primitive. I think Apple would be having a browser which can stream a/v and enabled for the best web content out there. Which would (I suspect) mean you need to have a data plan for the device, just like your phone (unless they allow a bluetooth latch on to your phone’s network).

    Comment by sriksrid — August 17, 2009 @ 10:12 am

  2. Jobs was dismissive about people reading books

    He was also dismissive of having a keyboard on the original Macintosh. Jobs. Not always right.

    Comment by admin — August 17, 2009 @ 10:13 am

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