Apple Tablet

Happy New Year to all!

It seems as soon as I save a bit of money I'm already finding ways to spend the excess...

I've recently caught Apple Tablet fever - an odd feeling since I had no interest in the semi-fictitious device up until now.

After observing my usage of my netbook however, I think it would be a perfect device for me. I initially bought my netbook to do super-mobile development - a workstation wherever I am. Although it can perform this function admirably, in reality I seldom use it like this. In fact I'd say 90% of the time I use it for simple email checking / web browsing on the go, whenever the iPhone screen feels a bit cramped. This echoes John Gruber's recent sentiment about the device:

The Tablet, I say, is going to be Apple’s new answer to what you use for personal portable general computing.

I certainly see it filling that gap for me. It would be a lighter, sleeker (and Apple-ier) replacement for how I use my current netbook. But I'm such an edge-case, I am curious as to how Apple is going to position this for the mass market.

Would you buy an Apple Tablet? Take the poll! http://bit.ly/4OksAn

Jan 03, 2010

Philip Seyfi said...

Why the fictitious Apple Tablet? Why not one of the many wonderful existing Tablet PCs?

I have a Dell Latitude XT with a quality capacitive multi-touch screen as well as an active digitizer for precise pen input (Photoshop editing etc.) and after using it for over a year I'm extremely happy with it. Windows 7 is very well optimized for touch & pen input and after using it for a few weeks with some good software like OneNote, Evernote etc. you simply won't be able to look back :) Also, several other good multi-touch Tablet PCs were released this year like the HP's tx2 or the Lenovo/IBM's XT200.

Sam Doidge said...

From how I've taken to the iPhone for surfing, email, YouTube; I can see it being prefered option to anything else for web viewing / reading. I'll wait for a while on release though - mainly due to $ but also updates to it.

Jan 04, 2010

Troy said...

What Philip Seyfi above doesn't understand is development platforms. The iPod is a known quantity with only 4 segments (old CPU, new CPU w/ or w/o OpenGL 2.0.

Tablet computers are niche and Microsoft has done their usual half-ass job of system intergration, plus there is no developer support focus or market for tablet-only apps, nor a way for ISVs to target tablet owners.

Apple has it in its power to change all of this. ISVs will be on this device like that scramble in front of Hachiko. Apple has movie media in the bag, and can leverage their music biz to move into eReader delivery via their 70/30 business model. $5/yr subscription to magazines or whatever.

Textbooks are another market ripe for plucking. All the eReaders are sucky black and white. Apple can potentially waltz in with a category-killer textbook replacement that schools can see will pay for itself instantly, forever changing the textbook publishing game (with the publisher's resistance perhaps). Imagine, later this decade we might have *interactive* textbooks.

The device will have the iPhone GS's PowerVR stack no doubt, so it will have pretty good graphics performance, drawing development bandwidth from PSP and DS markets.

And this is before we get into the netbook replacement area. All it needs is a good virtual keyboard.

I'm eagerly, eagerly awaiting this device.

Chris Edwards said...

I like the thought of the big iPhone (a.k.a. Tablet) but is there anything out with specs like what kind of hardware it's going to be running? Is it going to be a MacBook Air minus the keyboard?

Jan 05, 2010

Malcolm Bastien said...

I think one of the other neat things about everyone getting tablet fever, other companies specifically is that if you notice all the new tablet rumours, announcements and developments from other companies it's truely amazing!

The *rumours* of an Apple tablet is driving all this attention to the tablet market. We can all assume even though these companies are pushing their tablet computers in a more public way they will all still suck compared to what Apple might be giving us.

^ yeah, the plus-alpha for Apple is leveraging the iPhone development model.

Bigger, badder iPhone 3GS. Sign me up!

Whereas Microsoft put one of their B-teams on the tablet idea and the result was a mish-mash of semi-supported technologies -- let's glue a wacom onto a laptop and see what happens -- with zero developer support or user-directed marketing feedback.

Feb 28, 2010

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Apple Tablet

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