I have to say I'm getting a bit cynical about this tablet business.
Take your own personal fantasy, do enough damage to it so that you
would be disappointed by the resulting device - and that is probably
closer to the mark.
The pattern of the current non-Mac devices has been for them to have
a content browsing emphasis, for which fingers are fine. This is the
most likely direction for a new product. Web, movies, pics, PDFs, a
bit of email - that sort of thing.
While we know that one could do a lot of useful work with something
that has the capability of the Newton, but boosted by current
hardware, what's in it for Apple other than a loss of Mac laptop
revenue - the most important part of the business?
The only solution would be to price it like an Air, or maybe a bit
less, arrange to give it a proper keyboard/mouse via Bluetooth for
when you really need them (for sure minimal ports) and have a touch
screen that builds on what has been learnt from the Touch products. A
stylus is almost certainly not a runner but a virtual keyboard seems
logical and makes data entry a bit of a pain in comparison with a
MacBook unless you lug the keyboard or it has the sliding screen
arrangement seen in recent patents. Remember the price of the MP2K
when new - not cheap (I got over it, eventually).
They have probably been playing around with an interface makeover (or
perhaps more) so that the next OS X can work with finger input to end
up with something that sits somewhere between an iPhone and an Air
and is a companion to, rather than a replacement for, a MacBook/Pro.
On the other hand, all this might be bollocks.
Joel.
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Received on Tue Apr 21 18:00:35 2009
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