Apple Tablet to link TV and PC?

[MacRumors]

Robert Cringely provides some educated speculation on the possibility of an Apple Tablet.

Beyond the usual rumors of an Apple Tablet, Cringely notes an upcoming technology that may provide tablets the "killer app" they need to drive their adoption.

The upcoming IEEE standard known as 802.15.3 -- "a high data rate Personal Area Network with a range of about 10 meters". This new technology will allow high quality video transmission wirelessly between devices. Early chips based on the new technology are reportedly scheduled to be released in January, a year ahead of the actual standardization... but Cringely believes that Apple will adopt them at this early stage.

Watch TV in your bathroom, access your audio and video collection from anywhere in the house, control your big screen TV and route video to it from your desktop or the Internet. Take a dozen movies and your entire music collection with you on a trip. Strap the gizmo to the back of your car headrest and entertain the kids. Grab e-mail from a passing WiFi hotspot. Surf the web. Play video games. It will still cost too much, but a million early adopters won't care.

[whfsdude]

802.15.3 has speeds of 11, 22, 33, 44, & 55 Mbps. For TV you need only need 8mbits (no HDTV but normal tv.)

Yeah anyway I hope apple doesn't do this, it seems very useless.

Someone needs to create a standard that all networking devices will use in the house. Like your lights would they have a built in web server? Your TV? Would you really want to control this with a big tablet or would you like to control it from your computers/PDA?

I know this, if I was able to control all those things with a PDA I would own a PDA.

But my point is it would be useless for apple to make a tablet, at this point. Apple needs to get non computer devices online and to use standards so that they can use practically any IEEE standard. :-/ Then they can start making devices that interact.

[DaveGee]

Yea... I've been waiting for it FOREVER and I have a feeling that long after Jan has come and gone... I'll still be waiting for it...

But I can still dream right?

..edit..

As for size...

PDA screen .. too small!
Phone screen .. way too small!

The device I want should be able to give me an 'iTunes' experience for choosing my music selection (and or buying from iTMS) and it wouldn't hurt if it could also give me a full (or close to full) web browsing experience...

Dave

[cubist]

Neat - Ultra-Wide-Band networking - it sounds like a great technology, and maybe the standards gurus will go with the working solution for once. But the evidence for any connection with Apple is pure speculation.

[LimeMac]

It's gotta be better than the windoze tabs!
I want one!

[x86isslow]

i've never seen a tablet outside of the ads.. but a lot of people on this site have bashed them in other posts. could someone tell me what is so bad about tablets?

anyways, i seriously doubt that apple will release a tabletTV right now.

[Macmaniac]

Anything new from Apple is always good!!
Lets hope something is true!

[Makosuke]

Hmm... sounds like a questionable idea to me, but I've gotta admit if you're going to do video, this would be the way to do it. No squinting at a microscopic screen (if you want to watch a movie on your cellphone like... what is it, Sony? thinks you want to, more power to you and the blindness you'll develop), less battery issues, no ugly overlap with the iPod, no need to try to make the iPod a video device.

Just a nice, say, 12" portable TV that happens to be able to recieve streaming video, store a movie or ten for walking around, and double as a web browser.

Might not work, and I don't know if I'd take the risk at this stage, but if Apple tries it, it'll be cool. Hell, why not--make the PC guys squirm again.

[fuge]

the last line of the article made me laugh.

[Dreadnought]

Cool! I definately want one! Wouldn't it be cool to have an Imac that sits on your desk and when you want to work on the couch, the only thing you take with you is the removable screen of the Imac!

[Hawthorne]

Originally posted by fuge
the last line of the article made me laugh.

If not them, then a year after that, Michael Dell will.

Seriously, between this, the rumors of a $749 device, and a snow-white enclosure 10 inches by 6 by 1 (old rumor, fuzzy memory), and the fact that Apple pioneered 802.11b and embraced 802.11g before that was a standard, this makes all kinds of sense.

Now team it up with an iPod to use as a shuttle. Imagine syncing up your movies, music, files, contact information and meetings on the iPod, and then plugging that iPod into a recessed Dock connector on the Apple tablet. You'd watch movies and the iTunes Visualizer on the Tablet, make changes to your schedule or phone numbers, or do lightweight computing, then either sync via this "Super Bluetooth" or shuttle the iPod back to your Mac.

*drool*

(edited typos)

[ennerseed]

Originally posted by Hawthorne
Now team it up with an iPod to use as a shuttle. Imagine syncing up your movies, music, files, contact information and meetings on the iPod, and then plugging that iPod into a recessed Dock connector on the Apple tablet.

That, along with the rest of the stuff this guy is talking about, is exactly what I have been thinking/dreamin. And what the new smooth surface/shape of the iPod seems to be very good for.

[jethroted]

This is exactly the kind of device I am waiting for! I have wanted something like this for a couple of years now. I even made a mock up of what I was thinking it would look like.

[jethroted]

Here is what the one I put together looked like.

[jimthorn]

A less risky way to enter this market would be for Apple to release something like the current iMac, but with a removeable screen. That way, you'd get a desktop computer, and you'd also get a tablet computer wirelessly connected to a headless server. Granted, this would have to start out at the price of two computers, plus all that nifty new wireless gear (at least $2999), putting it right out of the consumer market. But hey, it'd be cool.

[wHo_tHe]

Sounds like great technology we'd all love to have, of course.

But the article seems to suggest Apple is backing DS-CDMA, the "underdog" technology competing for the 802.15.3 standard, whose inventor has just been bought by Motorola.

I had thought Apple and Motorola's business relationship had soured intensely after the long delays -- and ultimately, Motorola's outright failure -- in ramping up G4 speed.

This could mean that Apple is once again placing a key technology in the hands of a supplier who has failed them before. I think we can all agree the (lack of) speed of the G4 was hurting Apple business before the 970 arrived.

On the other hand, of course, the interference problems with Multiband OFDM sound like they could cripple the technology to the equivalent of little more than a 6-foot cat 5 cable, something my junk drawer has more than enough of right now, thank you very much.

Bottom line, some sort of wide-band wireless technology will exist in the next couple of years and someone -- perhaps Apple -- will be poised enough and deliver the right mix of computing and entertainment to have their product shape the marketplace.

[dnedrow]

The 802.15.3 standard purports to connect as many as 245 wireless fixed and portable devices at speeds to 55M bit/sec over distances to 100 meters.

[sanford]

I hate to paraphrase his Jobness, but again, tying computer and television/video together in a multimedia-PC-type arrangement -- be it tablet or full-blown PC -- is apparently not the direction Apple is going with the digital-hub strategy.

Apparently, Jobs just doesn't see the personal computer as the nexus of the home entertainment enivronment; rather, the glue between disparate portable digital devices -- cameras, music players, etc. Frankly, I tend to agree with him. I like my TV where it is: away from me.

Various third parties provide solutions for getting music from your Mac to stereo systems throughout your home. I do appreciate the flexibility the "iTunes/iPod experience" lends music listening; but I can't imagine myself tracking round the house watching movie playlists.

The only time I see the lack of TV/video integration in the Apple version of the digital hub as a possible impasse is when DVD-quality movie rentals go online as downloads. But then again, all you'd need is a third-party device for transferring the data over a network.

[kerryb]

I've noticed some people (mostly under 30) have a really hard time not being connected to some electronic device. I watched, or had to listen to a young woman's cell phone conversation while waiting in line at a music/DVD store which like most retail places had music playing. Two seconds after finishing the phone call she hurriedly groped for earplugs for an iPod of similar device. Are we raising a generation that has to be constantly entertained by an electronic device and cannot just experience a moment in time? This new device idea sounds like another way of making people think they are in their living rooms instead of in public. Why live in the real world when you can stare at a little screen and not count the cows when driving through the country side.

[hobbes3113]

Please not another tablet rumor. As nice as it would be to have one, these rumors are tiring...

[DHagan4755]

Steve Jobs did say at a recent analyst's meeting that the nexus of the personal computer and the television is not a direction in which Apple is heading.

Q: TVs and Computers?
Jobs: "This is not a new thing. People have been working on this for years. Apple was the first company to ever do this. And there is a small audience that likes this. It is not a large audience" .... "People want 42" and above plasma screens on their wall and they want to view them from far away with their friends or family" "And generally, what they want to view on their television has to do with turning their minds off" .... "Now how do I want to work on my computer? Do I want to work on it 6 feet, 8 feet, 10 feet away with my buddies? No, I want to work on it a few inches away by myself. It's a very very very different experience. We've always believed that this convergence between the computer and the television wasn't going to work. We do believe that there's room for people watching some television on a computer now and then. And we do believe there's a vast opportunity to make televisions more intelligent and home entertainment systems more intelligent and easier to use. But that does not mean that computers and televisions are coming together. And, um, the media center -- basically every young person already has their stereo on your computer - that has come together." .... "but television's another animal. And we don't see it happening in a mass way"

You can listen here:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/analystmeeting03/

-or-
MacRumors thread about the analyst's meeting

[xTerryMon]

If Jobs was going to release anything in tablet form; think big.
He is not going after the consumer home market but business.
Id Apple was to develop a tablet that could "become" what ever application you programed for it, THAT would be the next wave.
At home, email, videos in the car & web surfing in your lap etc.
The real biz would be the same device, but programed for other applications like hospitals,warehousing, military, UPS delivery guys. My money says that Jobs is working under cover with the corps out there with say Oracles' help for killer applications on a multi-purpose tablet for personal-business-corporate usage.

[thedbp]

Apple could have released a tablet that would do this LOOOOONG ago. Hardware the wireless standards are not the issue.

Its the software, stupid!

Doing all these things can be easy for a techie. But how do you make it simple for Joe Sixpack or his wife to watch TV on a tablet when the TV wasn't designed with this in mind at all? The tablet would have to have some pretty killer, easy-as-hell software to get it all connected, communicating, and keep it that way, through computer restards, TV turn-offs, etc.

As of right now, I can watch live TV in the bathroom via an iBook, my wireless network, El Gato's EyeTV, and CyTV, a server-client solution that pumps the EyeTV data from one computer over a LAN (wired or wireless) and uses VLC to play back the stream. Plus you can save the stream locally or on the computer the stream originated from. This solution works great - but it is a combination of multiple hardware/software devices.

Its not getting the hardware or network working. All the tech they need to do this is already here. The problem is finding the correct implementation.

[SuperChuck]

When Jobs repeatedly says something, he usually means it. I think everyone else in the world agrees that the one-button mouse is ready for extinction, but Jobs has stood his ground and lost a lot of potential customers for it. As mentioned in the article, he has repeatedly said that a computer without a keyboard is not a good idea.

On this one, I completely agree. As a designer, I love the idea of writing on my screen...just as long as I don't HAVE to write on my screen to get anything done. The keyboard allows me to write this message far faster than I could by "writing" it by hand. And for those who want more than one button on their mouse - imagine a whole computer with one button: the power switch.

Since we know how true Mr. Jobs is to his word, I think the tablet may be the screen of a new generation of powerbooks. All the convenience of a portable tablet, all the joys of doodling on the screen, and all without the nightmare of trying to multitask with a stylus (the NO button mouse).

[sanford]

Originally posted by kerryb
Are we raising a generation that has to be constantly entertained by an electronic device and cannot just experience a moment in time? This new device idea sounds like another way of making people think they are in their living rooms instead of in public. Why live in the real world when you can stare at a little screen and not count the cows when driving through the country side.

I would agree with you on all but the point about the iPod. I rarely use my mobile phone -- about 20 minutes a month, intentionally leaving it at home so that I can't be reached sometimes -- I watch few television programs. I do play video games at home; but I spend most of my time writing, at the same time listening to music, or reading. In the car -- a "necessity" where I live -- I listen to music via my iPod. We live in a crowded, busy and cacophonous urban area; the iPod gives me the option of tuning out automobile horns, shopping market squabbles, and Linkin Park or whatever else the local record store DJ is spinning that I'm just not in the mood for at that moment. My iPod has in its way become "counting the cows", if you will.

I am 35, however, so I don't really meet the constant-stimulation demographic your proposed.