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Here are some more thoughts I have on this concept of using the touch tablet as an interface device/peripheral..

Also.. imagine using MULTIPLE of these Mac tablets in this fashion. You could have all kinds of interactive control mechanism or display mechanism for different element of your computer. The possibilities are truly incredible.. but it requires actually playing with them to explore those possibilities fully I think.

This actually makes me wonder if we will see Apple move away from the iMac design and move to a central appliance like system. So you would have your central brain computer and then multiple modular visual/touch pads people use for monitoring and controlling their computer.. all working together and interacting.. like parts of one large brain.

If you want more capabilities or control you buy another tablet and it grows organically.
Exactly what I have been thinking for a while…good ideas there.
 
I wonder if they are doing this to keep people guessing as to the form factor being used?


That's what I thought.

It that's true it's perhaps smart of them.

Give a range of just about every different size makes a moving target.

Also, you've got to love the theatre. It's a fun show regardless. :)
 
What I am thinking a killer app for a larger iPhone/Tablet would be is as a peripheral device for your primary computer...

I like the idea. And I hope you're right.
But for my money the killer app is: Bonjour. The ability of these devices to detect one aynother and create their own little network. Seemlessly, without hassle or servers. Imagine a writing pad that really allows you to interact with everybody else in the room - or on the other side of the world if you so wish.
I think soon schoolchildren at most schools will be required to have one of these. No more paper writing pads, no more printed textbooks, no more loose sheets flying around in bags or classrooms, getting lost.

Picture a scene from a classroom:
"Good morning, class. Here's the scene from 'Romeo and Juliet' we're going to work on today." [with a flick of the wrist the teacher passes a copy to each student] "Tom, you'll read the part of Romeo. Lisa, you'll be Juliet." [sends them a special copy with their lines highlighted] "We'll start here." [points to a line, which is imediately marked in every student's copy]
[after reading] "Now I'd like you to sketch out the scene as you would direct it on the stage. Where is your balcony? Where does Romeo hide etc? When you're done, hand it in by dropping the paper on my icon"

And I believe that it won't be just schools that find good use for this. Every meeting I've ever been to could have been improved and streamlined, made more creative if people had had such an iPad.
Sure, you could do all that with laptops, but you don't quickly sketch down ideas with a laptop, you don't doodle in the margins of a brief. And I always feel that in meetings where many people have laptops with their screens folded up you tend not to work with each other, you don't look onto each other's screen or share papers on the fly. It's like a game of Poker. This device will eliminate the laptop from all interactive work environments. It could be the first successful stab at the paperless office.
 
Tablet, shmablet. Your avatar... inspires my innermost geek.

Well thanks ... I think. You may feel differently after the new Precious is released. And speaking of released ... it's ok to let your geek come out for some air ... into the light ... the Green light. :D

greenlantern.jpg
 
A while back we saw a rumor about the integrated docking station for an apple laptop. Basically a slot in the side of an iMac (or something similar) that you would slide your laptop into.

Maybe this is the next generation of that rumor.
 
Well thanks ... I think. You may feel differently after the new Precious is released. And speaking of released ... it's ok to let your geek come out for some air ... into the light ... the Green light. :D

greenlantern.jpg

In brightest day,
in darkest night,
My GL T-Shirt, hid from Her sight,
She has said, "that shirt ain't right"
Fear her power, an old geek's wife.

I know, it does not rhyme, but it's true. I can get away with my old disreputable hats, torn-up flannels, raggedy shorts, whatever. But I'm not to wear my old Green Lantern T-Shirt when out with her. Never. Noooo.

What does all this have to do with tablets? Not a darn thing. Except for one thing: As of right now, Green Lantern is far more real than any new Apple tablet.
 
What OS will it use???????

the big question is what OS will the tablet use? Something like a overblown iPod/iPhone or Mac OSX. It is sure bet that Apple is going to massively over charge for it anyway. I wold love to get my hands on a 10 inch tablet that runs a full OSX. I work in IT and having a computer that small would be massively handy.

:DThis way I can ditch my Hackintosh Acer Netbook.:D
 
12" for photoshop , illustrator,etc

4" for pocketable porn on the go


Yes please! I really do think they need to bump up the touchs screen as long as it's below 5" it is still pocketable.
 
The marketer in me says it will be tied to the App Store where development will explode even further and Apple can start raking in some cash from app sales. Apple didn't open the App Store to sell 99¢ and free applications.

The device will not have a CD/DVD drive. If you're installing at home from a disk you'd do it as a mounted installer from another machine over the network (a la MBAir). If Apple is looking into a purchase system similar to PayPal then application developers might hook to a purchase system built where Software Update is responsible for those downloads/updates.
 
And I believe that it won't be just schools that find good use for this. Every meeting I've ever been to could have been improved and streamlined, made more creative if people had had such an iPad.

I agree 100%. I have been dying for a tablet for this reason. I think people don't realize it but we need a more intuitive interface allowing people to interact with computers more easily. I just don't think it's been done properly or the technology has been developed until now. The multi touch is a big part of that. Then add it to Apple's killer UI development and that is why I think this could be so huge right now. The more powerful the hardware and batteries the more likely this is to work, too. It appears we have reached the boiling point for all these factors.. HOPEFULLY!
 
I like the idea of two different sizes. But I'd rather have 10" for the larger one and 5" for the smaller one.
12" for photoshop , illustrator,etc

4" for pocketable porn on the go


Yes please! I really do think they need to bump up the touchs screen as long as it's below 5" it is still pocketable.
 
The killer app is portability with a larger screen combined with Keynote. Almost everyone at my company would jump at having a slim, light weight, sexy device for media, e-books, email, web, simple document editing, and most of all Keynote. Being able to tote around a light tablet rather than even a Macbook Air would be a home run. No handwriting recognition necessary, but a front facing camera for iChat and a 3G option (hopefully not restricted to a single carrier) would be ideal. That's it, anything else would be gravy as my grandmother used to say. They will sell a billion of them. I will buy 4 myself.
 
I will be very sad if Steve just make a big iPod touch... I am waiting for a full TOUCH Mac OS to be able to do my work, and not my Video or Graphic Designs... just powerful enough to do my work and use my main productive apps. if Apple bring that miracle up I will be buying two, one for my wife and one for me, thats a promise.
 
Interesting... very interesting...

I mean, I have no need to buy anything at all just yet, but I am curious to see how things come along. Investigating lots of screen sizes is odd, especially the smaller ones.

One thing I am thinking about, considering the rumours we've had recently about cameras in the iPods, iPod changes, mini-projectors in an Apple device (that was a while back but Nikon just used one in a camera, hence it is on my mind again) and little-to-medium screens has me thinking...

Maybe one of the panel sizes is intended as a sort of portable screen unit for the iPods for showing films or something? And one of the others is as a tablet computer in full? Will either the iPod or the Tablet be able to project images? This is all unsubstantiated conjecture, I know... but that makes it fun!

Guess we'll find out soon enough...
 
Name?

Anyone willing to speculate on a name?
iTablet is a bit naff - although iPhone was too but now it has simply entered the vernacular.

I'm not married to these but how about:
Page, Slate, iPod Slate or Touch Slate.
 
The smaller display sizes are interesting since they are not likely sizes for Mac OS X. If it's true that the tablet will come in a range of sizes, maybe that increases the likelihood that a variant of iPhone OS will be on it. On the other hand, if it'll only be one size, maybe they settled on 10" because they want Mac OS X on it.

Maybe the tablet this year will only be 10", with additional (larger and/or smaller) sizes in 2010.
 
I like the names iAlloy and iInterface because I view this device as something that would meld with your primary PC and allow you to interact with it in a completely new way.

iGlass might be cool too.. as in "eyeglass" -- looking glass.
 
Anyone willing to speculate on a name?
iTablet is a bit naff - although iPhone was too but now it has simply entered the vernacular.

I'm not married to these but how about:
Page, Slate, iPod Slate or Touch Slate.


iGottaHaveIt :D

Depending on where they position it, it will use either the Mac or iPod as part of its name. In other words, if it runs OS X, it will have Mac in its name and if it runs iPhone OS, it will have iPod in its name.
 
I hope one these babies can replace my MacBook Pro 2006 one day. :)

Yup I'm with you on that one. But like I said, I will not speculate until I feel this rumor may actually be real this time. I want hard evidence ! :D
 
those tablets will NEVER replace a notebook. they are in addition to a desktop and an iphone.

they are a toy for all the times you don't want to drag you notebook out of a bag and wait for it start up. and they are for all the applications where the iphone is just too small.
Tish, nonsense and all that jazz. For the more geeky of us then yes, we need the flexibility of a notebook and full-fledged desktop OS but consider, for a moment, the typical parent or, for that matter, non-geek. What do they actually DO with their computers right now? E-mail and internet would be the highest entries by a long, long way. Probably a little document creation but most of it could probably be done in a simple rich text editor. Image manipulation? Yes, but again only on a very basic iPhoto level and the same for video which Apple already showed CAN be done to an acceptable degree on the iPhone for many, possibly the majority, of consumers. Then you've got music, movies (both local and internet-based) and viewing photos rather than editing them.

I wonder, looking at all the rumours flying around, if Apple isn't thinking something like this: A typical household probably needs one computer with a metric ton of storage. This is for those times when you need the desktop OS and serving up media. There may be a requirement to do this work on the go so that computer may be a laptop with network storage but whatever. Everyone also has an iDevice, whether iPod, iPhone or iTablet that has an AppleTV-style software package to allow easy simple streaming from that computer as well as obtaining new media from the iTunes Store. In the house it all works over the wi-fi network and outside of it there'd be an option like the PS3 / PSP remote play functionality to allow you to stream over the net to your registered devices. Throw in some nice auto-scale software so an app is an app and can scale up or down for whatever device it's running on (within reason obviously), enough graphics grunt to outperform the PSP and enough local storage to carry a decent chunk of your library around with you (the larger tablets could use SSD hard drives especially if they keep dropping in price).

Hey presto, instant eco-system where everyone has the basics that they do for 90%+ of their computing time covered. Hell, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool geek and my 17" MBP spends most of its time these days browsing the net in one form or another.
 
But then wouldn't you have the issue where developers have to develop at different resolution to support all of the screen sizes?

How is that any different from application development on a computer where the monitor resolution can be anything from 12" to 30" or more?
 
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