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Apple Tablet Computer?

I know what this tablet will be called

iMac --> PowerMac

iBook --> PowerBook

iPod --> PowerPod

The PowerPod will be an Airport-compatible tablet you can use to view photos and movies broadcast from your Mac.

It will also serve as a remote for AirTunes.

It will even be able to mirror your display so that you can surf the Web.

It will be dockable a-la the iPod.

It will retail for 999$
 
macsrus said:
Oh no... If Steve really understood consumers.... Then Apple would not have languished at the bottom of the Computer manufactures in sales for their entire existence as a company.... 3 to 5 % market share....
Click to expand...

Actually, Steve understands computers and PDAs quite well. Arguably, Apple has one of the best operating systems available, computers that are very well engineered, are cuting edge and win industrial design awards year after year. The PDA market is a minor disaster and the fact that a few people have been imploring Apple to do otherwise, Steve as CEO, is showing a good deal of responsibility to his investors by telling these folks who don't seem to understand the word "no" by saying "Shove off!"
If you want a PDA- get one from someone else: there are good ones out there.

Apple's low market share came about for one reason only: people preferred an OS and computers that could be 'redesigned' at home with parts from Frye's -and cheap parts, too, leading to the ready availability of choices and features that were lacking in the early Macs. That this myriad of choices has led to compability and reliabilty issues, poorly designed OS (es) with unfixable flaws and no easy means of integration of hardware and third party software clearly is less important than well designed (and for the most part) tightly integrated services for most people.
 
iMac or iBook + higher profit margin?

If the new iMac looks like an oversized tablet PC (which is just a laptop with no keyboard) then that would explain this rumor. It just might be true. If so, it would end up costing almost as much as a Powerbook yet have a G5 in it. I think Apples product matrix will look bad until a G5 Powerbook is released because of this.
 
alirio said:
The PowerPod will be an Airport-compatible tablet you can use to view photos and movies broadcast from your Mac.
It will also serve as a remote for AirTunes.
It will retail for 999$
Click to expand...

I can't imagine why people are fantasizing about a $1,000 remote control for a $20 feature on a $129 base station. Is it worth $1,000 so that you don't have to get up from your couch and walk to your computer?

The Register article pushed everyone towards this idea of a remote control just because one apple exec might have winked at the idea. When in the history of the world did a remote control cost ten times as much as the thing it's controlling?! My Sony T610 is a remote control for Airtunes, and I got it for FREE, and it also MAKES PHONE CALLS.
 
The Newton was to PDA's what the Mac is to Personal Computers

If he knows so much about PDA's then he surely he knows that Apple had, and still has to my knowlege, the-best-example of PDA technology in the Newton Message Pad 200x. The current manufactures of PDA's...Palm, Microsoft, IMO have not really made useful devices like the Newton was and still is to alot of people.

I firmly belive that a PDA's input system is th #1 key for sucess. The "others" have stabbed in the dark at creating a useable system, and still come up short. The 2100 nailed it with palm-resistive touchscreen technology combined with a nearly flawless handwritting recognition system. When one of the "other" companies get this part down, they will see success. It will happen, and PDA's will be as common as Cellphones, and only a handfull of people will know what was missed.

Yes, Steve Jobs understands personal computers. No, I do not belive he understands the current state of the PDA market, technology, and it's future.

He is however by all standards and execellent CEO and Visionary for Apple right now, and my hat is off to him.


rjwill246 said:
Actually, Steve understands computers and PDAs quite well. Arguably, Apple has one of the best operating systems available, computers that are very well engineered, are cuting edge and win industrial design awards year after year. The PDA market is a minor disaster and the fact that a few people have been imploring Apple to do otherwise, Steve as CEO, is showing a good deal of responsibility to his investors by telling these folks who don't seem to understand the word "no" by saying "Shove off!"
If you want a PDA- get one from someone else: there are good ones out there.

Apple's low market share came about for one reason only: people preferred an OS and computers that could be 'redesigned' at home with parts from Frye's -and cheap parts, too, leading to the ready availability of choices and features that were lacking in the early Macs. That this myriad of choices has led to compability and reliabilty issues, poorly designed OS (es) with unfixable flaws and no easy means of integration of hardware and third party software clearly is less important than well designed (and for the most part) tightly integrated services for most people.
Click to expand...
 
I can't imagine why people are fantasizing about a $1,000 remote control for a $20 feature on a $129 base station. Is it worth $1,000 so that you don't have to get up from your couch and walk to your computer?
Click to expand...


Haha, good point. :D
 
rjwill246 said:
[.....]

Apple's low market share came about for one reason only: people preferred an OS and computers that could be 'redesigned' at home with parts from Frye's -[....]
Click to expand...
Actually, the only reason why I bought a Windows system is so I could play the games that were available for it.
 
could Apple make a sucessfull tablet? of course! :D but that includes taking into consideration the very important point of price... if it's just a 'lesser' spec'd out version of a iBook or PB, then it needs to have a much lesser price.

i'm not so sure how this would be so great as a 'remote control'. that for small mobile phone sized thingys with lots of buttons. :p

this would have application in the creative industries, design, film, photography etc. if Apple can do it, it would be great... :D
 
AM radio i sbad for you.

Or that's what they're saying in Wired today. So I guess it's a good thing that most computier peripherals don't use it.
 
have faith

C'mon guys a tablet/pda if done right could be a huge hit. Mp3 players weren't all that popular until the ipod. Apple usually is the first company to finally get things right. The ipod was the first well designed affordable mp3 player. itunes was the first good, legal online music service. Now as far as references to the newton, yes it was a flop, but so was the Mac portable. But after the mac portable came the powerbook, the first practical laptop.
So have a little faith, I don't think apple's going to mess up on this one


;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) :)
 
I've been thinking about this for the last three days (amongst doing other things, naturally), and it seems that folks are arguing along four lines:
1. a remote control
2. the new iMac
3. a video ipod
4. a small 'tablet'.

I think that 1 and 2 are ridiculous. Remotes are small devices, and the batteries last forever. How many people honestly need a remote control for their Macs? Also, the idea that a 10" device is the detachable screen for the new iMac makes me wonder what variety of crack the proponents of that suggestion have been smoking. No comment needed.

So, could it be a video iPod? Why? I don't need to carry my movies with me, and I'm certainly not going to watch them on a 10" screen. I've got a television, and it's big and loud and doesn't run on batteries, so it won't run out on me when I'm half-way through a movie. And I'm never sitting on a bus when I think to myself, "I'd like to see that scene from Spiderman 2 right now'. I think a video iPod is a non-starter. You can listen to music in many situations, but there are few situations where you can watch a movie/TV program and do something else at the same time.

So that leaves suggestion number 4, which is 'a small tablet'. At first I dismissed this idea, but it's grown on me in the last couple of days. A lot of the suggestions got mashed together in my head, and now I'm a believer: it's the iPad, a portible ebook reader, and much more.
As someone said, it's the size of a paperback. And many people carry books with them. So it could be a proper ebook reader, with the ability to make/take notes.
But it's also a sketch pad, for notes and doodles. And it's got voice recording for recording meetings.
Perhaps it'll run MS Office, or perhaps Appleworks X?
It should dock with your Mac, syncing automatically, and have a wireless capability, for surfing the internet and rendezvous-ing with your Mac on your local network and and and...

Arguments against this have ranged along the data entry model. But there are applications like 'Dasher' which when you get used to them, allow very fast data entry, with only a pointer.

We can all admit that we mostly don't utilise the full power that our Macs have, it's just nice to have it for those times when you're ripping a DVD or doing intense Photoshop work, or whatever. So, a pared down computer geared specifically towards being a notepad/book/dumb terminal, well, that would be interesting.

I suppose that we'll all know the answer come August 31, this year or next.
 
Yes! Schiller!

Phil Schiller is giving Le Keynote:

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=602

Steve Jobs will be back at Apple at the time, so he could do it, which means only one thing:

Steve won't have to eat crow, err, his vegan-hat.

Schiller will introduce the new WunDerNewTonPod, thereby saving the universe from overload of the reality distorition field. For once, I'll be glad to see all four hundred pounds of Schiller up on stage.

This should also help to assuage Wall Street's fears of a 1-man company.
 
Apple Remote Desktop

Anyone who has used Apple Remote Desktop or comparable products know full-well that a computer can be used remotely, even over a < 1MBit Internet connection. Imagine how will it performs over an 11MBits or 22MBits wireless connection!!! The technology is in place to have an arbitrary number of remote displays sharing the same base computer.

I rarely need to use the disk drive or USB devices other than the mouse and keyboard. The monitor with Inkwell technology is the only component needed for most work. A wireless keyboard could be used when doing tasks such as programming which requires speedy text entry.
 
Colonel Panik said:
I've been thinking about this for the last three days (amongst doing other things, naturally), and it seems that folks are arguing along four lines:
1. a remote control
2. the new iMac
3. a video ipod
4. a small 'tablet'.
Click to expand...

What about a pair of Virtual Reality glasses plugged into the iPod while you're sitting on the plane. We all know that that's the future, so why not have Apple deliver it _first_?
 
coolfactor said:
Anyone who has used Apple Remote Desktop or comparable products know full-well that a computer can be used remotely, even over a < 1MBit Internet connection. Imagine how will it performs over an 11MBits or 22MBits wireless connection!!! The technology is in place to have an arbitrary number of remote displays sharing the same base computer.

I rarely need to use the disk drive or USB devices other than the mouse and keyboard. The monitor with Inkwell technology is the only component needed for most work. A wireless keyboard could be used when doing tasks such as programming which requires speedy text entry.
Click to expand...

I just looked into this kind of idea. I though it would be great to have a X server, and a bunch of cheap thin clients. Well It turns out that apple's Display Server (Quartz) can only run one display at a time :(. So unless apple hack ..... urmm repaired ... umm updated their display terminal then there can not be mac thin clients. Which would rule out this tablet thing being a thin client.

The only way this thing would be affordable ( I'm using this term lightly) is if it where some sort of thin vnc client.

So..
A) apple has been hacking away at their display server. This new iTablet will need Tiger.
B) this is vaporware and macrumors is going crazy over nothing.
 
Maybe Apple is listening to all the people complaining about how there's no G5 Powerbook. If Apple throws a G5 into an iMac, they can say "hey, it's smaller than your average PC", but it's too large to have as a notebook.

.narco
 
coolfactor said:
What about a pair of Virtual Reality glasses plugged into the iPod while you're sitting on the plane. We all know that that's the future, so why not have Apple deliver it _first_?
Click to expand...

or maybe Apple could put special magic iBeans in every box that you could plant in your yard and grow a beanstalk.
 
Dr. Dastardly said:
But how on earth Apple would have made this as a some sort of detachable computer display is beyond me. It really doesn't even seem feesable.
Click to expand...

Don't know if anyone else has mentioned this but viewsonic and a couple of other display manufacturers made displays like that a while back for XP. The display itself contains a wireless card and the dock acts as a base station. The monitor contains the guts of a PDA to help process the information and then transmit it to the computer for all the hard work. They failed miserably because of price, and lack of marketing. But it has been done and apple can go and do it right.

EDIT: Turns out viewsonic still makes them they have modified them a bit (upped processor speed, removed wireless base station etc.) they are still expensive $1400 for a 10" model.

http://www.viewsonic.com/products/desktopdisplays/wirelessmonitors/airsyncv210wirelessdisplay/
 
I think if Apple can pull this off with a cheap price say $299, or $399 (that's about the price to get a new old Clamshell iBook 12'' LCD Screen) it would be great. This is what they need:

LCD Screen ($200-300)
Low-End G3 or G4 Processor ($???)
Slot loading CD-ROM Drive - Optional ($75)
Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard - Optional ($79)
AirPort Extreme Built-In ($79)
USB and FireWire ports

Maybe video and audio out??


I'd imagine this as a 500-800mhz G3/G4 iBook with no base (with the keyboard, trackpad, etc...) Seems like a good idea. It all depends on the price and features.
 
LimeiBook86 said:
I think if Apple can pull this off with a cheap price say $299, or $399 (that's about the price to get a new old Clamshell iBook 12'' LCD Screen) it would be great. This is what they need:

LCD Screen ($200-300)
Low-End G3 or G4 Processor ($???)
Slot loading CD-ROM Drive - Optional ($75)
Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard - Optional ($79)
AirPort Extreme Built-In ($79)
USB and FireWire ports

Maybe video and audio out??


I'd imagine this as a 500-800mhz G3/G4 iBook with no base (with the keyboard, trackpad, etc...) Seems like a good idea. It all depends on the price and features.
Click to expand...

If it will run MS word/excel, WiFi for AX anbd internet access, and work with a BT keyboard and have reasonable battery life then it could be a real hit.
 
SWC said:
Don't know if anyone else has mentioned this but viewsonic and a couple of other display manufacturers made displays like that a while back for XP. The display itself contains a wireless card and the dock acts as a base station. The monitor contains the guts of a PDA to help process the information and then transmit it to the computer for all the hard work. They failed miserably because of price, and lack of marketing. But it has been done and apple can go and do it right.

EDIT: Turns out viewsonic still makes them they have modified them a bit (upped processor speed, removed wireless base station etc.) they are still expensive $1400 for a 10" model.

http://www.viewsonic.com/products/desktopdisplays/wirelessmonitors/airsyncv210wirelessdisplay/
Click to expand...

I wonder how they worked? Any reviews? It seems like there would be latency issues. Also seems like battery life would be an issue.
 
Porchland said:
or maybe Apple could put special magic iBeans in every box that you could plant in your yard and grow a beanstalk.
Click to expand...

Video-quality virtual glasses (Sony Glasstron) have existed for several years. They cost a couple hundred (more for VGA versions), but they DO give you a big-screen TV in your pocket! Apple offering something similar may or may not make market sense, but the technology is no fantasy.
 
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