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Apple Tablet Rumors Revived: February 2010 Launch? P.A. Semi Processor?

Interesting, I have a friend that works at VZW(Verizon Wireless) and he keeps telling me i better be saving for a Mac net book type device that should be released her pretty soon. I wonder if this is it...
 
Cant see this device running OSX

Imagine Typing Pages Documents & Numbers sheets on a touch screen, you would lose half the screen Yuk.

The Price for this device will put it alongside the Macbook Air, all Style not much substance
 
I find it odd that people think you cannot design a good touch screen only user interface. I have been doing that for the last 20 years. I design and build user interfaces for machine control. About 80% of these installations are touch screen only. We design them with the ability to to view PDF, Drawings, Video ( repair/service), web pages, historical trends, etc....

I have never found an app that I could not modify to work with pop-up on screen keyboards. Some Run Windows CE and others run XP Pro Embedded.

I am sure the mac OS would be easily modified to suit a touch only interface.

My biggest problem is switching from one of our machine interfaces back to a laptop as I keep poking the screen and wondering why the keyboard did not pop up...😱

I honestly think Apple can pull it off, Their touch technology is far superior to what we work with and we manage to make our systems quite user friendly...
 
eastercat said:
We might as well go back to those brick cell phones while we're at it. My hands are too small to even hold such a device as a phone. 😱
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What if it were to have a camera and allow video calling? How cool would that be? And no, you wouldn't put it up to your head. People would only use the bluetooth headset or the video chat. No, this would not be a phone for everyone, but some people send text, email, twitter, facebook, etc. so much that they would want something like this with them all the time.

Design it right and you wouldn't have to take it out of your bag to use it. Just voice command the person you want to call into the headset. No big deal. It also creates a new product so Apple can team up with Verizon and keep their sweet deal they have with AT&T. How about that?

pfft, iPhone? Bigger is better! Maybe I want an iTablet phone. Five years from now, phones that don't do video chat will be obsolete.
 
Ironduke said:
Cant see this device running OSX

Imagine Typing Pages Documents & Numbers sheets on a touch screen, you would lose half the screen Yuk.

The Price for this device will put it alongside the Macbook Air, all Style not much substance
Click to expand...

If it ran full OSX, then you would be able to use a bluetooth keyboard if you wanted.
 
alent1234 said:
they will then have to write a virtual machine like JVM or .NET for people to port the code easily. no one is going to spend a lot of time writing code unless they are sure to make money
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They could just use LLVM(Low Level Virtual Machine) and build a processor that runs the intermediate comply code as its native.

After all they have been putting a lot of work in to that compiler chain and all the new features in Snow Leopard are targeted there first. It maybe be Open source but with the major players in house they still have full control.
 
bfc said:
I find it amusing that Apple dissed netbooks because they couldn't fit in your pocket.

err... the tablet won't fit in your pocket either. I wonder how they are going to spin this.
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Apple knew what they were doing when they put that pic up on the screen at the September event.
Perhaps Apple has figured out how to make a tablet pocketable.

We'll find out soon enough.
 
mrgreen4242 said:
10" is too big. 6-7" would be ideal, imo. Anything bigger and I'll just carry a laptop or netbook.
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I agree, unless of course they develop some sort of OLED screen that can shrink down and open up at a whim for full screen use and not be sectioned off at all with any sort of plastic separators to enable folding which would make it sloppy.
 
MrM said:
Seriously. I still do not see a point in having a 10" (or so) screen as a computer. I would think you're going to have a massive kink in your neck from always looking down at it. On top of that, you wouldn't really be able to see the screen when you're typing on it unless you do a "hunt & pick" style of typing. I see very little that is productive about this proposed toy.
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What have people been using for centuries and still buy orders of magnitude more than any netbook?

Books and paper pads... far less likely to cause kinks in ones neck than any laptop.

Steve said that people don't read books anymore. But this might just be Kindle, not just for books, but for Wikipedia, Google, web apps, short youtube videos, and iPhone apps, and thus outsell Kindle enough be to a pretty decent success.

If you have good eyes, then you can do this already on an iPod Touch. But most people don't have eyes good enough to comfortably read full size pages on such a tiny screen.
 
But what we really need is to be able to read and take notes straight on the page and in the margin when we are reading, which is why the kindle sucks. The Apple Tablet really would benefit if it had a wacom digitizer built-in and allowed you to take notes, while reading a book and underlining passages, or for the purposes of sketching more generally. If you really want a winner, adapt or build a program that incorporates Pages (word processor), sketching, viewing of PDFs or eBooks, all the while allowing one to add handwritten information to any file opened within the program.
 
Let's be clear:

(1) Apple has stated multiple times that they do not think they can currently offer anything in that market segment, for that price range, using current technology that is worth having.

(2) All you *cough* unimaginative *cough* people who are saying this will fail are basing your ideas on the assumption that they will be doing exactly that.

So what kinds of future technologies might they use?

Apple Patent number 1: A display that has sensor technology -
https://www.macrumors.com/2006/01/13/apple-integrated-sensing-display/
it can act as a camera for video chat, or alternatively, detect what your finger is hovering over before you press it.

Apple Patent number 2: Integrated solar panel *in* the screen -
https://www.macrumors.com/2008/05/26/solar-lcd-powered-ipods-iphones-and-laptops/
Combined with their new battery technologies equals longer time between changes.

Add P.A semi's low power CPUs to that, ability to use App store apps, iTunes media, Internet connectivity and add ebooks for the heck of it. This is your ultimate casual computing device we're looking at here and it will eat netbooks for breakfast.

And like I said above, I'd bet money that it will be called the MacBook.
 
ravenvii said:
I'm not so sure about the built-in 3G. Is it popular in netbooks? Personally I wouldn't want to add yet another bill to my monthly expenses.
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It's relatively new as a built-in option. But when you consider that you can buy a hspda usb dongle for < 30 quid, building it into every tablet would be a small expense. Offer it through cell companies discounted with a plan or full price via the Apple Store or other retailers. Then if the user decides they want remote access in the future they pick up a payg sim and slot it in.

Everybody's happy.
 
Seriously, I can't see apple producing a tablet at 10" or less, when for one, people complain about the screen size of the Mac Pro 13" being to small.

The price would have to be in the $500 - $600 range in order to compete with anything on the market and that price is way to high for a consumer net book. Most of all the price is way to low for apple to sell a net book of quality. I would just stick with the next best thing, a 13" Mac Pro. 😕
 
jeep said:
a simple device for videoconferencing/web surfing/movie watching/book reading and note taking (handwriting would make it a one of its kind, clear distinction with laptops). Hope they'll manage the stand issue though.
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I suspect the dock will be a stand, either with a physical connection or wireless, similar to how the Pre can charge from a touchstone.

That way when it's charging beside your bed it can be a picture frame/bedside clock/internet connected applet display (weather/news/stocks). Beside your computer it could be a secondary display or flat as an oversized touchpad. In the kitchen as an interactive recipe book. In the living room it's the same as the bedroom plus massive AppleTV remote. 😀
 
Reitarating -
The question isn't "which flavor of OS X will it run?" because it will run both.

The tablet will have both an x86 chip (an Atom, dual-core (N330) as an option) and an custom ARM SOC (system on a chip). You'll be able to hot-switch between a modified iPhone OS and touch-optimized 10.6. However, the hot switch may or may not involve booting the Atom system as once it boots, if you switch to the ARM chip, the Atom side will go into Sleep (10.6 has Sleep optimization, so it'll be nice and smooth).

The "iPhone" OS version for the tablet will be, of course, optimized for the tablet and able to run current iPhone software, and not just one at a time. However, if the users wishes to do more complex work and needs more processing power, they can boot up the Atom system. The SOC will continue to run as it requires very little power, and will communicate things like push messages to the Atom side, per user settings.

Once the Atom system is booted (and it will boot fast, SSD + 10.6), the transition will be very smooth between the two.

Proper iTunes sync will, of course, work, but it can, if the user so wishes, keep the Mail apps of both simultaneous, as well as some others. The Atom side will be able to update the SOC as well as restore it - no need for another computer. Critical software update on the road? No problem. Need to install 10.6.2? You can tell the tablet to not sleep the Atom side while you continue working on iPhone OS.

Apple has never liked using a separate partitions for data and applications (many PC users do this so they can completely wipe and reinstall their OS of choice (be it Linux, Windows or another) without losing all their documents and photos in the process).
The SOC will have its own memory, as very fast sync removes the need of accessing the other side's drives (and the issues that come along with that). Files will be duplicated between the two systems, though the user is in power to choose what the SOC side has.

Only the Atom system will have access to the tablet's ports (except, of course, the 3.5mm jack). The user will be able to pick which system is using the stereo speakers/audio jack - so music can continue to come from iPhone OS while the user switches back and forth accomplishing different tasks.

Due to tech constraints the two systems will have separate Wi-Fi antennae. Although this can be a very slight nuisance for the user, it means that they can save power by killing AirPort on the Atom side and only browsing on the SOC. It also means they can use two networks at the same time on the tablet. The Atom side's antenna will be more powerful.
Click to expand...

From here.
 
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