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Apple Touchscreen Netbook to Launch in October at $800?

The Direct Quote says, "Taiwan science and technology supply chain manufacturer disclosure, The apple small pen electricity will be taken to the threshing ground in October". (Direct Translation)

Taken to the thesaurus factory...

Taiwan science and technology supply chain manufacturer disclosure; The Apple Tablet will begin production in October.

Foxconn is the only Technology Chain Supplier I know of so...

Foxconn Disclosure; The Apple Tablet will begin production in October.

(Note I am not Chinese so the translation will not be 100% ACCURATE)
 
I see a future coming where you won't be able to buy apple software for the Macbook or iMac through your local store or through the vendors website. You will have to buy it all ONLINE through the app store. I believe google is working on it as well.

So, through the app store you will be forced to buy Mac OS X, Mobile OS, and to be soon Tablet OS software. What will go away is the ability to buy software at your local bestbuy. This will be the death of CD's not DVD or blueray. You still need those to watch movies :)
 
chaosconan said:
I see a future coming where you won't be able to buy apple software for the Macbook or iMac through your local store or through the vendors website. You will have to buy it all ONLINE through the app store. I believe google is working on it as well.

So, through the app store you will be forced to buy Mac OS X, Mobile OS, and to be soon Tablet OS software. What will go away is the ability to buy software at your local bestbuy. This will be the death of CD's not DVD or blueray. You still need those to watch movies :)
Click to expand...

So we'll only be able to get a limited selection of Apple-approved apps?

I don't know about you, but I like being able to install whatever I want on my Mac. And I also like a tangible copy.
 
Keyboard and price.

"aaaw! the keyboard would be too small"

Tablets usually don't have keyboards.

I use my iBook for reading in bed and email/photos/web when I'm away from home. A tablet would be so superior for reading e-books/articles/blogs etc. and lighter for travelling.

I love having a reasonably powerful desktop for the kinds of things I do and a small Apple tablet would suit my mobile device needs to a T.

chstr said:
800 dollars for a netbook is lame. not surprising at all
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An iPhone 3G S is 1,179 NZD (equal to 747.014 USD) without contract here in New Zealand. That's not a lot less than US$900. It is alway possible that Apple are building 3G/4G/Wimax (or whatever) into these units, which would almost make them giant iPhones.

ibjoshua
 
LagunaSol said:
Razor-thin margins that are eaten up by support costs for an underpowered device that ultimately hurts your brand image with consumers?

Apple has no reason to compete with vendors who are cutting each others' throats over nickels and dimes.
Click to expand...

Bollocks. Apple already uses the same components as other manufacturers. If they use superior parts as someone else has already commented here then they won't be eating up margins with support costs. And if you read my post I did say that they could sell it for more than the average netbook and still people would buy it for the Apple label. There is nothing underpowered about a netbook unless you misunderstand what its for. Unless you think the iPhone is underpowered because it won't run Photoshop?
 
ibjoshua said:
"aaaw! the keyboard would be too small"

Tablets usually don't have keyboards.

I use my iBook for reading in bed and email/photos/web when I'm away from home. A tablet would be so superior for reading e-books/articles/blogs etc. and lighter for travelling.

I love having a reasonably powerful desktop for the kinds of things I do and a small Apple tablet would suit my mobile device needs to a T.


An iPhone 3G S is 1,179 NZD (equal to 747.014 USD) without contract here in New Zealand. That's not a lot less than US$900. It is alway possible that Apple are building 3G/4G/Wimax (or whatever) into these units, which would almost make them giant iPhones.

ibjoshua
Click to expand...

Crosses Fingers for 2degrees support for iPhone and MacTablet.
 
Shake 'n' Bake said:
I'm all for a netbook as long as it has a full size keyboard and doesn't perform like crap, i.e. it'll run intensive iMovie renderings in a reasonable time.

Apple won't make anything without a full size keyboard (except the iPhone). It's been a selling point of Apple notebooks for years.

I won't buy it if it has a single core Atom or a dual core Atom. I want a Core 2 Duo or better.

And I don't want to pay a premium for it. These days Apple uses the same parts as everyone else so I don't see why It can't be ~$400. But someone, can't remember who, said Apple doesn't know how to make a sub-$500 computer that isn't a piece of crap.
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The iPod touch is 400 dollars, no way Apple is selling a computer at that price.
 
posting from my netbook..

Netbook sales are predicted to double from 16 million in 2008 to 33 million in 2009

it wouldnt be smart to ignore this market, maybe a smaller plastic macbook with a 10" touchscreen and a dual core atom and ion chipset
 
ibjoshua said:
"aaaw! the keyboard would be too small"

Tablets usually don't have keyboards.

I use my iBook for reading in bed and email/photos/web when I'm away from home. A tablet would be so superior for reading e-books/articles/blogs etc. and lighter for travelling.

I love having a reasonably powerful desktop for the kinds of things I do and a small Apple tablet would suit my mobile device needs to a T.


An iPhone 3G S is 1,179 NZD (equal to 747.014 USD) without contract here in New Zealand. That's not a lot less than US$900. It is alway possible that Apple are building 3G/4G/Wimax (or whatever) into these units, which would almost make them giant iPhones.

ibjoshua
Click to expand...

What tablet doesn't have a keyboard? All the tablets that I've ever seen have had a keyboard.
 
(Didn't see that bit)

ibjoshua said:
An iPhone 3G S is 1,179 NZD (equal to 747.014 USD) without contract here in New Zealand. That's not a lot less than US$900. It is alway possible that Apple are building 3G/4G/Wimax (or whatever) into these units, which would almost make them giant iPhones.

ibjoshua
Click to expand...

Apple is an American company. They only care if the price makes sense in USD.

Goona said:
The iPod touch is 400 dollars, no way Apple is selling a computer at that price.
Click to expand...

So the 8 GB iPT is dropped and the 16 GB and 32 GB models are lowered in price by $100. The 160 GB Classic is brought back as the base model at $250 and a 180 GB version is added for $350. Each Classic has a Product Red version for $25 more.

Or just sell the cheap computer for what I said because it is a full-featured computer whereas the iPT isn't.
 
Shake 'n' Bake said:
This has been mentioned somewhere before but...

How about two screens; one for the main display, and another one for the keyboard/trackpad?



iMac touch. Hmmm... Sounds like something Dell has. Apple would get blasted for that. We're not talking about Microsoft here :rolleyes:.
Click to expand...


HP also has a touch computer as well, but I don't knonw their price. Maybe around $1000-1500 US


Hugh
 
blackmondo said:
I just remembered one little piece of technology in Snow Leopard that could be telling:

EASY PDF TEXT SELECTION

...

What I'm thinking though is that it's not a stretch to imagine this technology being used to identify columns of text in a PDF NEWSPAPER or PDF MAGAZINE? Think about how mobile safari works right now - double tap on a block of text to zoom in on that text. I assume it can do that on the web because these pages are marked up in HTML, so Safari knows a bit more about them. This AI technology could do the same for PDF documents where there's no markup ;)
Click to expand...


PostScript is a markup language... quite different from HTML, but a markup language, nonetheless.

At one time NeXt, then Apple used Display Postscript instead of Quartz for display/printer presentation, so this should not be a real stretch, if they want to pay Adobe for licensing.
 
I seriously doubt they would write a 3rd OS for this new computer. It sounds like they'd be headed the path of Microsoft with a separate platform for each device. Before you know it OS X turns into OS X Home Edition, Tablet Edition, iPhone Edition, Media Center TV Edition, etc.

Apple makes fun of Microsoft for making multiple editions of a similar product, so I don't see them headed down the same path.

I see them keeping the iPhone OS for mobile devices (iPhone and iPod Touch only) and OS X for all other computing devices. This way there is no need to recreate iWork or iLife or other apps over and over again so they can run on different devices, creating incompatibilities and confusion.

That doesn't mean they won't create a separate interface for a Tablet device (like HP's program that runs on their Touchsmart computers) but it will just be an application and not a whole new OS.

Keeping it simple is the best thing they can do.

So my guess:

- It will be the new "MacBook" line replacing the single white model of today
- It will be available in 9", 11", and 13" models ($799, $899, and $999)***
- It will run OS X Snow Leopard
- May have a cool application running on top to make it easier to use touchscreen
- No optical drive built in, but a 7 or 8 hour battery
- All other tech specs similar to the MacBook Air or regular MacBook


*** I think 9" is too small for a laptop though, so if this is indeed a netbook/notebook device it will probably be at 10 or 11 inches minimum to allow a good keyboard which Apple always stresses.

If indeed it will be an oversized iPod Touch, then all bets are off but I think this would be a stupid device as it wouldn't be able to do more than the iPhone already does (just bigger) and no physical keyboard would render it useless for writing reports or doing serious document editing, which would make it even WORSE than a netbook.
 
My predicted specs:

-10.2" Multi-touch Screen with proximity sensors built-in

-Built-in iSight

-Full Mac OS X Snow Leopard (If you pay attention, you can now see that it's grabbing more and more UI bits from the iPhone)

-MagSafe charging, 1 USB Port, 1 SD Card Slot, Audio-in Jack, Mini Display Port.

-Unibody (Glass and Aluminium design)

-1.66GHz Intel Processor, 2GB RAM, Nvidia Graphics.

-Price ranges from $700-$900

Ams.
 
zedsdead said:
The 12" G4 Powerbook was not a netbook.
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Where did I say it was? I NEVER SAID THAT! I was simply comparing the performance (the post I initially responded to - please read my posts) of the older G4 1.25GHz PowerBook or iBook or even Mac Mini (different category but still based on a portable computer) versus a NEW Atom N271 netbook. Can you please let me know WHERE I stated the 12" PS was a NETBOOK? I am SURE I did not say it was - not once.

It was CLOSE to a netbook by today's standard on size and performance - but again - that was NOT a comment I EVER MADE.

Thank you - D
 
Completely different design

First off, those that don't care for the Atom line of processors may have another option.

Acer has shown off a new netbook using the Intel "ULV" processor. Here is the Acer netbook, and here is probably the processor they're referring to. These processors provide a little more oomph than the Atom, while still not drawing too much power. Plus, they are 64 bit, so very Snow Leopard friendly.

Just speculating, but couple one of these with an Nvidia 9400 GPU and you have the best performing netbook on the market. Especially if SL can utilize the 9400 for OpenCL, etc.

Second, the screen size has been steadily increasing, making netbooks seem more like "sub-notebooks" now. First they were 7", then around 9", and now 10", 11" or even 12". Prices have been creeping up, and $400-$500 for the larger screens is not uncommon.

Third, as Intel has done with Moblin, HP with the "Mobile Internet Experience" (MIE), and Ubuntu with the Netbook Remix, you can modify the user interface to look better on smaller screens.

So, I think an Apple "MacBook Mini" with a 9.7" HD screen, maybe having some touchscreen gee-wiz features and a special interface on top of SL, using a newer, differentiating processor and costing $599-$699 is within the realm of possibility.
 
It's a tablet with virtual keyboard, but bluetooth and USB for physical keyboard. Also it wirelessly interfaces with your other Mac(s) like the MBA does for CD/DVD drive and video streaming.

Further, it can function as a wireless 2nd monitor, but one that you can set flat on your desk and use like one of those pressure-sensitive graphic design tablets, or for displaying menus and things like the mixer panel in Logic with sliders and knobs you can move by touch.

So its main selling point is as a new peripheral for your Mac, but one you can use by itself too. Has great handwriting recognition, will ship with Snow Leopard, 8-12 hour integrated battery. That's my prediction.
 
It's a tablet with virtual keyboard, but bluetooth and USB for physical keyboard.
Click to expand...

So is it going to have some sort of stand built in or something? Otherwise you'll need a stand AND a separate keyboard because I don't think an oversized iPhone is going to balance itself well on a table unless you want to get neck cramps from looking straight down at the screen while typing. Sounds like a lot of hassle. So if you want to use this on the go, you'll have a backpack full of accessories.

I can see the PC fanboys now saying "haha if you want to use a mac netbook for any useful purpose you have to carry like a bazillion cables and accessories versus just ONE item, the netbook itself."

Reminds me of people who in the early 2000's would buy the HP iPaq PocketPC and buy extravagant hardware accessories to try to get a keyboard and such to work so that it would actually be useful beyond a fancy calculator and calendar.

Unless this has some sort of features we're not seeing or some sort of amazing utility that we aren't yet aware of, a simply larger version of an iPhone is COMPLETELY STUPID.

Makes me wonder if they release this as an accessory, what will they do with the macbook line? I doubt they will have one single macbook model with an outdated design forever, which as of now looks like its just holding them over until they get ready to release a whole new line (and calling all their laptops pro makes the pro moniker meaningless).

And this certainly will be no replacement for a macbook given the lack of keyboard (so people buying macbooks as their only computers for college will not see this as a viable alternative).

Makes me wonder...
 
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