Not the iOpener, anyway... tablets, maybe?
I'm surprised that in 19 pages of comments thus far, nobody has brought up the iOpener (heh, and it even has the little 'i' in front), that 'revolutionary' iAppliance that was basically an 800x600 LCD on a stand with a motherboard on the back, a USB port for the keyboard (which had a Pizza key instead of a Windows key... rawk!), a 56k modem, no HD (16 MB sandisk... etc)...
Yes, I bought one of these, and hacked it, adding a laptop HD, fan, RAM, better processor, win98, etc. Originally I had it in the passenger seat of my car, to be my own 12 GB mp3 jukebox... and planned to mount it to the dash. Then the iPod 20GB's came out, so I got one of those instead. The radio shack A/C vane mount is genius.
🙂
The iOpener was a crappy concept (sell hardware at a loss, try to lock people into a subscription, and roll your own QNX-based OS to deliver the 'dumbed down' internet to people). That's why they failed. But what is more important to me here is that the form factor is not as good as the LCD iMac's currently is, with its swivel neck.
I can't help but think that Apple would recognize that (nor would they invent something that looked just like another one of their product lines, e.g. the new LCD monitors, because it would confuse people). So to the guy who has the .Mac slide show with the iMac G5 mock-up: Sorry, I don't buy it. And I have already seen other manufacturers with their conceptual models and DVDs sticking out of the side. Would Apple really go there? (Again? ... plenty of people DID mention the 20th anniversary mac.) I saw the Sony VAIO W700G, and I can see where people are coming from -- but I'd hope Apple's version could come apart. Tablets! In my mind, the only thing that could improve on the swivel neck form factor (you know -- a great way to collaborate and share ideas with another person) would be if you could plop the display+ IO device in their lap.
Now: I found my way to this thread while trying to find out if digital pens (Anoto, bluetooth, etc) worked with OS X and Ink. Doesn't appear so. I'll keep praying. But I was intrigued by the possibility that the new iMac G5 could be a tablet, because then I'd buy one.
Think about it. Little rumors here and there, past few months. Now, I believe that wireless video is nearly impossible, present day and age. State of the art appears to be wifi-uploading images (a la static powerpoint slides) to a projector. 5-wire cable (RGBHV) is thick for a reason. VGA cables (not to mention DVI.. yeesh) aren't that long and have a LOT of wires in them... becase they carry a LOT of data to that monitor.
Think about it: 30fps full screen video wirelessly? One heck of a codec. But there was a rumor about some very high bandwidth short-distance network technology that Apple was supposedly investigating. I'd be SO happy to be proven wrong about wireless video. It sounds like Ultra-Wideband technology being discussed could maybe handle this.
That would let you take something like the wacom Cintiq (1024x768 color LCD under the tablet) and make it the detachable screen, with Ink as the input technology, or a remote control, photo picture frame to pass around, whatever. Personally I'd just about cream myself if the form factor were exactly the same as the iMac LCD, except the LCD lifted right off the swivel arm. Make for a hell of a product demo. Maybe they'd get Steve one of those iBOT 3000 wheelchairs (you know, stands upright, Dean Kamen, Segway, etc... and starts with a small 'i'! Ooh) to demo it with... Man, it's after 5 am where I live. Can you tell?
I like this guy and his
tablet rant to Steve.
I mentioned Bluetooth earlier -- I love it, I even switched carriers just so I could get a GSM nokia with bluetooth. Now, granted, I hate my 3650, but that's just because I couldn't wait for the 6600's. Point is: Even my antiquated handspring prism has a bluetooth springboard card. And iSync ties it all together. (By the way, Yes, even the eMac line has bluetooth now, I've got a 1.25 ghz with it.) This thing has to have it.
So: my wishlist is for something that is the size of an Apple ][c or smaller, (You "Switch"ed on what date? I never left...), the key being the convenient carry-handle and the stunning 1 Mhz clock speed^h^h^h^h (skip that last bit.. but obviously, if it has a G5, it'll smoke), and maybe the counterbalanced swing-arm could fold right into the body; this lets your optical drive lay flat, that probably is indeed a factor... with a detachable tablet component, pen or touch screen (this is my dream, back off) with optional plug-in or bluetooth mouse/keyboard/etc.
If Apple recently quietly play-tested a PDA, I hope they only killed it because they realized how much cooler a tablet could be. And like someone said earlier: Apple has indeed taken some things that had been done before, and done them better. But they're also pretty notorious for adopting new technologies that hadn't yet caught on (you know... like USB? Personal Laser Printers? DVI? Wifi?) and then you watch the rest of the industry scramble to catch up. I just hope that they're about to jump-start the tablet market, with wide-band. I'm disappointed that I don't see them mentioned in
this article. Sounds like there's a lot of potential but also a lot of politics.
And to think, I was just hoping to find an electronic pad and paper I could use to zap my notes over to my powerbook, so I'd stop losing my (actual) Stickies... to me it's all about Ubiquitous computing. The powerbook is pretty good, but in some cases pen & paper are that still better...
