'Large Screen iPod Touch Device' in Fall of 2009?

[firewood]

"It’s a shocking statement for a CEO to say publicly, as Steve has, that the goal of a company isn’t to make money, it’s to make great products"

And yet they are quick cancel great products they've made that don't also make money. (original Cube, Newton, etc.)

Steve gushed over the Cube at it's intro. He didn't gush over the Newton, but many who purchased them did. Many many years passed until they figured out a product variation that would make money (Mini, iPod Touch), and they were nothing like the original, completely and utterly incompatible in the case of the iPod Touch vs. the Newton.

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[!¡ V ¡!]

Larger screen iPod Touch and possible iPhone, this is called a Tablet folks. Believe nothing that comes out of Apple even Steve Job'ness, hypocrisy or secrecy a fine line to madness.

 

[TheMechanic]

Tried my best to make a mock-up of what a MacTablet could look.
I posted it in this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/626334/

 

[rijiMacDij]

Great Read Lepton

No sooner do I publish my prediction of Apple's next new device being a NetPad, than this article shows up later the very same day! My article speaks of a device about the size of three iPhones side by side. Many details are in the article:

http://www.myallo.com/blog/2008/12/apples-next-new-device/

Thanks for the great read Lepton, I do believe you may be onto something there. I can see tailors and clothing manufacturers checking to see if their pocket dimensions will accommodate the iPad/MyPad/BigPod.....

 

[rijiMacDij]

sketching would only be a positive if...you could use a stylus which apple is against, and if it could run decent sketch software such as...corel painter

Nah, Sketching would be even better if you could use software such as Corel Painter....

I'd like to see an optional data plan. I'll agree wholeheartedly that a mandatory data plan would suck, but it should have the option. Not everyone will have an iPhone (especially if they have one of these). If the carriers could somehow associate one user's iPhone and iTablet with the same SIM and thus, the same data plan, that would be brilliant!

But with wireless connectivity from (virtually) anywhere, think of what you could do. Complete access to every file on your home machine. No need to worry about syncing, leaving files at home, etc. This machine would then, in fact, be little more than a terminal, tapping into your home network and streaming content.

Obviously it would still have onboard storage, for multimedia and other files too large to stream, but imagine you're working on a project, you present it to a client, they make some edits. When you get back to the office and open the file on your iMac, all the changes are there, perfectly synced.

It would be genius.

Precisely!

I guess my question is how do you carry that and why is that better than a small laptop? It's too big for a pocket, you need to carry it laptop-style anyway, but it'll have a smaller screen than a laptop and probably no physical keyboard and less ports, so where's the advantage?

Krusty summed it up from one point of view perfectly in the Mapple store!

"I hate this MyPod! I can't watch movies on a screen this small".

It's much better than a small laptop or a little iPod Touch for many reasons, eg.

1. Portability - It will fit in a pocket, I carry wood-powered books around in my Jacket pocket all the time and they equate to a 9" screen...
2. Usability - You don't have to open and shut the sucker every time you want to use it to jot down a couple of words or a telephone number...
3. Usability - Hey, you can hold it in one hand and operate it with the other...
4. Usability - You don't need a desk or other flat stable surface on which to use it, standing in a queue, riding a crowded bus, etc...
5. Usability - The self-help brigade (apparently 90% of us) can hold the large screen iPad in one hand and operate their myPud with the other....

If this is true I will be buying one ASAP, price will be no consideration as the device will be more useful than a 17" MBP in many situations, at around a quarter of the price. In fact it will make your current devices at least twice as useful.

 

[Mal]

And yet they are quick cancel great products they've made that don't also make money. (original Cube, Newton, etc.)

Steve gushed over the Cube at it's intro. He didn't gush over the Newton, but many who purchased them did. Many many years passed until they figured out a product variation that would make money (Mini, iPod Touch), and they were nothing like the original, completely and utterly incompatible in the case of the iPod Touch vs. the Newton.

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Steve gushed over them, but in the end they weren't good products, partially because of price but also partially due to design. The Cube was at a very bad price point for it's power and design, which was remedied in the Mini, but it also had some flaws (certainly nothing that made it unusable, but faulty power buttons and heating issues come to mind, though of course none of those were inherent in all Cubes). The Newton was a great implementation of wonderful software design, but the hardware sucked for it's purpose. Far too large for a device like that, and not the greatest on battery life either. It simply wasn't practical for most of the people who would have been interested. I wish they'd brought back the incredible handwriting recognition, but Steve's apparently moved on past styluses (not that I can argue too much having owned a Palm and breaking or losing styluses). At least if they make a tablet it'll likely support something similar, though no guarantees.

jW

 

[babyj]

The big flaw in this rumour is there have been no leaked cases, which we've seen for pretty much every new iPhone and iPod recently. So I'm saying that no leaked cases equals no upcoming product.

 

[Demosthenes X]

The big flaw in this rumour is there have been no leaked cases, which we've seen for pretty much every new iPhone and iPod recently. So I'm saying that no leaked cases equals no upcoming product.

The rumor we're talking about is suggesting a Fall 2009 release. That means case designs probably wouldn't be leaked until September or thereabouts anyway...

I would love to see this come out with either a port of Microsoft OneNote, or an Apple equivalent built into iWork. With a stylus, this would be the perfect device for taking notes in lectures, business meetings, etc. I handwrite my lecture notes because I think it improves retention, but would love to be able to handwrite them onto the MacTablet and then have it create a digitized version. It would be amazing.

Apple would really revolutionize the NetBook market with this. Right now all NetBooks are are miniture laptops... a product like this would be exactly what current NetBooks are trying - and failing - to capture.

 

[kdarling]

... I handwrite my lecture notes because I think it improves retention, but would love to be able to handwrite them onto the MacTablet and then have it create a digitized version. It would be amazing.

Sounds like the handwriting recognition that's been on Windows tablet PCs since at least 2003.

PS. I handwrote notes in college for retention, too.

 

[MattInOz]

I don't think it will be any different than the ipod touch model other then in size.
Current touch is 4x4 icons on the display excluding the dock.
The new tablet will be 12x6 icons. They will use the same OS and it will be locked down so that you can only install software through apps store.
You guys give too much credit to apple with those fancy pictures showing mac os desktop and expansion slots.

It will be locked down and tightly controlled with no expansion slots.
They will sell two models. One that's WIFI based and the other that's Mobile Data Broadband based. Of course no cell phone.

Here is what I think it will look like.
It's the next logical course in growing this product line.

Seeing we are talking 7' screen, and probably double the total pixel count. So higher res per inch screen. would suspect the same format instead of doubling in one direction.

Then really maybe 5x7 icons at the same size as current, for the larger version. which may not seem like much but it is a big jump.

The iPhone family really needs high res screens so some that big is a way off.

 

[Demosthenes X]

Sounds like the handwriting recognition that's been on Windows tablet PCs since at least 2003.

Well, yeah... but I want an Apple version!

 

[MattInOz]

Well, yeah... but I want an Apple version!

You mean like InkWell which has been in the OS since which version, but was based on the work they did with the russian guys for the newton.

Works ok with a wacom tablet but always feels strange not writing direct on screen. Heard good things for people with modbooks and Cinic Tablets.

Still needs a stylus not that the touch screens apple uses can't work with one but you'd want a nice fine one which doesn't work so well. Unless Apple have those camera pixel touch screens ready to go.

 

[derek1984]

I am going to be in the market for a iPod Touch in a few months and will be willing to wait for something like this in the Fall. I knew that there was a good chance the Touch would be updated in the Fall, just not as much as this! The question will be however, how much is something like this going to cost? I had planned on spending $230 on a 8gig Touch. I really would not like to spend over $300 on this.

 

[drakeshipway]

I am going to be in the market for a iPod Touch in a few months and will be willing to wait for something like this in the Fall. I knew that there was a good chance the Touch would be updated in the Fall, just not as much as this! The question will be however, how much is something like this going to cost? I had planned on spending $230 on a 8gig Touch. I really would not like to spend over $300 on this.

It will be more than $300 if it were to come out, most likely.
I don't think we're talking about an updated iPod Touch, we're talking a whole new product that is a computer, possibly running full Mac OS X.

 

[iMacmatician]

Apple would really revolutionize the NetBook market with this. Right now all NetBooks are are miniture laptops... a product like this would be exactly what current NetBooks are trying - and failing - to capture.

And that is exactly why Apple will not release a netbook. Because they have this better device coming.

It will be more than $300 if it were to come out, most likely.

I'd say about $200 more than an equivalent capacity iPod touch, maybe more. So $499 for 32 GB. Definitely not under $300, and most likely not under $400 either.

I don't think we're talking about an updated iPod Touch, we're talking a whole new product that is a computer, possibly running full Mac OS X.

Actually, the rumored device is apparently based on the iPhone OS and iPod touch.

 

[gnasher729]

Highly doubt that--it has to have a capacitive digitizer and the high-impact glass crystal...makes it slightly less easy to fold.

What would happen to the current Apps on the App Store and the iPhone OS itself if Apple just decided to up the resolution of a device or the phone itself? I had a Windows CE PDA with a 640*480 LCD instead of the conventional 320*240 once; after hacking the OS to turn off scaling, I noticed that some programs worked pretty well and had really small UI elements, but other programs looked rather retarded, either pixel-doubled or only displaying on 1/4 of the screen. Wouldn't Apple be pretty much SOL with respect to things like prior compatibility if they just threw in a say, 800*480 display?

Exactly that will happen: Some applications will work just fine, some won't. If the pixel size is the same as on the iPhone, there are three behaviours that you could expect: The application can work absolutely fine (UI elements same size as on the iPhone; twice as much space for displaying things). Or the application uses an iPhone-sized part of the screen (if the programmer didn't care). Or the application is scaled up to the full screen size; not more usable space than on an iPhone, everything is just bigger.

Apps that can be rotated today will most likely work fine.

 

[gnasher729]

"It’s a shocking statement for a CEO to say publicly, as Steve has, that the goal of a company isn’t to make money, it’s to make great products"
Jonathan Ive about Steve Jobs, International Herald Tribune, 2006

It may be shocking, but can be very reasonable. If you only care about money and optimise profit at the expensive of great products, eventually you will stop making money no matter how hard you try. If you try to make great products first (with a bit of common sense added so that the cost and profits stay reasonable), you will make money without even trying.

 

[Cakester]

I'm really interested to see what happens with this. I could really see some interesting applications. Unleash the app store and it just gets "silly".

 

[Mister Snitch]

Solution

Sounds a little big for my pants.

Clearly you need bigger pants.

 

[g4tom]

Big would be better

I do not use my touch for anything but the web and email. I do play a few games just to kill time here and there. But a bigger screen would make me very happy for browsing the web

 

[BobtheTomato]

I hope this is where the retained Newton IP is finally put to work. Give me a near Newton size screen, handwriting recognition, Bluetooth earpiece, and an intelligent fusion of iPhone and Newton apps and it's a winner. With Bluetooth it doesn't need to be sized to be held up to the ear.

I used a Newton while i was in school for notetaking and it was pretty decent (the problem I had with it was it didn't have enough multilingual support. I could write more quickly than I could type (I used Via Voice at home for writing papers). It was pretty nifty also to be able to sketch a visual representation of an idea. Being able to carry my music and the odd movie or game would have been gravy.

 

[wizard]

This sounds really good!

I hope this is where the retained Newton IP is finally put to work. Give me a near Newton size screen, handwriting recognition, Bluetooth earpiece, and an intelligent fusion of iPhone and Newton apps and it's a winner.

I hate to say this but I've never had my hands on a Newton. The desire for the device comes from what I've heard and my experiences with iPhone. IPhone is great but falls down a bit due to the limited screen size.

With Bluetooth it doesn't need to be sized to be held up to the ear.

Actually a complete BlueTooth stack on IPhone would help that device immensely. The truncated stack and lack of general profiles really limit software development.

I used a Newton while i was in school for notetaking and it was pretty decent (the problem I had with it was it didn't have enough multilingual support. I could write more quickly than I could type (I used Via Voice at home for writing papers). It was pretty nifty also to be able to sketch a visual representation of an idea. Being able to carry my music and the odd movie or game would have been gravy.

With the new CPU tech a Newton2 could be performing 20 to 40 times faster maybe even better. IPhone is already faster than many of the computers I've owned over the years. With the new GPUs available for embedded devices the potential is for some apps to be very snappy.

I really like the idea of this type of device. Ideally it would have an expension slot for the cellular modem of your choice and also capable of attaching to an iPhone to access 3G. Yes I want both ways supported. AND NO LOCKING OF THE DEVICE TO A CARRIER. They can lock the modem if they want but not the actual device, we should be able to change carriers in the field if we want to.


Dave

 

[techfreak85]

with the app store, apple has paved the way numerous similar, portable, multi touch devices that we can only dream of.

 

[darkblu]

with the app store, apple has paved the way numerous similar, portable, multi touch devices that we can only dream of.

exactly.

any new 'osx mobile' devices don't need to run the current iph/ipt apps, they just need to be able to use the app store infrastructure, and that'd already give them a headstart.

 

[techfreak85]

ya its a "framework for the future"
haha.