This "virtual keyboard" is useless, because there is no way to "lock" the Shift key. You may click Shift twice, but it doesn't do the trick. Try to enter "@" sign to see what I mean.
How am I supposed to type and hold the thing? How am I supposed to see anything on the screen as I'm typing, editing Word documents?
Outside the fanboy market, this tablet is going to be a massive fail.
I personally think this speculation is crap. and a big stretch. there's plenty of reasons to think apple's working on a tablet. this is not one of them.
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Fun to see how people speculate that it is a sign of a spaceship coming to save them from the 2021 destruction of the planet, when Apple take some liberties to redesign an App when they rewrite it in Cocoa.
Heck, Finder had quite a few changes with it's rewrite.
Though it was about time to update the thing to match the current keyboards, simply doing that it a drastic change for some people.
The way I think Jobs does things is he has an idea.. in this case it is the touch tablet. The touch tablet is the be-all end-all. It is the holy grail device in a line of devices that starts with the iPhone.
The iPhone is like the lowest end version of the tablet. But Jobs starts with the lowest end because if you bought the tablet you would have no need for the iPhone really.
So I think the tablet was the real focus all along.. but Jobs is going to sell the least desirable one first (the iPhone) knowing that people have no choice since they have to buy it.
I think it worked the same way with iPods. Jobs stated with the most bare bones iPod imaginable. All it did was play music. No other features whatsoever. Now look at the iPod. It's a full fledged media device. Jobs could have come out with the full fledged media device first. That was the real goal all along.. but he sold every device imaginable on the way to that in the process. I think they are doing the exact same thing with the tablet. The tablet is the real device everyone will want. But he is going to make us earn it essentially. Because we have no choice.
That's ridiculous. You may as well say no one will ever buy another iPod touch because the iPhone is out. Yes, there is a lot of crossover between these products, but they do have different purposes and different features.
There will be more differences between the pad and the iPhone than between the iPod touch and iPhone. Who's to say the pad isn't aimed at a professional (e.g. graphic designer-style) audience anyway?
Job could've come out with the the fully fledged iPod rather than the bare bones first one. Alternatively, people could have invented cars before using horses for transport. Or invented electricity before using candles. Silly people![]()
I agree with you on most points, but not on this one:
A tablet would not be a replacement for an iPhone or vice-versa. I can't see myself holding a 10" to my ear (you would look certifiable with a 15" tablet stuck to your ear...).
As with most Apple products, they will probably think of a way to make them complementary like the iPhone with Keynote or the Apple TV if you just happen to own both.
How do you get rid of the number pad, like in the screencap?
2021 ? When was the nine year extension announced ?
Hopefully a touchscreen is coming sometime in the future. It is long overdue. Not sure why it took this long in the first place.
While my money is squarely on Snow Leopard being the (as yet, unannounced) conduit OS for Apple to formally start converging their device matrix (iPhone, iPod touch, Macs, Apple TV, iPad Tablet) from an application run time and developer tools perspective, the "evidence" cited by Leander Kahney is fairly weak.
As others have noted in discussions regarding this point, it's far more likely for Apple to iterate from their best practices approach to virtual keyboard (iPhone/iPod touch) than simply tweaking the virtual keyboard that has been part of Mac OS for years.
What would be so great about a touchscreen computer? What would you be able to do with it that you can't already do with your current computer? Use your finger to tap on icons? How would this be any better than using a mouse pointer?
First direct evidence for a Mac OS X tablet if you ask me. Not to say there hasn't been indirect evidence. The evidence for an iPhone OS tablet seemed to be quite good until recent rumors and then this page.Page has been updated very recently. This looking good!
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/EventOverview/HandlingTabletEvents/HandlingTabletEvents.html