Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
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.

You know thats a good point. Apple doesn't usually overlook an issue like this. Unless it is designed for multi-touch screens. Right now the only use is to see what features happen when you press certain keys. Eg. I just learned from looking at it if I do a Function Delete I can back delete.
 
Fun to see how people speculate that it is a sign of a spaceship coming to save them from the 2012 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.
 
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.

Wow. Ok, do you walk around holding a Macbook or Macbook Pro trying to type in the street or do you carry it with you, to do work when you get to where you are going? Not to mention, I think it would be a lot easier to work on a tablet regardless of where one is. Look at the iphone as an example and you don't have to wait. Real portability friend, that's what Apple is aiming for, not just catering to fanboys (even though I am one). :D
 
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.

arn

I thought this was a family friendly site. :D I always put an asterisk in cr*p. Well, not anymore, by golly. ;)
 
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.

2021 ? When was the nine year extension announced ?
 
A tablet would be pretty cool and I'm sure there are some folks out there that will find it fitting their needs, not enough to convince me though, there is only enough room for one ultraportable in my life and I'm getting my Macbook Air regardless.
 
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 :rolleyes:
 
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 :rolleyes:

The difference is that when Jobs sold the original iPod there were mp3 players with all kinds of features besides playing music. There were pda's. media devices, you name it. You think they just figured out how to add all these features later? Like they didn't have the technological capability to add those features? Like people didn't want them? lol

Jobs relies on simple people like this. :D These are the kinds of people that buy a $400 iPhone and then buy a tablet that does all the same things just to be "cool".
 
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...:eek:).

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.

What I meant by that is that if you have a tablet you don't need a iPhone with all that power. If Jobs had just offered the tablet first people would have kept their old phones and wouldn't have really "needed" anything more than that.

Having a cell phone that is a 400 dollar tablet is extreme overkill. People bought it because the tech behind it was so sexy. If the tablet was already out no one would have bothered getting all that tech on a phone. It's a HUGE luxury item.
 
Hopefully a touchscreen is coming sometime in the future. It is long overdue. Not sure why it took this long in the first place.
 
I love how CoM conveniently ignores that this viewer is already in 10.5. You just click the green zoom button.
 
A 30in cinema display does not mean you get a 30in wide keyboard, for the last billion years screens have been measured diagonally. Just thought I would point that out, sweet none the less.
 
Hopefully a touchscreen is coming sometime in the future. It is long overdue. Not sure why it took this long in the first place.

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?
 
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.

Snow Leopard isn't any sort of conduit - all of those devices run OSX already. The only difference is in having AppKit (Aqua) on the desktop and UIKit on the iPhone. That's not going to change.

With Snow Leopard, Apple have ported CoreLocation and their Quicktime enhancements to regular OSX. Integrating Cocoa Touch with regular OSX is clearly going to be of interest to Apple, and if they haven't accomplished that with Snow Leopard and the unibody trackpads, they'll certainly be aiming to do that for 10.7. It's too large to happen in a point update.
 
I can imagine the device can run both, the iPhone OS and then a full fledged OS. Quite simply, the iPhone OS would be used if the user just wanted check some emails, browse the web, etc, stuff that can run on an ARM-based processor, so it's low-power. With better batteries that would mean maybe 10+ hours of battery life.

However if a user wants more than just email and webbrowsing, they can simply boot into the regular OS and use it like any other Mac.

Is this solution not possible?

I can definitely imagine Apple doing this; Asus made that laptop with a mini PDA build into the lid, Apple will just be using the whole screen instead.

It would explain this development in Snow Leopard and Apple's possible use of the PA Semi acquisition.
 
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?

EXACTLY, it's not practical unless you're an artist. It's a niche market indeed. How am I going to hold it and type on it at the same time??

I also see alot of talk about the virtual keyboard. Well how the hell am I supposed to see the screen or what I'm typing in when the virtual keyboard is taking up all of the screen space?

'
hmm...
 
A laptop with 2 screen

This is for a laptop with 2 screens. One at the top and one bellow to type and manipulate objects.

Apple is a brand which move FORWARD :)
 
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.

The rumors of some tablets running iPhone OS and other tablets running Mac OS X seem more likely to me now. This could be another step in making Mac OS X suitable for touchscreens on future Macs—probably one reason why Apple hasn't released a tablet yet.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.