The “new product in the pipeline” Apple hinted at during yesterday’s quarterly sales call? Mac Daily News dusts off the standby rumor of an Apple Tablet and props it up with the words of a “reliable tipster.”
Think MacBook screen, possibly a bit smaller, in glass with iPhone-like, but fuller-featured Multi-Touch. Gesture library. Full Mac OS X. This is why they bought P.A. Semi. Possibly with Immersion’s haptic tech. Slot-loading SuperDrive. Accelerometer. GPS. Pretty expensive to produce initially, but sold at “low” price that will reduce margins. Apple wants to move these babies. And move they will. This is some sick shit. App Store-compatible, able to run Mac apps, too. By October at the latest.
I’d love for this to be true, but I’m banking on balderdash. I see a convertible tablet MacBook or MBP coming before a tablet-sized iPhone. Perhaps we’ll get both: convertible MacBooks for the higher-end crowd, priced-to-sell MacBook Touches with built-in 3G subsidized by phone companies and priced-to-sell, stealing all the thunder from the cheap web tablet Arrington is going to build out of the wishful thinking of his marketroids and magic-infused unobtanium.
Rumor: Apple’s secret product is MacBook touch [Mac Daily News]
Image: mwilkie
Please leave out the optical drive. That’s a pretty useless feature for a tablet. It just adds weight and takes up space. Then there’s the battery drain when it runs.
Otherwise, I’m sold.
Yeah, all that’s true, but Apple isn’t getting my money unless I get a sweet tablet. Until then, this mac mini will be replaced with another mac mini, and my laptop will be occupied solely by my cat.
As ACB pointed out, wouldn’t App Store compatibility be a huge incentive not to design for such a hamstrung device? Why wouldn’t users just install the standard Mac software and be done with it?
Also, subsidized notebooks will require some serious pillow talk from both carriers and manufacturers. 3G and EV-DO have been options in notebooks for years, and it only makes the damn thing more expensive. (I read somewhere that DoCoMo is experimenting with this on a netbook.)
There is the additional problem of users’ perception of hardware stability and longevity. People normally expect a mobile phone to last through the entirety of their contract, and therefore justify the expense of buying that glossy iPhone. Given the “must upgrade now” and “fear malware and ignorance” mantras from every computer PR and marketing department, how many users expect their computer to last through the end of the week, much less the end of a two-year contract?
I want a MacBook shuffle.
Huh? Why not just do the following: add a multitouch glass display, make the display pivot and lock in backwards like a lot of Windoze tablets, and Apple’s ready to go. Full keyboard for when you want it, tablet when you don’t. Oh, and with a form factor similar to the Macbook Air, you’d be a road warrior.
(And I’ll give Apple my domain, macbooktouch.org [which I should really set up as a "rumors site" or something and rake in the Adwords $] for the price of one Macbook Touch…)
I don’t get this MacBook Touch. Is it just a tablet sized iPhone basically? What’s the point? Why would they make that before making a true tablet with a convertible screen other than to be “different” from all those PC tablets?
And yes… keyboards (and pads) rule.
Given the delays the App Store puts on updates, which must be vetted by Apple’s people, users are jumping at the opportunity to bypass it. If Apple offer an OSX App Store, they will have to lock down the rest of the system, iPhone-style, for it to be relevant.
I’m hoping that Jobs’ obsession with controlling the users doesn’t extend to Apple’s actual OSX computers. If it did, it may be time to do the unthinkable and switch to Windows. (For those things Linux won’t run, anyway.)
The Mac Book Pro is long overdue for an update. If you bought a 2.16 model a couple of years ago there’s currently little incentive to replace it unless you have need of the higher graphics processing.
Amazing! Apple Mac Book has already been very popular and now this technology is certainly going to rock the world.This is not only hi-tech but it is looking beautiful.
There are more features and articles on here:
http://www.touchuserguide.com
Keyboards rule.
The prospect of an interface that’s this much fun does appeal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKh1Rv0PlOQ . Is this where they nicked the technology from?
“This is why they bought P.A. Semi.”
The company that made low-power versions of the POWER chipset? I’m not seeing the logic there! Apple won’t be going back to the PowerPC CPU anytime soon (and even if they did, it has nothing to do with touchscreens and the Springboard derived OS).
Who the hell would wanna use a tablet as a phone? I have this mental image of someone holding something almost the size of a Macbook Air up to their ear…