According to a report in
Barron's, a phantom "veteran analyst" has
actually handled Apple's
heavily rumored tablet-device-thing. If you believe what the report is laying down (and honestly, that's a big if -- analysts have a funny habit of making things up) the tablet is still on for a
September unveiling, with a shelf life beginning somewhere in November. What's also interesting about the report is that the analyst claims the device will be marketed somewhere in the $699-$799 range -- as was
previously rumored -- and will be aimed at uses as a
media player (with some kind of potential Apple TV tie-in) and gaming device. The analyst, who obviously declined to be named, said that the tablet is simply awaiting Steve Jobs' final blessing, and claimed that other ODMs have paused new products until they see the finished version of what Apple has in store. That last bit is potentially the most interesting of all, as we've recently heard reports of device-makers
freezing new production until 2010, which definitely raises the possibility that the industry is holding its breath to see what kind of
new trick Apple has up its sleeve. Yeah -- things are about to get fun. [Warning: read link requires subscription]
[Via
9to5mac]
posted August 2nd 2009 5:15PM
That thing looks damn heavy.
as thick as a notebook
Don't worry it's not heavy. They're just trying to give you more air for your money.
IF i can install windows 7 on it, i am sold!
OneLove)
It is going to be using ARM, so no win7.
@onelove, I'm hoping Windows 7 is the default OS choice tbh.
OneLove, it will probably have Bootcamp. ;)
Nobody Knows what it loks like. This is just a sketch from an old patent application. Just sayin' ...
I am a little dubious about this news. Sounds like some analyst was maybe worried about his long AAPL position after the FCC news and made up some story to hype it up and exit on Monday.....Or they could just wish to remain anonymous to avoid falling out a window in the near future.
I guess time will tell if this is true or not, it sounds appealing in some ways and like a potential disaster in others.
god i hope they dont push this as a gaming device, the sad thing is i bet they will ... what a joke.
It's a drawing. How heavy can it be?
Oh look! Apple made a tablet! How original! I wonder how long it will be until M$ decides to play Me-too and copy it!
Sorry, would=wouldn't in paragraphs 1 & 2. Doh.
@uwaga
I do not know if you were being sarcastic, but just incase:
Tablets have been around for almost 10 years (or at least mainstream).
ps This does not mean that I think Apple is doing a "me-too" or have any opinion about this phantom device.
@uwaga dude
Hey Ape Man get a clue. MS was the one who brought the market of tablets. There are quite a few nice feature fliendly tables out there so please STFU. IF you think this will be a success then think again, this perhaps would be within the fanboys followers but not mainstream.
There are a lot of reasons why hardware manufacturers are freezing new hardware. Mainly because the Intel is delaying introduction of faster Atom chips for fear of cannibalizing it's upscale chips. The atom coupled with an out of date GPU is not that gravy. Additionally, an ARM based Apple tablet would give the Google Chrome OS a boost and realign the low end netbook market away from Intel. ARM is basically 80% the performance of Atom at 5x the battery life and 10x the standby...couple it with Open GL ES 2.0 GPU and you have a pretty good device, and potentially a new standard emerging. This will force Intel's hand into upping the spec of it's Atom/GPU chipset quicker, so manufacturers are waiting for all of this to shakeout before investing R&D on new designs. Also, with the $21 Windows XP OEM license sunsetting - vendors are not excited about sticking the $50 Windows 7 starter or the $100 Windows 7 Home Prem on top of $200 hardware.
Didn't Apple purchase a chip producer to make customized cpus?
^ http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/23/apple-buys-chip-p-a-semi-chip-designer-intel-says-wha/
Don't tell me those ODM biyatches are starting to load paper into their copiers already.
What does he mean by paused new products? They've just decided to stop manufacture of their own tablet PCs? That sounds a little exaggerated to me. Surely these companies realize that Apple could never come out with anything unique. A tablet is just a flat computing device with a display and a processor. Not much you can change that design. What can Apple possibly due to make a better tablet than, say, Archos besides stick on an Apple logo. That's all Apple loyalists are paying extra for, right, an Apple logo. So why would these companies wait just for Apple to stick an Apple logo on a tablet?
Commenters on Engadget always say that Apple just copies everyone else and never innovates. So this story must be a lie and no companies are waiting for Apple to come out with a tablet. Besides, it's already be mentioned countless numbers of times that "tablets will never be successful because they are niche products." So why would these ODMs bother to wait until Apple comes out with a tablet device that's already destined to fail, sight unseen.
Besides, netbooks are the miniscule computers that all the financially-challenged individuals desire. $300 is the Atom-powered sweet spot. Not some useless $800 tablet device without a physical keyboard and sporting an Apple logo.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates was an early supporter of tablet PCs. He truly loved them. He believed they were more than just a niche device. If he couldn't get them to sell with all the mighty backing of his company, certainly Steve Jobs and Apple don't stand a chance in hell of selling more than 100 units a month. Another iPod/iPhone disaster in the making.
@iphonez...
Two points:
1. OEMs are most likely halting production since Windows 7 is coming out in October. Considering that there is a version of Windows 7 tailored to netbooks, and therefore will be on netbooks (as opposed to XP), these OEMs are actually trying to do away with stock that has XP. This would make sense since no one would buy a netbook with XP if one for the same price comes with Windows 7, especially since W7 run well on netbooks.
This also makes sense since Asus makes a tablet netbook, which would most likely benefit from W7's multi-touch capabilities.
2. People who buy netbooks are generally not so poor that they can only spend $300 on a computer, but instead do not see the point of buying such an expensive computer to browse the internet and check email. A netbook fills the majority of users' needs, and is easy to carry around.
In all honesty, unless you are a family on a tight budget, a $2000 computer is not ridiculously expensive. People do have the money to afford a Mac, but a good number do not see the added benefit for the money, since most people just use their computer for basic things such as word processing, perusing the internet, and checking mail.
@Quix, more like: It doesn't matter what this mystery product will actually turn out to be - it's guaranteed the Apple-Loving Engadget Commenter Horde will praise it with the burning intensity of a thousand suns. And they'll let us know about it. Oh wait, they already are...
it's hilarious how apple sackriders always get so butthurt when people don't say nice things about apple. you guys sure are sensitive little girls. if you can't take criticism towards your beloved apple, just head over to giz since they only allow apple sackriders to post.
I agree, it does look heavy.
I am highly dubious about the tablet idea, never seen a good slate and I have always wanted to, Fujitsu has been a niche leader in it, but niche is the word.
Weight, usability, and what to actually do with it after impressing your friends is all highly dubious.
If Apple is doing this I sure hope they make the "hobby" disclaimer cause it will take a lot more than what they did with the iPhone to make the tablet market go orbital; you can after all hold a phone sized device for quite a while and such things tend to be used in short bursts. As others have said, hanging onto a tablet with one hand and typing with the other sucks.
About 12 years ago I developed a tablet device, on the back of it was a tilt/rotate point that you fitted your hand into so you didn't have to grip it; it used your body to stabilise the device as you operated it with the free hand while the supporting hand's thumb had an internal control surface it could contact. It was made of very lightweight materials (surfboard composites), was a sealed unit, used a flashable ROM to store the OS and Apps, pizo electric cooling, WiFi and network side storage of files and settings that would auto configure any unit you picked up to be yours; it also functioned as a media receive and broadcast unit. The back had a fold out thin film solar panel for when it wasn't in use and half the thing was battery.
Anyway... I didn't have a global multi-billion dollar company to force it on everyone with and I got over it. All I got to say, it's the most challenging form factor, more so than wearable/augmented computing.
Star Trek has made us all delusional with their Styrofoam mockups.
I'm interested in more details...
Hmm.. Who isn't? :obvious-smiley:
Yes, the other tablet makers would freeze production *specifically* and *only* because of Apple's netbook launch, NOT because the economy has tanked and they aren't selling nearly as many netbooks. What's with you fanboys? Is everything about Apple? I bet the *entire* US economy tanked because Americans didn't buy enough Macbook Pros, iMacs or iPods.
@Bob,
If I was making a device to compete against Apple, I'd do the same. I wouldn't waste billions of development dollars on a new device until Apple revealed its hand. Look at what happened with the iPhone.
Competitors have wasted billions on development and production of smartphones that were simply overshadowed by the iPhone. All those consumer dollars that are going to the iPhone were supposed to go to other smartphone makers. All players in the market have been victims of the Apple factor before and its simply a wiser course of action to wait until you know what you're dealing with before you devise a strategy against it.
@Bob
Who you calling fanboys? Your reply was to someone who was just asking for more details... AND the comment about other manufacturers comes from the analyst who supposedly handled the device. Jeeze, dumbest comment I've read all day. No need to get all butthurt just because there's a rumor that other tablet-makers are waiting to see what Apple has in store. It's not THAT far-fetched.
@malkmus, thanks for the "butthurt" comment ... *laughed*
ulcat
The PC industry is not like the phone industry, Microsoft's OS is super mature, and PC vendors have thwarted every single Apple entry into the market for the last 20 years.
Apple is a relatively insignificant player in this industry, where they only hold a nominal marketshare of 8% at best, and have fallen into 5th place in the US alone (even less world wide).
The other 92% need not worry so much about the insignificant 8%, at least not as much as fanboys try to make it out to be.
Like apple could freeze asus development.
Whats happening?
Windows 7 is around the corner.
And as intel has refuted claims of pine view coming late so it will be released.
If you add these up the asus etc development teams might be busy working with the pine view cpus and new netbook releases with windows 7. It doesnt surprice if there is a freeze on OLD atom developments as it cearly is going to be obsolete in cost wise in about 2-3 monts.
Oh, and windows 7 has touchscreen support. It could be the analyst has seen a windows 7 touchtable to be released when windows 7 goes live. Might be a shock for apple if they release anything.
Exactly Newone,
Let the ignorant iFanboys think otherwise.
Apple hasn't held any sort of significant position to freeze development in the computer industry in nearly 30 years.
A little bit of math is in order:
8% < 92%
Apple being stuck at
@Bob
Did you just enter the year 2009? The ONLY computers that have been selling well are the cheapest ones, ie:netbooks.
Manufacturers would hold productions completely for a product that is still selling well. Perhaps a little slower than under ideal conditions, but well nonetheless.
Regardless of how fashionable it is to hate on everything Apple does, to say that it would make sense to hold off offering new versions of a product that will possibly be directly competing with one of the best marketers/computer designers in the world wouldn't be a bad decision especially with the rumored device only a few months away.
You can argue the semantics of price all day, but what you can't argue is the fact that when Apple launches their take on an existing market, the majority of the time it ends up with them owning that segment or at least taking a very large percentage of it.
The only true flop of a product I can think of since jobs has been back has been the cube (possibly the appleTV), and the reality was that people just weren't ready for it yet. Hence, the mini.
Again, maybe Apple isn't for you. Don't buy it. Other people obviously enjoy the experience they are having with their Apple products. If they don't they either take it back or bitch and whine so incessantly about it that it's heard the world over on every message board and blog. Apple is consistently rated high in customer service, high in product quality and I think the sales of their latest entries to market speak for themselves.
Apple has 30 billion in the bank and is an american company that on some levels is doing great things in the tech industry/retail in one of the worst economies in our lifetime. There has to be some part of that that even the haters see as positive.
The only thing that could make me happier is if they'd quick dicking around with the app store and give me f-ing bluray already. But so far my trusty PC is doing a fine job serving up my bluray goodness and letting me mess with .net here and there.
That and bring their assembly and production into the US. I'd pay more, not a ton, but I'd definitely pay a few hundred more per computer and probably 50 more per iPhone if I new it was giving US workers jobs.
Jesus, one day I'll learn teh internetz.
paragraphs 2&3 would=wouldn't
sorry, especially since it changes the entire outcome of the post. Ha.
Oh, and one more thing. I'd be perfectly content with 8% of anything that had me holding 30 billion dollars in cash and making hand over fist in the worst economy in decades.
Go ask the rest of the tech community how they are doing.
Quix, I disagree, most windows users are NOT sheep. Most don't even give a fuck about microsoft. They wish they could afford a mac, especially the tweenagers. Mac users are just sheep with money.
Anybody that knows anything about product development knows how ridiculous the claim that they are have frozen development until apple releases whatever they release. If they release. If whatever they release isn't crap.
Lets look at asus eee keyboard. The protorype was revealed in january, and consumers might be able to buy it in august. That's 7 months delay from working prototype to final product from conveyor line. If you add the time to develop prototype it will easily come to over a year.
So if they are waiting to see what apple comes up by and then using it as a influence you might see prototypes in january 2010 and production line start up by the fall of 2010, a year late.
So it's ludicrious to think that developers are on a extended summer vacation for rumored apple launch. Whatever they are cooking up in asus probably has to do with intel pine view and windows 7. Old atom development is frozen and new netbook development is consentrated on intel pine view. By christmas the first ones should appear. Netbooks capable of displaying hdtv.
Also Asus eee keyboard is a innotative novel design and we might see more new and novel, and innotative designs from asus soon.
As a incoming freshman who desperately needs an inking solution in a tablet, I'm waiting to see what Apple's gonna do. If nothing surfaces by the 23rd of August, it'll be a Lenovo tablet for me.
uwaga dude: Next time you envision "sheep," consider the ratio of sheep to the herder and his dog, then think about that Windows marketshare. More people blindly walk in and buy Windows boxes than any of us can fathom. Probably mostly out of habit or fear of change or losing compatibility.
I don't know about this. From the description it sounds like it's just gonna be a tablet mixed with a cheep netbook, probably a bit overpriced at that.
Apple selling overpriced hardware? unheard of!
we all know the apple flock will jump for joy for this they always do.
Wait, don't you mean the "people who like usable, good products" flock?
Fix'd.
Wait, don't you mean the "people who like somewhat usable, over-priced, and incredibly unsecured products" flock?
Double Fix'd.
Wait, don't you mean "people with severe Stockholm Syndrome"?
triple fix'd
That looks like ass
Damn I really want to know the specs on the itablet damn u apple the suspense is killing me
iTablet? Don't you mean...MacsiPad?
Jack,
Brilliant :)
Does the specs include "For skirt-wearing men only" or is that merely coincidental?
hmmmmm....
lol that much for that shit? Good try apple.. but NO