Now that all that
iPod mess is over and done with, looks like it's as good of time as any to return to the world of Apple tablet rumors. A report from
Taiwan Economic News starts us off right, with "industry sources" telling the outlet it'll have a
9.6-inch multitouch screen, built-in HSDPA (so much
for Verizon), a
P. A. Semi processor, a "long lasting battery pack," and a $799 to $999 price tag. Most to all of that sounds
fairly familiar, but coming along with it is a new timeline: shipments will reportedly be delivered to Apple this December in preparation for a launch in February 2010. As for component providers, Taiwanese company DynaPack will reportedly be the exclusive supplier of battery packs, as much as 300,000 per month, while iPhone screen-maker
Wintek will be doing the display duties here, too. The author in question here does appear to have some manufacturing sources -- it looks like
he was right about the
Acer Timeline -- but at this point, we're not ready to believe anything without some photographic evidence of Steve Jobs personally adding the magical unicorn tears.
[Via
TabletAge]
posted Sep 15th 2009 1:17AM
Is that a real game for the iPhone? What is the name of the game?
Cro-Mag Ralley
Very cool game
Yes. Cro-Mag Rally.
Yeah, Cro-Mag's cool, but they are waiting to release the tablet until they can demonstrate its real gaming potential with the tablet version of Duke Nukem Forever...
Cro-mag Rally is an old school mac game.
what the hell is a P. A. Semi processor? OMG, more cpu specs to learn. (brain explodes)
P.A.Semi is the company that Apple bought last year that makes the cpu's for the normal ipods. S.J. wants them to make system-on-a-chip processors for future ipods, http://www.cultofmac.com/jobs-claims-pa-semiconductor-will-make-iphone-ipod-chips/2082, maybe this is it.
No buttons though? How cool can the game be?
What is this madness?!?! It appears as though investigative reporting has taken place... so odd, yet so welcomed.
i
why does it look like i types just "i"????
i said I
Oh FFS....
I (heart) photoshop!!!
now that's what i call heart failure.
wow.
wooow.
well played, sir.
They are REALLY trying to knock the Zune hype out... ugh Apple you truly are an evil genius!
Can't wait for the Zune tablet a couple of years later in all its me-too, lttp glory.
Don't disappoint me Redmond!
Considering Microsoft had a tablet PC back in 2002, I'm not sure what you're getting at.
redmond didn't disappoint...Windows XP tablet edition came out 7 years ago..
And since Redmond had absolutely nothing to copy from, they splendidly displayed their lack of innovation in all tablet "features" of Windows XP/Vista/7.
Own it MSFT fanboys! Tablet PCs never took off because of utter lack of innovation in software. This comes from a Thinkpad X60 tablet owner who has tried Windows XP Tablet edition, Windows Vista ultimate and Windows 7 editions.
About a year after Apple gives rest of the world on how to use tablet PCs, Redmond would start it's photocopiers and "improve" their tablet offerings.
That's what happened with WinMo. MSFT had the smartphone OS market all for themselves for nearly 5 years (after Palm lost and Apple had not entered) and never did they care to think about ease of use on mobile phones. Then iPhone is released, and 2 years later, MSFT comes up with a great, finger driven UI for their media player.
About a year after Apple gives rest of the world *a lesson* on how to use tablet PCs, Redmond would start it's photocopiers and "improve" their tablet offerings.
that right click thing was pretty smooth too ... good thing MS copied that- uh, never mind.
@crescentdavid
wow...seriously? Is that the best you got? Not only did Apple have a way of doing right-click for quite some time, they've since even innovated that beyond what big red could ever hope for. Oh wait, copied with Surface. Multi-touch? Copiers start your engines.
To be honest, I'm glad they've copied each other over the years. Businesses that do that means more competition which means lower prices for the consumer.
@ridley and Maddy
Don't try to walk and chew gum at the same time, guys. It'll just end in tears.
Its not so much about copying as it is stealing. Microsoft is notorious for semi-acquiring companies (most recently Caligari.com ) taking their great technology and then killing them -mostly to their advantage. Leaving said company high and dry.
Shame on Microsoft. It would a different story if they made improvements or great software, but they only make 'good enough software (and sometimes not)', 'cost effective/maximum profit (for them)' software.
Now I'm a firm believer in a capitalist system, but there is a a clear difference between earning profit and short changing your customers.
And before you start cussing me out blatantly and rudely Mark -We all know that you are the #1 Microsofty Fannie boy, claiming to know something about Macs too "because you own one."
Truth be known, ya' don't know jack about either platforms or their origins. So save it!
"And since Redmond had absolutely nothing to copy from"
Well they can't copy Mac OS more than they did...
Good lord guys, this is supposed to run a custom OS like the iPhone does, so it's a new type of product. It's not a "copy" of Windows tablet any more than Windows tablet is a copy of the Newton.
I say let Apple keep coming out with custom copies of OSX. It keeps degrading the quality of their OS. Their developers are forced to concentrate on multiple versions and it becomes more unstable with every release. iPhone OS has gotten worse with every update. Snow Kitten was disappointing, and though a tablet sounds cool in theory - once people see how clunky and cumbersome a full touch screen tablet with a limited OS is and a built in battery with a short battery life, they won't want one.
I'm getting sick of Apple. Microsoft may have some issues, but it's because of those issues that I know what I know today. There's a stereotype that Mac users don't know how to use computers. Though this isn't true for all, it somewhat fits. They blindly follow what Apple does because they have no choice and don't know else wise. Windows users, however, are used to tinkering with things and enjoy their freedom.
@Jordan
Are you kidding me? iPhone and Snow Leopard have both become more optimized with time. For the most part, Finder is still the same, just re-written in Cocoa.
When was the last time Microsoft actually developed their OS or any of their own products using their own high level programming tools? .NET and its Framework are beyond FATWARE and I shudder to see a day when Explorer, or IE be actually written in it. No, its actually written in the same VC++ 6.0, technology ala 1997. As for Office, the majority of which is kept in pseudo code; it is the defacto definition of piggie-ware. It is one of the rare examples of an application that actually runs more efficiently in Microsoft's patented pseudo code technology simply because compiled to native Intel instruction set would make it unable to fit in RAM. In RAM folks! What a joke.
Development in Cocoa and in Carbon is actually well thought out and doesn't suffer from 'platform fragmentation' contrary to your complete lack of understanding.
Alright, I'll give Snow Leopard a break, we'll give it more time to see how stable it is, but Leopard was definitely very unstable - due to the fact that developers had to work on the iPhone.
And you're just kidding yourself about the iPhone OS. 2.1, or maybe 2.2 by now I can't remember, was perfect. It worked, except for the email program constantly getting stuck in an endless updating cycle forcing me to restart my phone. 3.0 broke the phone again, and 3.1 didn't fix what was broken. And yes, my email still goes into an endless updating cycle like everybody else's does. My phone is the slowest and buggiest it has ever been. And I'm not the only one, everybody I know who has upgraded to 3.x wishes they didn't.
Yikes, "Battery Pack" sounds heavy.
Oh good lord!
It's like the people here just troll the web looking for any BS excuse to run another fluff Apple story!
THERE IS NO TABLET! Talking about it over, and over again will not make it real!
It worked with the iPhone...
I think it's like fairies. If you REALLY believe, they can exist.
At last, somebody with sense.
First the rumor mongers tell us (with a ton of "reliable" sources) that an Apple tablet will of course be presented in Fall, and even newspapers like the FT bought into the crappy Apple hype. We all know how that rumor turned out.
Now they tell us that it will come February? Yeah right. There is no Apple tablet, and there will never be.
Exactly. If we could believe everything we heard on the Internet, I'd be a Nigerian millionaire by now.
9.6 sucks for a tablet. I prefer carrying a thin netbook.
A tablet has to fit in the pocket .. so that means it's gotta be 6 inches diagonally .. not more than 7 and not less than 5inches.
The iPhone could actually fit a 5 inch display diagonally in its current form factor (measure it). The LCD would have to be flush with its edges .. I'd expect a 6 inch or 7 inch tablet's display to be flush with the edge too so there is no waste bulk.
Should we make a running count on the apple tablets rumored release date? I think this is at least the fifth rumored release date. the rumor before this one claimed the release date was for this fall, and sources were about ordered display modules, eg. same as this.
This tablet rumor has surfaced so often that even ig Steven Robs said it I wouldn't believe it.
There is no way in hell Apple is going to release an $800 netbook that doesn't have a physical keyboard. It would be suicide.
There is no way in hell Apple is going to release an $599 phone that doesn't have a bunch of physical keys. It would be suicide
There were many many touchscreen phones released before the iPhone with no keypad....O2,imate,HP and samsung to name a few so apple did not take a new groundbreaking and bold step into the unknown as you imply.
The 600 dollar phone was suicide, until AT&T subsidized the price. Most new cell phones cost ~$500, but are always subsidized. It never hurt them before and it's not going to nowl. That's not going to happen with a tablet
i would buy one of these bout as quickly as id buy a macbook air...
*sigh*
http://www.misterbg.org/AppleProductCycle/
Ah, ha! so that's what Apple intends to do with a low power chip company
I know they think that they need to wait to drum up popular support, but I would purchase the item at this time.
me too... unless it's crippled. if it can run regular programs then it's a winner. i'd buy it right now if i could run logic on it. but if it's just a bigger iphone, it's useless.
I'm excited for this thing, but I'm damn tired of all these rumors. Out with it already Apple! You guys are abunch of money grubbing jerks.
4" is a better size without a keyboard. Readable yet lightweight. For 9.6" they need a keyboard.
Couldn't agree more.
A max of 6" with an on-screen thumb keyboard would probably work well, but a 10" slate is a huge PITA to hold and enter text with. Neither on-screen keyboards nor handwriting recognition nor care bear magic is going to change that.
Feb....no wait April! NO FO RLZ YO JULY! Its been leaked! Official! September! Macrumors just heard from someone inside apple! It will be released January of 2012.
Pathetic. Its always amusing to watch the fanbois snort all this vaporware as if they were in an oxygen bar. Meanwhile the rest of the computer industry has been using tablets and slates for years with newer and newer refinements with each OS MS releases as well as newer and newer hardware.
But of course if Apple ever releases a tablet it will be as flawless as all their other 1.0 releases in the past, and no doubt SATA bug free.
*walks away laughing* I was once a Mac user. I drank the juice for 3 years. Then realized that Apple's success basically boils down to: look at us. We make pretty and aren't MS. Once you drop that mask what is underneath is pretty damn ugly. Questionable polices, crap hardware that overheats if you push it too hard, initial buggy OS releases, patches that generally work but occasionally are crap releases, warranty work that you need to sometimes argue with the genius to get done, and generally planned obsolescence.
I said enough. If that was suppose to be computing nirvana then I will gladly accept the Windows hell.
I'm thinking different alright. I'm thinking of an OS that I don't need to download a bagillion haxies to make my own. I'm thinking of hardware that I can extend my warranty past 3 years. I'm thinking of an OEM that will send someone to ME to repair my hardware. I'm thinking of games that I care about. In short. Apple may someday release this fabled tablet. I couldn't care if it was God's gift to the computing indistry, no doubt iTards will make it out to be that, I wouldn't touch it if you paid me.
You fooled me Apple. You fooled me with your commercials and your fanbase making your platform out to be great. It isn't and I'm damn well spitful about it. Esp after dropping 4 grand on hardware and software. I recouped 1.5 but still. Never again.
"...Questionable polices, crap hardware that overheats if you push it too hard, initial buggy OS releases, patches that generally work but occasionally are crap releases, warranty work that you need to sometimes argue to get done...", "...an OS that I don't need to download a bagillion haxies to...."
Are you sure you are not talking about Microsoft there? lol
@John Doe,
looks like u forgot the sarcasm tag.
For that price! hahahaha! I wouldn't doubt that they really thing someone would buy it for that cost
Will it have a camera?!!!
Not if they intend to make it a great gaming machine.
Did uncle Steve tell us what should we use it for? He knows better.
seriously though.... front-facing maybe?
But can it take pictures?
I still want a true netbook from Apple. I just don't see touch computing taking off beyond small consumer devices such as the iPod touch, MS Zune, phones, etc. If you look at the Macbook Air there is plenty of room to on either side of the keyboard to make it smaller and provide the customer with a 10" screen. That combined with OS X may begin to capture another market.
I also look at it this way, Jobs said they would never use Flash memory in their media players because it just wasn't a viable option. Now Apple is saying that they see the netbook market as niche and won't sell something that is not well designed. I think we will see a true Apple netbook before we see a large touch screen pad because the market is so slim.
Its not so much about copying as it is stealing. Microsoft is notorious for semi-acquiring companies (most recently Caligari.com ) taking their great technology and then killing them -mostly to their advantage. Leaving said company high and dry.
Shame on Microsoft. It would a different story if they made improvements or great software, but they only make 'good enough software (and sometimes not)', 'cost effective/maximum profit (for them)' software.
Now I'm a firm believer in a capitalist system, but there is a a clear difference between earning profit and short changing your customers.
And before you start cussing me out blatantly and rudely Mark -We all know that you are the #1 Microsofty Fannie boy, claiming to know something about Macs too "because you own one."
Truth be known, ya' don't know jack about either platforms or their origins. So save it!
Wow, even more apple-fanboyism in this thread than usual.
1. $799? Are you on crack? Double that, at the least. This is apple, not acer, and screens like that don't come cheap. Unless its some shit 768 x xxxx display, which we know isn't going to happen.
2. No, verizon does not currently do HSPDA, but they said over a year ago that their 4g network would be LTE, which is GSM. By the time this tablet actually comes out, it would probably have an LTE chip, which means verizon is still in the running. And after seeing how poorly AT&T handles data devices, its not likely apple would give it to them.
You're probably right about the data. AT&T is already getting hosed by Apple on the iPhone; no way they and Apple would reach another agreement. It's way more Apple to play one vendor off another. Whoever carries the data for this new device, it WON'T be AT&T.
Wow, talk about a high price point. I was waiting to see exactly what this was going to retail for but it now looks like I should just go ahead & finish my Dell Mini 10v OSX netbook. No way am I spending that kind of money for a freaking tablet with just a 9" screen. I guess I was just dreaming to think that maybe this would be a $400 retail item. This constant overpricing & the never available Midsize-tower system I had hopes Apple would produce has really disappointed me. I swear Apple is like the college kid who suddenly becomes a superstar & gets such a big head that no one can make him listen. To bad too, because all this overpricing of hardware is going to bite them in the butt eventually.
To be honest, I couldn't really care anymore!
We've seen Apple bulls**t about not putting camera's in the iPod touch because it wouldn't be 'cost effective' (yeah, and thats why you prepped it for one then isn't it!), and say their not interested in the netbook market; and not care about taking Apple TV forward (so much for Apple innovation!!!!) ... so lets just leave them to get on with whatever they want - Im sure they will regardless of what we say and think!
I don't know; something happened at Apple ... they got lazy, relied to much upon existing success to the detriment of innovative new products!
As is par for the course, Apple are shooting themselves in the foot again.
They are going to price themselves out of contention with this crippled tablet of theirs.
The shiny edges won't make up for the lack of a keyboard. And if they plan on using any form of the iPhone OS on there, then it's automatically a fail.
Apple just doesn't seem to get it when it comes to computers.
They can count on continuing to enjoy their 7% marketshare, which would perhaps drop down to 5 or 6% with a limited tablet that will come in at nearly $1000.
I it features HSDPA, wouldn't it need to go through FCC first. With the iPhone, Apple went away from their normal release strategy (product available 'tomorrow') to avoid being outed by FCC... so wouldn't that apply to tha tablet as well?
As much as I love my iPhone and my iPod Touch, the price for this Apple Tablet is way off feasible. $800-1000??? For a 9.6 inch tablet? I could buy 3 or 4 netbooks for that... a mean ass laptop, a kidney from a homeless man. You get the idea. The die hard Apple elite fanboys will buy it just because it's Apple. But it will not break any ground into the hearts of America with that price. For a 9.6 inch tablet to succeed, it's going to need to be between $400 and 600 and have higher standards than the app store.
Honestly, 90% of the games look like ass on the iPhone already... do I really want to see that level of piss poor graphics on a larger screen?
bah humbug...Sony X
It looks like the new Dell Adamo http://www.adamobydell.com/xps/uk
I'm totally buying one of these macs once they come out. http://www.datarecoverygroup.com/services/mac.htm
But will it have a camera?
I cannot wait until Jobs comes to stage with this thing and say "That is a great gaming machine, unlike the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3...."
Sure many people will buy it, but it wont be anything special. Just an oversized iPhone/iPod touch.
$ 799 to $ 999????? WTF?
That's Apple's hardware profit driven mentality for you....can't even imagine only having a virtual keyboard to deal with all the time.
I'll take a convertible Netbook or even a full size CTO laptop instead (see Thinkpad X200, HP T2, Fujitsu, etc)......that has refined their features since 2000.....
Remember when Apple used to innovate rather than follow???
We miss you Rainbow APPLE.......