Those Apple Tablet rumors keep churning and churning. Today ABC News sums up what’s going on in the Mac Tablet rumor space. There’s nothing new here though. Just idle speculation and the repetition of rumors.
Like many, I’ve had some supposedly second and third-hand sources tell me an Apple touchish-tabletish device is in the works. But that’s only a couple people spread out over more than one year of time. In other words, Apple may be working on something, but who knows if it’s going to be released as a product.
My guess–and this is only a guess based on no tips or anything–is that Apple will make a larger iPhone-slash-iPod touch-ish like device and this may or may not be what people are hearing about.
Maybe Apple has something more revolutionary in the works, maybe something more Tablet PC like. However, I doubt it. It wouldn’t fit into Apple’s product line. I’d love to see one and I’d buy one in an instant, but I just don’t see it happening yet. Apple would need to dramatically improve its handwriting, gesture, and shape recognition. That wouldn’t be that hard to do, but I just don’t see it happening. Now maybe, just maybe, the education market is so compelling to Apple that they’re going to rethink their engineering efforts and build a notebook with integrated handwriting support. Maybe.
Anyway, even ABCNews.rumor.com isn’t enough for you, there’s always Jason O’Grady over at The Apple Core or MacRumors to keep the rumor mill primed.
Isn’t this fun? 🙂
One thing is predictably true here though: If Apple releases a Tablet–that’s even slightly close to the approach Microsoft has taken–the Tablet market will finally take off like we’ve all figured it would. There’s no doubt in my mind that Apple would release a quality product–whatever it does–and the arguments over whether a Tablet makes sense will all be over. Then it will turn into one of who has a Tablet that better matches your needs. For the sake of the overall Tablet market, I hope this is what happens.
By the way, same thing can be said for the MID market too, which at this time is owned by the iPhone.