The countdown is on. There are only 9 more days until Steve Jobs takes the stage and introduces an Apple Tablet. Apple, in typical fashion, has done a good job of keeping the lid on what the Tablet (or iSlate) actually does, but with d-day fast approaching, the leaked reports are coming far more frequently and from more reliable sources.
The countdown is on. There are only 9 more days until Steve Jobs takes the stage and introduces an Apple Tablet. Apple, in typical fashion, has done a good job of keeping the lid on what the Tablet (or iSlate) actually does, but with d-day fast approaching, the leaked reports are coming far more frequently and from more reliable sources. A few days ago, Boy Genius Report (which has a strong record when it comes to Apple related rumors) cited a well-connected Apple contact who relayed some interesting tidbits about what we can expect in the rumored Tablet.
- The tablet’s multi-touch gestures are “out of control.”
- It’s powered by an incredibly fast ARM CPU
- It runs on the iPhone kernel.
- The internal model number is K48AP.
- There hasn’t been an updated iPhone OS build because there’s too much tablet-related code/references in the OS and Apple obviously didn’t want that to leak. Oops.
- The tablet is basically an “iPhone on steroids.”
Wow, now that sure is a lot to take in.
As an aside, Apple can’t get enough of multitouch, and the technology has slowly but surely become more prominent across Apple’s entire product line, from its line of laptops and, more recently, to the Magic Mouse. It remains unclear exactly how users will interact with the tablet, but it goes without saying that the current range of gesture support on the iPhone would be insufficient to justify an entirely new product – and with Apple applying for multitouch patents on a regular basis, I can only imagine what type of innovative gesture support Apple has baked into the tablet.
Incidentally, analyst Matt Thornton of AVI Securities, citing a nameless component supplier for the upcoming Tablet, told investors that the Tablet is already in “full production”, which corroborates previous reports suggesting a release date as early as late April.
