Picture an iPod Touch...with a 10-inch screen.
With little in the way of details, and almost no sourcing, AppleInsider’s Kaspar Jade is reiterating the assertion that Apple will launch a 10-inch multitouch tablet device in early 2010.
Conceptually, it would a really big iPod Touch, which itself is an iPhone without the built-in 3G radio for cellular voice calls.
But, according to Jade, the touch tablet actually would have a 3G radio, but only for a data connection, possibly tied initially to Verizon’s wireless network. Last May, rumors of the same basic device surfaced again.
According to Forbes.com’s Brian Caulfield, an Apple Tablet could problems for the vital community of Apple mobile software developers by making development more complex and “fragmenting” the developer ecosystem. But he doesn’t really make clear how or why that would happen. The iPhone and iPod Touch have identical screen sizes and resolution, but an Apple Tablet would be much larger, he says. An iPhone game developer would want to shift his app to the larger tabler, but might it find it difficult as a result, Caulfield suggests.
I agree there are UI issues in designing or sizing an application for a handheld versus a large-screen client. But, though I’m not a developer, I would think the more critical issue for developers would be what operating system the tablet would use. Any iPhone programmers out there with some thoughts on this?
PC World’s Ian Paul exactly captures the fervid quality of the speculation, which often cites what he calls “Mr. A. Source-familiar-with-the-companies (not to be confused with Mr. A. Source-close-to-the-company or Mr. A. Source-with-knowledge-of-company-plans).”
Our own IonApple blogger, Yoni Heisler, weighs recent Apple Tablet speculation by Scott Moritz, of TheStreet.com, who also sees a larger-screen all-touch device in the works.
A multi-touch tablet is a very different animal from the equally long-rumored, and long-denied, Apple Netbook, which top executives at Apple have ridiculed as junky and, worse from Apple’s viewpoint, as offering a lousy User Experience.” Not to mention that netbook profit margins are thin, something that Apple views the way most of us view bubonic plague.
The AppleInsider link has a new “artist’s rendition” of the rumored tablet, and to me it looks just like a big square iPod Touch. I admit it’s intriquing: a large, thin, fairly light (my own fervid speculation here) display with the fluidity of Apple’s multi-touch technology could be as pathbreaking on this size device as it was on the iPhone.
Much of the speculation around both form factors is based on such things as Apple’s 2008 quarter-billion-dollar acquisition of PA Semi, a maker of lower-power, 65-bit mobile chips, and the hiring of outsiders with extensive chip experience, such as Bob Drebin, former CTO of Advanced Micro Devices’ graphics product group.
But a convincing argument has been made that Apple isn’t seeking chips but chip expertise in several areas so it can work more effectively with silicon suppliers like Intel for…whatever the next mobile product actually turns out to be.
