According to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has thrown himself back into work at Apple, and is focusing almost exclusively on finalizing details for what is expected to be a 2010 launch of an Apple Tablet.
According to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has thrown himself back into work at Apple, and is focusing almost exclusively on finalizing details for what is expected to be a 2010 launch of an Apple Tablet.
Jobs laser like focus on the most minute details of the tablet has left some Apple employees “jarred”, according to the report, as the work environment at Apple apparently loosened up a bit under Tim Cook’s command in Jobs’ 6 month absence.
But with Jobs back in the fray, things are operating at full throttle, a fact which suggests that the upcoming Apple tablet may be game changing in ways we might not yet realize.
Mr. Jobs’s involvement is a sign of how important the new gadget is for Apple. In the months before Apple launched the iPhone in 2007 — now its fastest-growing product — the CEO was also on top of every detail, such as the curvature of the phone’s back, said people familiar with the matter.
The iPhone, of course, helped launch a smartphone revolution. In one fell swoop, the innovative features of Apple’s revolutionary device prompted handset makers across the board to go back to the drawing board and actually deliver phones that consumers actually enjoyed using. RIM’s CEO has even publicly credited the iPhone for helping to boost awareness of smartphones, and for ultimately increasing sales for the company.
The iPhone, though, was entering an existing and proven market. In contrast, there really isn’t a viable tablet market today, and previous attempts to deliver a tablet have all ended in failure. So in that respect, Apple has a much taller order on its hands if it hopes that its upcoming tablet will revolutionize the tech industry in the same way that the iPhone did when it first launched in July 2007.
As it stands now, analysts expect that the rumored Apple tablet will be a multimedia and Internet enabled device capable of playing movies, music, games, and applications. That’s all well and good, but if the tablet is anything like the iPhone, and there’s no guarantee that that’s yet the case, then Apple will undoubtedly have some surprises for us when, or if, it ever gets around to actually announcing the damned thing.
