Asus Insider Claims Apple Tablet Is Real

CaptainCrunchyApple writes "According to cnet.co.uk the oft-rumoured Apple Tablet PC is actually very real, and on its way soon. CNET claims to have spoken to an anonymous tipster at Asus who claims to be working with Apple to produce the tablet. 'We're guessing it'll be based on Intel Core architecture, a tweaked version of Leopard, and have all the multi-touch, CoverFlow goodness we've seen in the iPhone and iPod touch. All this begs the question: Can Apple turn the Tablet PC into a success when previous attempts have failed? The short answer is 'yes'. Any company that can make a mobile phone with no buttons, no picture messaging, slow Web access and no video capture into the most desirable phone on the planet can easily make tablets popular.'"

Nifty.

Tablet PC's have been cornered by Windows for a while now, it'll be nice to see some competition in the market.

Re:

Shame that they've been pretty useless for everyone but graphic artists so far eh? The summary is a little overoptimistic about Apple's ability to sell something - lack of picture messaging is hardly a problem when you have email, and nobody uses picture e

Re:Nifty.

Yes - they're called "unlock codes", and are available (freely, under law in some countries). Usually you can buy them, or have a service apply them to your phone.

Re:Nifty.

I should have been more specific. I'm talking about officially-supported unlocking, and an officially-supported SDK. So you can keep your phone under warranty and not have to wait for hacks to use your own SIM or applications.

The contractual reasons for not having officially-supported unlocking are well known. And I have to mention that my Treo 600 was locked to Verizon, I couldn't use it with any other service provider. Oh, and there was no SIM card that I could access, and the battery also wasn't user-replacable, just for the record. The officially supported SDK comes out in January or so, if you don't want to use the third party one that's been out for months already.

You're not hallucinating, you simply don't make the distinction between official and unofficial.

You're right, it doesn't matter to me whose sdk is used to write third-party apps for my iPhone. Why should it?

As for GPS, cell triangulation is NOT GPS. Considering there are phones out there with actual bona fide GPS in them, having to use a rough technology like cell triangulation seems a bit cheap.

Fair enough - works more than well enough for me where I live, maybe I'm supposed to be bothered that it's coming from cellphone tower locations instead of time shifts measured from geosynchronous orbit but, functions the same from my perspective. And even if it didn't exist, that lack of one minor feature is more than made up for by the usability of the rest of the iPhone.

I'm not disliking it out of ignorance. Not having an official SDK or an official unlocking method, which can leave your phone inoperable with the latest firmware, is a show-stopper.

Ah, so you _are_ intentionally distorting facts. Because this latest is quite a backpedal from your initial points that it couldn't be unlocked and had no SDK.

Re:Nifty.

I know a few people who make their living simply trading stocks. They don't consider themselves "stock traders" by profession, just people who invest well enough that they move to a different city every couple of months so they can see the world.

Anyway, I occasionally run into them at Starbucks, because where there's wifi, there's an office. The interesting thing about this group of guys is that they all use tablet PCs (IBMs I think -- they're black and don't look cheap like a Dell) to track their finances (which they constantly do).

I don't know if there's something about tablet PCs that is useful to the financial+mobile set, but until it was mentioned above, I never considered tablets would be useful to artists and designers.

Really?

"Asus Claimes Apple Tablet Is Real"

Can someone comfirme that, since I really doubte it?

Re:Really?

Netcraft Confirms It.

Previous Attempts?!?!

All this begs the question: Can Apple turn the Tablet PC into a success when previous attempts have failed?

The link they give goes to an article about the Newton. I don't mean to be pedantic, but comparing a PDA to a Tablet?

Re:Previous Attempts?!?!

For sufficiently small values of "success".

-jcr

Great editorialization...

I got a Razr because it was cheap, and a good phone. A lot of phones are similar in quality. They cannot hold a candle to the iPhone when it comes to the software interface. I am not an Apple fan boy, and I would GLADLY give up my Razr right now if the iPhone were available to Verizon customers. Do you know clunky its software is, compared to Apple's? If you think the iPhone sucks because it has a few missing features, then that's fine, but you clearly haven't paid attention to how bad a lot of the alternatives are.

Fine, but Apple's handwriting recognition sucks!

As much as I'm a "loyal" Apple user ( I came from linux, and I do love OS X ) I will say flat out that Microsoft's handwriting input is years ahead of Apple's. Microsoft has thoroughly integrated it, with very impressive recognition and overall it *feels* right, like MS really put a lot of love into it.

As it stands today, "Ink", Apple's handwriting interface leaves a lot to be desired. In principle, it's nicely done. A good sort of floating scratch pad which you can write on, which will insert into the active doc. But, the quality of the handwriting recognition is pretty poor. God knows Apple has the resources to do this right. I'm sure there's a lot of left over experience from Newton ( if Jobs didn't fire all of those guys ), but as it stands, if Apple released a tablet with Ink it would be useless for anything but consuming media.

Frankly, I don't want to consume media. I want to use a computer, and a tablet is a nice form factor. I know I'd never write code on a tablet, but I'd like to think I *could*. I used to sketch out prototype algorithms using graffiti on a palm ( which I'd later edit/compile/etc on my desktop ), it was a nice thing to be able to do. What I don't want is a real computer which is so hobbled by bad input that it's only good for music, internet and video.

Seems to me Apple *could* do it... but who knows. Microsoft pulled it off, so, let's let competition bloom!

If this is true...

If this is true, and Asus have just completely blown Apple's surprise, then Asus are about to have a really, really bad day.

Woe betide the man who steals Steve Jobs' thunder.

Why have a tablet........

when you can have a Microsoft table [youtube.com]. :-)

Previous thoughts from Jobs about tablets

Steve had not been forewarned about the tablet question, but it became obvious he had given the topic serious consideration. He listed a number of reasons why Apple was not interested. And they provide some of the best insights into why Apple does or does not do a product.

The tablet situation

First, he said, tablet computers were not a big enough market for Apple to spend its limited resources chasing. And even if the market grew, it would not reach a size to be of interest. The form factor was all wrong. Apple was more interested in defining markets than trying to catch other companies that were busy trying to create a market for questionable products. Still, some of the NIH scientists pressed the issue. Steve's follow-up answer was the most impressive I had heard him give.

First, he said, the wireless bandwidth for huge images, plus the security needed to successfully do what NIH wanted, was just not on the horizon. (Apple staff had been notably fuzzy earlier in the briefing about wireless standards after 802.11b.) Plus, tablets' screen resolution was nowhere near that required for NIH's high-quality medical images. Finally, any product designed to work in the medical field would attract significant liability. The hint was that Apple wasn't interested in anything with that kind of potential liability. That pretty well shut down the issue.

So, no tablet. But NIH at the time had more than 2,000 BlackBerry users. The NIH CIO wanted Apple to push RIM for better compatibility. Tough: Steve basically said it was another niche product, and that while there would be convergence of computing and phones, the BlackBerry was not that product. He did not see that compatibility as an area where Apple should spend any effort. So what will the converged product - what is being called the "iPhone" (even though that's a Cisco trademark) - look like? He said the really converged, ubiquitous devices would have to fit in your shirt pocket, and be better than either a phone or a computer by itself.

From:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jan/04/newmedia.media [guardian.co.uk]

Since this article ran, Apple has demonstrated two technologies that might change that answer a bit. 802.11n networking approaches the speed needed to work with high-resolution images wirelessly. And Apple is now sourcing LCD screens with very high resolution--the iPod nano screen has about 200 pixels per inch, which is quite close to the resolution of printed photos.

However I'll believe it when I see it. The big question with tablets has always been data entry, and thus they are closely linked with handwriting recognition in the marketplace. Handwriting recognition has been an almost total market failure, so tablets have been an almost total failure. Perhaps Apple will try a full-size onscreen keyboard. Or perhaps they will leverage the new super-thin iMac keyboard technology and do a pull-out or flip-down physical keyboard. Or perhaps most likely is a slight modification of the MacBook product to include MultiTouch...either a touchscreen display or (as hinted in patents) a second, MultiTouch screen replacing the touchpad.

The big question is software. They just released a new OS that will need support. They are already committed to providing and supporting an SDK for the iPhone. And they are undoubtedly working quickly to update applications like the new iMovie, and produce new ones for the iPhone. Apple typically does not release new categories of product without new software to support/drive sales. I have no doubt people at Apple are experimenting with tablets. But I do not believe we will see one released anytime soon.

Re:Previous thoughts from Jobs about tablets

Yup. Having worked with several tablets--which I love as a gadget, and they're really great for a few purposes, like walking around doing inventory with a customized web-app--the single biggest problem is data entry. Basically it comes down to this: how do you enter data on a device that you're supposed to hold in your hands? And I'm not talking about writing the great American novel on one. Unless you're doing nothing but opening, closing, dragging, and dropping files, you can't use a computer in any meaningful fashion for very long without doing some kind of data entry. With tablets, Palms, and even the iPhone, once you get past a couple hundred characters, you realize how excruciatingly slow it is. Even poking out a URL, switching between letters, numbers, and punctuation, you can't help but think "if I were at a desk, I'd already have this page loaded."

• Voice recognition mostly sucks, and even if it worked fine, I don't want to be talking out loud to my computer most of time--not in the office, not in public.
  
• Voice recognition is also out for anything that must be character-perfect: web addresses, email addresses, even renaming a file--miss a period and you'll be renaming it again.
  
• Pen-based input is OK, accuracy- and speed-wise, but still nowhere near what you can do with a keyboard.
  
• A chord keyboard would be ideal--they can be faster than conventional keyboards--but you're not gonna see something that complicated on a mass-market consumer product from Apple.
  
• An iPhone-like virtual keyboard is obviously an option, but unlike the two-thumb operation of an iPhone, you'd be limited to poking with one index finger while you hold the tablet with your hand.
  

Which leads to the conclusion--as soon as you set the tablet down to use a conventional mouse and keyboard, it becomes equal to a regular laptop in all regards except it's slower, has a smaller screen, and is more expensive. Apple's last big flop was the Cube, which had the same specs (CPU, RAM, HD) as a PowerMac, was less expandable, and cost $200 more.

What I really want Apple to make is what I would call the "MacBook Elite": 2 pounds, 10- or 11-inch screen, Core Duo, no HD or optical drive, 1 or 2 GB RAM, 16-32 GB solid-state storage, very thin, and 12-24 hours of battery life. (Yes, I know there are PCs that more or less match these specs, but I want OS X and the industrial design from Apple.) You could use it as a basic standalone computer or you could sync it up with your desktop just like an iPhone. Obviously it wouldn't be the center of your digital life (especially in terms of mass storage of media and media creation) but it would be so good at so many other things.

AppleDisplayScaleFactor

I always thought the AppleDisplayScaleFactor setting was pretty interesting. It, combined with the vector-based interface of Leotard could work really well with multi-touch. Essentially they have the framework in place to scale any application - in the same way you can scale photos on the touch. I really think a sufficiently powerful tablet could genuinely change how we interact with our computers. I just don't think I am ready to write up a dissertation on such a thing... but that's not the point if it, is it?

Mac user? Who cares?

Last Monday, Macworld ran a blog item on the diminishing allure of the Mac to artists and graphic designers in the United States. The next day, the San Francisco Chronicle published a story, in the business section, explaining how Mac users in California are a lot more socially and creatively diverse -- read: more strait-laced and less avant-garde -- than you might believe. This month's Computerworld will contain a report by ersatz demographer Mike Elgan that explicitly poses the question: Is Apple the new Microsoft?

Elgan's research on U.S. Census data drives home a point that the Mac vanguard has been wrestling with for a while: The hedonistic, transgressive, radical ethos (and stereotype) that once characterized the Mac community doesn't represent reality anymore. The decline of urban coastal Mac user groups, the increase in the Mac-using population in the interior U.S. and the overall diversification of the Mac community are facts. What's more, Elgan argues, these trends are a function of the growing acceptance of Macs among the American public.

Acceptance? Really? Has Elgan forgotten about the majority of offices that have policies in effect barring Mac use at work, or the Justice Department's recent decision to relax court-ordered restrictions on Microsoft's business practices in the face of continuing opposition from the White House?

Not at all. There is, he says, a vocal, virulent -- and sometimes violent -- anti-Mac movement, but it doesn't negate years of opinion surveys that show a marked increase in tolerance in most Americans' attitudes toward Macs and Mac users. In 1998, for example, a Gallup poll found that only 33% of Americans thought that Macs could perform standard pencil-pushing tasks like running Microsoft Office. By 2007, that figure had risen to 59%.

Growing acceptance means a decline in social stigma associated with using Macs, and a consequent shift in the politics of declaring oneself a Mac user. The more Mac users come out, the more accepting people are around them, and the more accepting the public becomes, the more people switch to Macs.

Elgan's study shows that the number of self-described Mac users in the U.S. has quadrupled since 1998, and the biggest increases are in the country's more socially conservative areas.

Utah is the poster state. Between 1990 and 2006, for example, it went from having the 38th-highest concentration of Mac users in the country to 14th highest. In that same time period, the percentage of Mac users who lived in large cities declined from 45% to 23%. Even more counterintuitive, from 2000 to 2006, the states with the fewest Apple stores had above-average increases in the number of Mac users. And places, like Utah, where a majority of people still believe Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11 -- the reddest of red, the squarest of rectangle states -- saw even larger increases.

Some of the growth in the number of Mac users in conservative areas could be because of migration. And yes, some on-the-barricades members of the Mac community have gotten older and mellower and moved out to the heartland. But the larger trend is simply that as more latent Mac users switch to Macs, they don't need to change or assimilate to fit into the mainstream because they are already very much a part of it.

"The demographic characteristics of the Mac community are converging with those of the mainstream," Elgan says. If you're from a state like Utah or Nebraska, chances are you're going to share a lot with your neighbors whether you're a Mac user or a PC user: "They're rural," Elgan says, "they're religious, and they're Republican."

So what does this all mean for American culture at large?

"Society is beginning to say that being a Mac user is not such a big deal," Elgan says. "What that means for Mac users is that their platform choice won't have the centrality to their identity it once did. Being a Mac user then becomes one of a variety of an individual's competing identities."

In other words, as the challen

Re:Or, at least it *was*...

True, true - Apple does like to punish those leaking future product details, especially when it's a company they work with. Yikes, Asus!

Re:If it sells

what's with all the hate?

why care SO much that you HOPE people end up being unhappy? don't you worry there's something wrong with you?

plus your Apple tax thing is clear BS since you only pay Apple money if you buy Apple products. that's not a 'tax', it's a 'cost' or 'price'. the more you know!

Re:If it sells

You only pay sales tax when you buy something, so I guess that's not a tax, either. :)

Re:I just don't see it...

I'm sure Apple will have solved the touch screen, keyboard and attractiveness issues, but I just don't see how they'll get around the weight.

Apple will probably focus on this aspect unlike other manufacturers, as Apple has a tendency to work on form and function. Other manufacturers don't go the extra mile to do both. After all, the first iPod was considerably smaller than the Nomad.

Re:I just don't see it...

It didn't fail in the slightest. The swivel keyboard is optional, and is a way to turn a notebook into a tablet. It's not forced on people. You don't buy a nice slimline tablet and Bill Gates turns up on your doorstep threatening your dog with a shotgun, screaming until you swap out your tablet for a notebook/tablet hybrid. Funnily enough, people want those machines, hence them being available to the public. Some folks like being able to draw using a pen on a tablet they hold, and also like using it as a notebook. Some just like the tablet-only computers that don't have a keyboard, which weigh considerably lighter, and run all office software you can shake a stick at. But please don't let facts get in the way - you were on a roll.

Re:I just don't see it...

I'm going to guess you haven't actually used a modern tablet-PC with OneNote2007. HP's offering in particular uses a magnetic stylus so you can put your hand on the screen and write very reliably during into OneNote or any other application that requires lots of writing. If you accidentally mark it you just turn the stylus over and use it as an eraser automatically just like with a pencil. OneNote makes it easy to convert all your notes to text. You can even do it after the fact. Combined with Penflicks you have yourself a powerful interface that is surprisingly intuitive. My experience with it resulted in 100% accuracy when converting my crappy handwriting. That was of course after a half hour of training it.

Tablet-PCs aren't a failure by any means, specific implementations of them have, Microsoft sucks at producing hardware as I'm sure you already know. I doubt it's a surprise although I've never seen anything called a Microsoft Tablet-PC unless you're referring to the XP Tablet PC or Vista Tablet PC edition. Both are very high in quality with Vista being a rather large improvement in this regard.

Re:I just don't see it...

i personally like the swivel bit. there're a lot of times when i need a keyboard or a write-on screen and that seems to be to be the most elegant method for it, rather than having to lug around an external keyboard, plus a way to prop up the tablet or use a OSK (which is too damn slow).

though i agree that weight is an issue. perhaps solid-state drives and ultracaps replacing the battery would help for that.

Business 101

It's not stupid at all. Apple make a huge impact every time they release something major - far and away more than any of their rivals. There's a direct relationship between the secrecy of the company and the buzz for a release, which translates into a *lot* of cash in sales. One of the reasons the iPhone was themost successful consumer product launch in history [blackfriarsinc.com] is the control over information that Apple exerts.

When the benefits are measured in billions of dollars, it makes perfect sense to implement the policy that Apple does. Sure it's an easy shot to blame it on Steve's ego, but it looks like a cold blooded business decision to me.

Simon