Snow Leopard features hint at Apple tablet
Bertrand Serlet demoes new features of Safari 4 at WWDC 2009.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)Though Apple isn't saying whether it's working on a touchscreen tablet, the company may have shown its hand at its Worldwide Developers Conference last week.
Of course, the has become the Apple press corps' version of a Bigfoot hunt. Some believe the evidence is overwhelming. Others are, well, underwhelmed. And Apple doesn't discuss products before it's ready to.
However, based on the features last week, the newest version of the Mac operating system, OS X 10.6, dubbed Snow Leopard, could turn out to be the most touchscreen-friendly Mac OS the company has ever built. Snow Leopard won't be available until September, and so far, Apple does not sell a touchscreen notebook or tablet. But some of the features in the upcoming OS at least show a path on which Apple could be headed toward offering a larger touchscreen device.
At the developer event, a list of new features of OS X 10.6 was rattled off by Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Bertrand Serlet. But most of the upgrades to the operating system from the previous build, OS X 10.5, known as Leopard, are gentle tweaks aimed at easier usability and faster processing, things the average user may or may not notice.
After a closer look, however, the unifying theme of several of the new features of Snow Leopard is that they're now extremely easy to navigate without a keyboard, or without a lot of mouse clicking. That also happens to be one of the keys to a successful mobile interface: keeping steps to opening applications and performing tasks to a minimum.
Expose in Dock Starting with the Finder, the addition of Expose to the dock is a great example. Expose is a feature that is used for organizing all your open windows at once, or just the windows from a particular application you were running. Putting Expose directly into the dock now cuts out the need to first switch to the specific application you want before activating Expose. It also cuts out the need to use a keyboard, or use a trackpad gesture to call it up. Clicking and holding an app's icon will bring all windows open that are associated with that program to the front. Being able to tap and hold on a touchscreen would make it that much easier.
Stacks now has a scrolling option and resizable thumbnails.
(Credit: Apple)Stacks There's also Stacks, a feature that keeps shortcuts to chosen files in the dock, which has been updated to be more useful without forcing users to enter the Finder. In Leopard, the amount of thumbnail previews of files shown in a stack was limited, and to see the all files, you had to go into the Finder. Now in Snow Leopard, all items in Stacks can be viewed simply by dragging the scroll bar, precluding the need to open the Finder. That might seem like a small change, but it's important if you're browsing with just a finger on a touch-sensitive surface.
Quicktime X The new version of Apple's video application QuickTime is also more touch-friendly. The player controls (play, pause, forward, backward) are now quite similar to what's found on the iPhone. Also, in order to edit videos, there's a ribbon timeline of scenes from the video that appears under the player. The ribbon can be moved forward and backward in time for editing just by dragging. The same interface is what users of the new iPhone 3G S will be using when they want to trim video clips they've captured on the device. Prior to this, you had to set the beginning and end points with little arrows that provided no indication of what segment of the clip you were editing besides the time.
Freehand drawing And then there's the addition of freehanding via the touchpad. Apple said Snow Leopard will allow users to draw Chinese characters freehand onto a Mac notebook track pad, and the OS will predict characters for faster writing. This feature could clearly transfer from trackpad input to direct onscreen input if Apple engineers wanted. They already have a similar feature in the iPhone for Chinese characters based on the .
Snow Leopard allows Chinese characters to be drawn freehand on the trackpad.
(Credit: Apple)Safari 4 updates New Safari 4 features would also accommodate easier navigation by touch. The new Coverflow option to browse through past sites visited as well as sites you visit most often would be easy with the drag of a finger. And on a screen larger than an iPhone, the effect would work marvelously.
These are just a few of the feature upgrades of OS X 10.6 that seem it indicate a trend toward touch capabilities.
True, Steve Jobs said at an Apple event last fall that putting touchscreens on traditional laptops "hasn't made a lot of sense" to Apple. His point is a good one: even companies that embrace touchscreen laptops admit that it's an awkward posture to sit and point at a laptop screen. HP's CTO of its PC group, Phil McKinney, has indicated that's why the company's Windows touchscreen laptops are convertible to tablet PCs. But Jobs' comment doesn't rule out a different form factor with a touchscreen, like a tablet.
While it would seem like Apple could use the ready-made iPhone operating system for a tablet instead of a touch-friendly version of Mac OS X users, that could limit the device. Most users expect the freedom of having a Finder and the ability to download directly from the Web and not through the App Store only, as with the iPhone and iPod Touch.
If Apple does end up making a tablet that were to run Snow Leopard or some version of it, that means it probably wouldn't be announced until after Snow Leopard's official release in September. Others have speculated that it won't be ready until at least early 2010.
CNET's Josh Lowensohn contributed to this story.
Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur. E-mail Erica. 
Good luck selling Apple computers in China where "brand" is important, but not exactly exclusive.
The IPOD was a GAME CHANGER in the MP3 category. I had an mp3 player before the ipod as well and the interface and usability was no where what the ipod was. Whether you like Apple or not you can't diminish Apple's contributions. It made mp3 players damn near a household name.
Apple was not the first to market with a media player
Apple was not the first to market with online music downloads
Apple was not the first to market with a set-top media centre that downloads off the net
Apple was not the first to market with a touch screen mobile telephone
Apple was not the first to market with an all in one contained desktop computer
Apple was not the first to market with ...
You get the picture... Apple are rarely first to market, and their first itteration isn't always effective, but their execution, packaging, assembly, marketing, integration, etc. usually catapults the product category so high that they often might as well have redefined an existing product or market category as being first.
But I'm not surprised that inside and outside Mac fandom people don't get it. Like the clueless MP3 comment further down. Here's what was on MacCentral's website in October 2001 on the day the iPod was introduced (Now Macworld):
- "I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player?"
- "All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality Distiortion Field is starting to warp Steve's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off."
- "Better bring that price down or you wont sell any of these babies"
So, you think Apple can't do it again? That it would be a me-too only device? You're not paying attention.
Even 10% of 15% would be a huge amount. Over 130 million computers have been sold this year so far. That's 19.5 million. That's more than the total number iPhones sold and the iPhones have been a cash cow for Apple.
Somehow everyone forgot another Apple "me too" product: AppleTV? Oh that's a success too I guess.
you do realize that the iphone wasn't the first touch screen mobile device
why did it become so popular ? and why is it considered revolutionary ?
well because of the execution
being first means nothing, it's doing it right that matters
which is wat Apple excels at !
and plzz stop with the marketshare non-sense
Apple is multi-billion dollar company and growing , there nothing else left to be said
I think Erica did a great job of tying together multiple subtle cues left by Apple that give a big hint to a potential tablet.
Right now the solution to typing on a touch screen is a keyboard. Now working voice recognition would be nice. That would truly tip the scales to an Apple Tablet.
The net effect is it would act as a tablet PC when not in its dock, but as an all-in-one PC when it is in its dock.
Of course, flame wars will commence and they will tangent off to nothing about the article's subject.
I also find it interesting that a bit of orange rind is often used when making special effects masks in clay for that human skin/pores look on the master molds.
It just depends on the individual users perception of how useful the device is. Not all of us drive full time four wheel drive trucks, but in my case I get it dirty and would love a more mobile full size system to accompany me while exploring.
Cradle=a netbook thing exists that does this.
All of your ideas are awesome and exist for Apple/anybody else to pick and choose from to combine and make an innovative product.
I'm agreeing with those that recognize this is not "news."
this is sarcasm, right?
It's gonna take time before Cocoa Touch is mature enough for a full screen UI. iPhone and iPod Touch are limited interaction, so one doesn't see the rough edges. In a big screen, the small delays are unbearable and show stoppers.
Also iPhone's based on Flash SSD no more than 32Gb. Try rapid touch gesture interaction with a 250Gb HDD. Mouse GUI can tolerate the latency (most cursors are hardware based and careless if the OS can catch up). But Touch is real time and intensive. If the OS can catch up, you'll have buttons that don't click or worse, pans that don't pan. So you'll click and click, creating USB buffered actions that will overwhelm the USB bus and create "phantom actions" afterwards, since touch is location specific and can't be played in sequence, as opposed to keyboard interaction or mouse interaction.
All this is known by Apple, and is way the most appropriate reason for the delay, considering that Apple has all the elements for a successful touch tablet, including the OS's, the API and now the processor (most probably an Intel ULV Core 2 rather than an Atom),
That being said, IF Apple could create a tablet computer that is as light as the Macbook Air - to wit, no heavier than a large sketchpad and it could be taken anywhere - they might have a market for aspiring artists.
And about the whole tablet thing, Archos is working on a Windows 7 tablet already ;D
FLAME ON!
Tablet computers are nothing new. They have yet to be very successful however, hence Apple's hesitation in producing one.
(Making statements like the one you made above, Kikarok,is called "trolling". Please refrain from doing it in the future.)
Think about it. What would you use a "tablet computer" for? Mobile email, web browsing, simple app access, media playback, snap shots, mobile gaming. What wouldn't you use a "tablet computer" for? Photoshop, InDesign, programming, heavy-duty spreadsheet use, typing long documents, hard-core gaming, etc.
How does the iPhone and iPod Touch NOT already fill this need. (and fit in your pocket to boot!)
This type of article is a case study for a statistics/probability/logic class. Just because X Y and Z are useful to A does not mean X Y or Z prove, or even hint at, the existence of A.
Only if X Y or Z were both necessary and exclusive to A would this hint at anything.
[CNET editors' note: Prohibited content deleted.]
Under White Macbook it says: "Cheapest full featured notebook".
FULL FEATURED, does that mean o cheaper one with less features????
I hope so!
- by mgheff June 17, 2009 5:50 AM PDT
- I have no doubt that apple will revolutionize the tablet, or whatever they decide to make it. I am interested to see what happens with the Macbook (not Pro) line, since the only left is the white, and they will have to get rid of that sooner or later. And, also this tablet.
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