Comments on: Apple tablet is coming, analyst says

The device, which would look a similar to the iPod Touch but larger, would be Apple's entry into the Netbook race, a Piper Jaffray analyst predicts.

[Super2online]

Oh but wait, Jobs insists that they aren't going to do a netbook (or tablet, same difference) remember, there's no margin in the low end. So what does that tell you. It's going to have the the new Mac OS- tweaked a bit for it, cost twice as much as a PC netbook and claim that this is how a netbook should have been done in the first place. The guy is nothing if not predictable. Just another gash on Steve Jobs credibility as far as I'm concerned.

You have to love the Tim Cook comment: "junky hardware". Helloooo, same hardware you use! Credibility=zero. Oh wait, you say he is referring to the wrapper. The pretty chrome, plastics, and aluminum. Sorry but that's not the hardware.

"Nor do we believe that customers in the long-term would be interested in." Hello, try checking the sales stats. Netbooks are flying off the shelves, and we all know there not Macs, because you don't have any!

"We have some interesting ideas in the space", yeah a netbook (tablet as you refer to it) that fly's in the face of everything Apple has been saying about this category of PC.

[Vegaman_Dan]

To be fair, Jobs stated that Apple didn't know how to produce a netbook at less than $500. Since the Touch is $400 (used to be $500 when I bought mine), they can simply make it more expensive than $500. The profit margin is pretty big for the Touch, so simply enlarging the screen and case are the only real expenses- the rest of the hardware can be identical to the Touch for cost savings.

[rcrusoe]

"You have to love the Tim Cook comment: "junky hardware"."

I just spent my lunch hour at BestBuy checking out netbooks from Dell, HP, Asus, etc. Junky hardware sums up what I saw pretty well.

They have to make them cheap in order to sell them for $300 - 500, especially when you consider they have to give Microsoft about 10% of the retail price.

[Seaspray0]

I would expect nothing less from Tim Cook since he works for apple. His idea of a junk computer is one that doesn't meet the minimum specs of a mac (probably a company policy). He's about as credible as a PR man from Marlboro saying smoking isn't bad for your health.

[pithenumber]

@rcrusoe
ASUS made Apple's computers for a while
the MacBook I think

[Fil0403]

Obvious for anyone capable of self-thinking. Unfortunately, that excludes most Apple sheep.

[Vegaman_Dan]

It's a possibility that Apple needs to explore, but it comes with some very real dangers:

Price point of under $999 puts it under the iBook. That means no matter how great it is, its features cannot exceed that of the entry level notebook or you will cannibalize your notebook sales.

Keyboards- the Touch gets away with a virtual keyboard because you can hold it in one hand and still do entry with it. Make the unit larger or between the size of a PDA and a notebook and it becomes too awkward to hold with one hand and type with a finger on a virtual keyboard. You'll need to set it down if you are going to do anything with it beyond menu options. Adding a real keyboard immediately places it into the netbook market, at which point it is too high compared to other offerings and again will affect entry level Macintosh notebook sales.

Portability. A Touch is small enough to fit in your pocket- I should know as I have one in my pocket right now that I love. But a netbook is too big to do that. Even something the size of a paperback novel is too big to fit in a pocket, so a netbook sized Touch would have to be something you carry loose with you. That puts it into the netbook/notebook category, or into the media player class like portable DVD players with screen. Too big to be portable, too small to be useful.

It's a tricky area to be in. If Apple wanted to redo the Touch as a netbook, they would have to lower that price a lot to be competitive for the features it may offer. But then again, as long as it has an Apple logo on it, it may sell to people who don't care about anything other than that logo. Hard to say how that will play out.

Ebook reader. This could be a good one to consider. The Kindle, against all possible logic to me, is successful. Heck, the e-ink feature alone is awesome. I don't know that a full color OLED screen is going to be as easy on the eyes for reading as e-ink which is passive. I don't like reading on glowing screens, the refresh rate and slight movement of your hand does funky things to your eyes and it's hard to concentrate on what you are reading. A book is passive and much more forgiving and that's where e-ink shines. I don't see the Apple tablet would really do well here unless it could undercut the price from Sony and Amazon.

Overall, the Applet (Apple Tablet) might be an area to look at for Apple. There's no denying the huge popularity this market has enjoyed and ignoring it means ignoring the potential money to be made. Make a device cheap enough to get people used to the OS and you might get them on board to buy more expensive computers. I think the product must have an OS environment that matches the desktop OS and not the iPhone/Touch though.

[megustansalchichas]

it's gotta be at least 1024X768 or there'll be little point of buying it instead of an ipod touch. like the guy says, you can already surf and email from your Touch.

[Rolker]

The question is if Apple will be able to sell a Netbook in a reasonable price. This is one of the reasons people buy netbooks.
Apple may surprise, but I don't think that they'll be able to match the price of Apple's rivals. Some people may be willing to pay more for an Apple Netbook, but I doubt most people will.

[Vegaman_Dan]

There is the danger that people may buy an Applet thinking they are getting a computer or laptop and not have to buy a laptop like the notebooks they offer. If they do that and get substandard performance thinking it is supposed to be a full notebook, that may poison those customer's opinions about Apple's offerings.

It's a tricky line to toe.

[DMAN3k]

This is called innovation even though we already have touch-screen netbooks running on Linux or Windows 7 RC...

I love the Apple marketing team!

[Deelron]

"This is called innovation even though we already have touch-screen netbooks running on Linux or Windows 7 RC...

I love the Apple marketing team!"

Apple (or it's marketing) hasn't done anything public yet, this is from an analyst. At least wait for them to even announce the thing (if it really exists, there has been Apple tablet rumors for like 5 years now) before commencing bashing.

[MyRightEye]

"We are anticipating a new category of Apple products with an operating system more robust than the iPhone's but optimized for multi-touch, unlike Mac OS X. The device's OS could bear a close resemblance to Apple's mobile OS and run App Store apps, or it could be a modified version of Mac OS X."

The iPhone OS _IS_ a modified version of OS X. And you really expect us to believe ANYTHING you have to say when you don't have a grasp of the most basic factors in the devices. Just go away and keep your stupid ANAList mouths shut. You're no better than a palm reader. You should all be convicted for fraud and stock price manipulation.

[nafhan]

I don't think Amazon is worried about this.
From what I've read long term, they do not want to be in the hardware business. They released the Kindle because there is nothing else out there that does what they wanted the Kindle to do. If tablets along the lines of the Apple tablet become ubiquitous, Amazon will just move to a software e-reader. Amazon will make more money if they are doing software only...

[freemarket--2008]

They already have the reader app on the iPhone and iPod Touch. All they have to do is scale it up for the new tablet.

[jumpjetta]

Funny, I saw some Sony eBook readers at Barnes & Noble the other day. They actually looked better than the Kindle. Color screen, even.

[KCGForce]

A tablet might make Apple more of a player in the enterprise space. Apple tablet + some Google Apps action and you have yourself one heck of a highly mobile computing experience. As long as the desktop is king in the enterprise it will stay a PC world but the incredible adoption of the iPhone by the enterprise shows there is a real hunger for a higher quality experience. I can definitely see sales reps and consultants running around town with Apple Tablets.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Until Apple releases its stranglehold on their support methods for the hardware and OS, then they will not be an enterprise solutions provider any time soon. When an enterprise has a system go down due to hardware failure, they cannot afford to be told to take their affected system down to an Apple store where it will take a week or two for it to be serviced and returned. There is no on site service, no Service Level Agreement, no overnight parts supply promise like there are currently with Dell, HP, Toshiba, Blackberry, Acer, Asus, Lenovo, etc, etc.

If they change this, then enterprises may take another look at them. Until then, they will likely stick with PC's running Windows or Linux. A tablet version running an OS in an unsecured root level would be a nightmare for any enterprise, which is what the iPhone and Touch are currently doing.

[CreativeMalcolm]

I'd love Apple to come out with a MacBook mini. I don't think they really need to compete too much on price, if they used cheaper parts than the ones in a Mac mini they could position it as another Mac mini but slower while being mobile. Still bring your own keyboard and mouse. Honestly I think it would be a great idea. My mom doesn't need much more than a 1.6Ghz Atom, for her email, light iWeb, and office work. But she's always saying she wished she had a laptop.

[wfolta]

@Super2online: What a troll. Apple (Jobs, Cook) have said they don't like shoddy netbooks. And yes, netbooks have cheap insides (not necessarily the CPU or each individual capacitor, but overall), and yes the outside actually matters in terms of looking good and not falling apart. You may call it "predictable", but its a niche that slides between netbooks (which won't make any company real money) and tablets (which have not gained traction in the years they've been around).

Another issue here is that Apple's been here before: the Newton. Jobs really disliked the Newton, I believe, but none-the-less Apple has been in that paperback-book-sized arena before, which I think gives them some perspective. COmbining that with their experience at the iPhone/Touch size and multi-touch interface and they've got a LOT more experience to bring to the table than others.

(Actually, the Newton was a good machine. It suffered mainly from being ahead of its time, and from a psychological issue: if a machine can't read my handwriting -- unless I'm writing so sloppily that even I can't read it -- it's the machine's fault. If I enter something incorrect on a keyboard -- unless it's an abomination design-wise -- it's my fault. That plus a stylus is rather a pain for many uses.)

[tgrenier]

An Apple Tablet would be Mac Book at Mac Book prices in the Tablet form factor. PC tablets have been around for a while and usually cost more than their laptop counterparts. It would be just like Apple to take someone else's vision (Bill Gates) and actually execute it properly. I love the Tablet idea as Microsoft presents it but the execution is terrible.

This has nothing to do with netbooks. If Apple wants a netbook, they can sell that 13" macbook for $600 and they'd do huge volumes. I think they're great devices but way over priced.

[delltechkid]

I think that Microsoft dropped the ball with the Tablet PC long ago. They could have created a great touchscreen only device that is slim and lightweight with some type of dock for charging. Wireless network connectivity and you've got a cool device that you can use on your sofa to surf the web. No more need for those pesky lapdesks to hold your laptop computer.

Instead, Apple will be the first to come to market with a well designed device, that will probably be overpriced, but will still be much nicer looking than any Windows tablet ever designed.

[monkeyfun14]

Looks are a matter of opinion not fact.

[myles taylor]

I always think it's interesting when people make blanket statements in the comments like: "Until Apple does this" or "this won't happen until this happens" because really they can't know. I thought the iPhone was cool but would be a flop and look how wrong I was there.

I really hope Apple does something like this. I need something small, light and mobile that is bigger than my iPhone and smaller than my Macbook Pro, and cheaper than a Macbook Air.

[ryokowerx]

All I'm saying is that if they can hit that magic $500-700 price point and have PDF and Flash support, I'm getting one immediately.

[arbulus]

The idea of a 7-10 inch tablet is absurd. The article talks about "cramped keyboards," but the idea of trying to type on a 9 inch screen with a software keyboard is laughable. On the iPhone you can easily type with your thumbs, you won't be able to do that on a large screen. So it will be EXTREMELY awkward to hold with one hand and then try to type with the other on such a large screen. And if you have to lay the tablet down then type on it, what's the point of it being a tablet? not to mention how awful it would be to type on something like that.

People love to talk about reinventing the netbook space and Apple's success with iPhone/iPod Touch but they don't stop to think about usability on a larger tablet style machine. It would be impossible to use.

Further, some have speculated that it would be a great device to use as an ebook reader. But the idea of that is even more absurd. People don't want to read books on a back-lit screen. That's why epaper and eink was invented. Reading a book on the iPhone is painful at best. Reading a book on a computer is even worse. Ebook reading on this kind of device is simply out of the question.

And why would Apple make a device that is like the iPhone, but bigger? That doesn't make any sense. If you want a "tablet", get an iPod Touch or an iPhone. You want a laptop, get a Macbook. Apple has no reason to dip into the netbook market. Intel and the netbook OEMs hate netbooks. They either make so little money on them or the loose money on them outright. They're cannibalizing the notebook market and doing so at the expense of profit. From a business standpoint, I honestly don't understand why netbooks are sill even being sold. Consumer demand is one thing, but companies don't care about consumer demand, they care about profit.

There is no market for a tablet. Even notebook sized tablets are considered absurd. No one uses them and no one wants them. And a tiny tablet would be even worse. Without a keyboard and trackpad, a 7-10 inch device would be completely unusable.

[shellcodes_coder]

Let me guess, it's gonna cost $2000 (CrApple tax included) and comes with an OS that's the easiest to hack into--crap os x LOL

[cmseeholzer]

i dont why the idea of an apple tablet is so revolutionary and great. there is the axiotron modbook, runs about $2500. even though i adore apple soft-/hardware, i agree with @arbulus, there is no market for tablets, hardly on the scale that netbooks run at.

[facetious1999]

Such a touch tablet would be directly competing in the netbook market (which is growing) but obviously at a premium (my guess would be $800-$1000). Netbook is a commodity hardware market, but aside from brand, apple offers something others don't - itunes store and that is where they expect to make most of the $ down the road. with an ebook app that is hopefully better than kindle/sony, this would be a no brainer for apple to offer. i don't care about the h/w keyboard (though this may be a bluetooth option) because 90% of the time I am reading/surfing.

I would definitely be one of the first one to buy it even though I have an Ipod touch and another netbook.

[Fil0403]

A Touch Tablet is something very different from a netbook, they are different markets, not competing with each other (and $800-$1000 for a netbook, now that's a deal only an Apple sheep would eat) - it would be more competing with Windows 7 and its advanced multi-touch capabilities than with Netbooks per say (and it would most certainly be shamelessly beaten by it as well). Aside from a logo of an apple, Apple does offer some things others don't - inability to run around half the hardware and software (including around 99 % of videogames) there is, inability to customize and personalize it to make it work the way *YOU* want it to, and OS update instabilities and unreliabilities (I'm afraid iTunes Store works wonderfully on any Windows XP or Windows Vista PC and they make most of their money out of people like you who are blindly and ignorantly willing to spend $800-$1000 for a yet-to-be-released device that is inferior to many $500 devices that already exist). I think before hoping a yet-to-be-released Mac to have a yet-to-be-released app that is better than the best apps of that kind that already exist, you should first hope for Apple to release a computer that is actually better than an equally-priced Windows 7 PC (since we're talking about the future) - and that day is not foreseen in the near future, if ever. If you don't care about the h/w keyboard you should look at Nokia's Internet tablet PC - I'm afraid you won't buy it because unfortunately it lacks the Apple logo.

People like you (willing to pay $800-$1000 for an unknown device when there are similar or better devices for $500) would buy a turd if it had an Apple logo.

[Firehazel]

why the french toast would ANYONE pay 800 to 1000 dollars for a NETBOOK? it seems that Apple labels are are expensive now... 500 to 700 makes more sense. tie it to a cell carrier and subsidize it. provide internet nationwide...

[Fil0403]

Yaaaaaaaaaawn.

[Dan7637]

you people that say crapple and you cant customize it and then cant use half the hardware thats more stupid than paris hilton and thats saying something

just go to the cheapskate blog if youre going to be hating just cause it costs more