Concept art for an Apple touch-screen Netbook.
(Credit: Gizmodo)We get a lot of e-mails from folks asking us when to expect a Netbook from Apple. Let's make something absolutely clear: despite all the previous rumors, we have no idea if, or when, such a product will exist. But we will let report to you when a new (or recycled) rumor pops in the blogsphere.
The latest: the Mandarin-language publication Chinese Times is reporting that Apple will release a Netbook in October. We tend to put a question mark on our rumor headlines, but there doesn't seem to be any question mark in the reporting here--at least according to a translation of the article that appeared within MacRumors.com's forum.
Naturally, this all comes from a "reliable source." Here's the key quote in the article (again, we are going by the translation that appeared on MacRumors):
- Taiwan's high-tech supply chain companies said Apple will debut
its first Netbook in October; Apple will pose itself to tackle the
Christmas shopping season. Three (Taiwanese) corporations--Foxconn,
Wintek, Dynapack--have received direct orders from Apple. (Wintek will
be producing touch screens and providing relevant technologies for
Apple.) In addition, some supply chain companies have privately
confirmed deals related to Netbooks."
The report also goes on to add that "Apple will not follow the current market trend (by producing Netbooks with screens about 10.2 or 10.1 inches in diagonal length). Instead, Apple will produce (touch) screens with about 9.7 inches in diagonal length." As to cost, word is that it will come in around $800, which is about what we'd expect an Apple Netbook to cost (if the company decides to make one).
There are also some interesting updates tacked on to the MacRumors post as additional stories have come out. One update says there are "unconfirmed rumors" that British reporters pried Apple Netbook info out of several Foxconn Electronics employees and that although Foxconn refused to publicly comment on the rumors, the reporters may have gotten some sort of private confirmation on the rumors' validity from the company itself.
Again, these are all rumors, and with Apple, you never know what kind of bizarre smoke screen it might put out there. But in the past, the company has had some issues with leaks coming out of its suppliers in Taiwan, so we're thinking there might be some truth to this one--especially since the same rumor hit back in March. Either way, we do expect Apple to release new iPods this fall (as it has the last few years). Whether one of them will be a giant iPod Touch remains to be seen.
Comments? Do you think Apple really will do a Netbook this year?
Source: Gizmodo via MacRumors via China Times (original article in Mandarin)
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.
Apple appears to be working on the concept of a Mac tablet again, based on a recent patent application.
(Credit: U.S. PTO (via AppleInsider))Rumors of Apple working on a touch-screen Mac have been circulating for years, and will only grow with the revelation that the company is hoping to patent similar technology.
A number of Mac sites on Thursday are pointing to a U.S. patent application granted for what would appear to be the mythical Mac tablet. AppleInsider has a description of the device discussed in the application, which appears to bring a lot of the iPhone's multitouch functionality to a slate-like tablet computer.
Given Apple' focus on multitouch user interfaces over the past year, there has been a fair amount of speculation that the company wants to do something similar with a larger, more powerful computer than the iPhone or iPod Touch.
The thing is, Apple's explored this territory before: I found one patent reference dating back to 2005, and other sites are reporting that the current application is similar to technology Apple patented two years ago.
Tablet PCs in the Windows world haven't sold very well, and the concept has almost completely fallen off the radar screen of the PC industry. That reluctance may be the result of software that isn't quite advanced enough to match the hardware, but few people seem to want a handheld computer the size of a piece of paper and the weight of a regular laptop.
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