These are all still just rumors, but after my post yesterday regarding e-book readers I felt I should pass along the news that various industry observers (I wonder if I could be an industry observer? I mean after all I watch what goes on, I listen to the podcasts, even contribute to a podcast now and then. So, you know what? I would like to officially declare myself an industry observer. There, I have done.) are convinced Apple will have an event this January and that there is a likelihood that they will announce a 10 inch tablet. If it looks anything like the image here, courtesy of The Unofficial Apple Weblog, and functions as a decent word processor I’m likely to be very pleased Apple user.
I will say, however, I’m not sure how I feel about a device that is only going to run iPhone applications. I can do a lot with my iPhone, but if I’m going to have a device as big as a 10 inch screen I want to be able to do real work on it. Being able to connect a Bluetooth keyboard will be a must and a decent word processor whose files I can open in Microsoft Word or, better yet, NisusWriter Pro would be imperative. Also, a way to do presentations from this tablet would be important not to mention (and it should go without mentioning because it should be an assumption) the ability to take notes directly on the screen to my PDFs, presentations, websites, anything I can bring up on the screen. Obviously my expectations for tablet are far more than my expectations for an e-book reader. And I expect the price will be commensurate.
5 thoughts on “The Advent of the Apple Tablet”
First off, I recognize you as an industry observer.
Second, I would be very interested in an Apple tablet even if it did not do much more than run iPhone apps, although I agree that it will be important to do more and I too expect it to do most of the things you mention.
But, the reason I would be interested in it is that I need a small, easy to carry device that is less than a laptop but more than an iPhone that I can take to meetings and use to take notes, make presentations and to access data I have stored in the cloud.
The iPhone almost does this for me, but when I use it to take notes for example, people think I am writing emails, IM’ing or twittering (likely @Targuman). Aside from this problem of appearances, I would like the tablet to be able to run multiple apps simultaneously so that I can look at notes, for example, even as I edit a wiki page or a word processing document.