Tag Archives | Tablets

The Apple Tablet: What Will Be, According to You

Last week, I asked you to help me kill time until Apple (probably) announces its tablet by participating in an experiment: a group prediction about its features, name, and price. Nearly three hundred of you pitched in. Here’s part two of the project: aggregating your responses into one big collective guess. (Part three will come once Apple unveils the thing: We’ll go over our prediction and see how we did.)

The predictions are based on your answers to a series of multiple choice questions. In instances where you were allowed to select more than one answer, any answer that more than 51% of you chose counts as a prediction. In cases where you were only allowed to select one answer, the one that received the most votes counts as a prediction, even if it fell short of a true majority.

(There is, of course, nothing the least bit scientific about any of this. But given the lousy track record of professional Apple pundits, I figure it stands at least as good a chance of being accurate as any other method short of finding someone within Apple who knows what he or she is talking about and has very loose lips. )

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Envision Apple’s Tablet, Get a Shot at a $100 Apple Gift Card

With less than a week to go until Apple (probably) tells all about its tablet, time is rapidly running out to discuss it without really knowing what the heck we’re talking about. So while you still can, please participate in Technologizer’s Apple Tablet Prediction Project. Just spend a few minutes answering multiple choice questions about what you think Apple is geting ready to announce. We’ll tally up the responses into an aggregate prediction, and compare it to the real thing next week–assuming it shows up. And we’ll choose a name at random from the entries and award that person a $100 Apple Store (U.S.) gift card.

We were originally going to wrap things up at 5pm PT today, but what the heck–let’s leave the survey open until 5pm PT tomorrow. Please enter, tell your pals, and have fun!

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An iSlate Docking Station? A Virtual One Would Be Nice

With almost precisely one week to go until the-event-that-everyone-assumes-Apple-will-announce-its-tablet-at, I’m tempted to declare a moratorium on even discussing rumors about the tablet. And I’m instinctively distrustful of rumors reported by TheStreet.com’s Scott Moritz. Among other things, he’s the guy who ran an EXCLUSIVE that Verizon Wireless had decided to pass on Palm’s Pre and wouldn’t be selling it starting in January. Which must have come as startling news to Verizon, which will start selling the Pre this month.

Anyhow, Moritz has another EXCLUSIVE that says that Verizon will be selling the Apple tablet. Let’s just skip over that tidbit (which has been floating around for months) and reflect on another rumor buried in the story:

The Tablet will also include a docking station, according to Northeast Securities’ Kumar. This could be a crucial feature for consumers who harbor an ongoing love affair with keyboards. For those unsatisfied with touchscreen typing, a dock would connect to a keyboard and mouse.

I dunno whether there’s any truth there, which is why this post isn’t called something like Apple Tablet to Feature Docking Station.  But even if Steve Jobs strides onstage next Wednesday and never says anything about a docking station, it’s fun to toy with the idea.

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Our Live Coverage of Apple’s Tablet Event

A week from Thursday at 10am PT, I’ll be in the audience at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco as Apple announces its iSlate tablet. (Okay, it isn’t telling anyone it’s announcing a tablet, and the evidence it’s going to be called iSlate is extremely tenuous–but we need to call it something for the next eight days.)

As usual, I’ll use the excellent CoverItLive service to share the news as it happens. If you join me, I’ll try to answer your questions, too. These live events are a blast–just ask any of the thousands of folks who have been showing up for recent ones such as our coverage of Google’s Nexus One launch.

Here’s where to go for next week’s Apple coverage: technologizer.com/appletablet. Head there now, and you can request that we e-mail a reminder to you.

See you there, I hope!

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Envision Apple’s Tablet, Get a Shot at a $100 Apple Gift Card

Once again, I’m going to give you guys a chance to make Apple predictions in the days before an Apple press event. (You’re no worse at it than most of the folks who get paid big bucks to do so.) This time I’d like you to take a stab at figuring out exactly what sort of tablet device Apple will announce next Wednesday, assuming it does indeed announce such a device. And if you still think Apple won’t make such an announcement–which is a pretty gutsy prediction at this point–you can make that opinion known, too.

To participate in what I’m thinking of as Technologizer’s Apple Tablet Prediction Project, click here and answer the multiple-choice questions you’ll find. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, and here’s an incentive to take part: We’ll draw one entry at random and give the person who submitted it a $100 gift card for the U.S. Apple Store.

You can fill out our T.A.T.P.P. survey through 5pm on Thursday, January 21st, at which point we’ll close it, crunch the results, and publish your aggregate guesses. If the machine you envision as a group ends up bearing much resemblance to the one Apple announces–probably!–next week, it’ll be impressive. And even if you’re way off base, this should be entertaining.

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The Apple Tablet As Game Device: A Brief History

We know so very little about the Apple tablet, but the invites to a January 27 Apple event that arrived today add a new wrinkle to the story: Among the invitees was Kotaku, a prominent gaming blog. That suggests there will be enough gaming related news to merit Kotaku’s attendance.

Could the tablet be Apple’s biggest push into video games yet? Let’s look at the clues.

In April, Gizmodo reported that Apple hired two gaming executives within a week’s time. There was Richard Teversham, former senior European director of business, insights and strategy for the Xbox, and Bob Drebin, chief technical officer of AMD’s graphics group and creator of the graphics chip for Nintendo’s GameCube. Tablet rumors had been around for years at that point, but the story was finding new momentum thanks to a Wall Street Journal story on Steve Jobs’ health and ongoing projects.

August yielded a juicy rumor from an unnamed analyst, who told Barron’s that Apple’s tablet would emphasize multimedia and gaming. Another analyst, Jon Peddie, added that gaming “will be a big part of what this is about.” Grain of salt: The unnamed analyst projected a November 2009 launch.

In November, an Apple job posting appeared, seeking a game designer for the iPhone and iPod Touch. One potential theory held that this was actually a covert gig for tablet game development.

It’s also worth mentioning that Apple talked up gaming in two press events last year. The unveil of the iPhone’s OS 3.0 included support for microtransactions, and Apple made a point of knocking Sony and Nintendo at its iPod event in September. Not tablet-related, but proof that Apple now sees gaming as a lucrative business.

Revisiting my reasons Apple shouldn’t get into gaming, I still think a dedicated game console doesn’t make much sense, and a tablet whose primary purpose is gaming would disappoint a lot of people. But if Apple indeed reveals the tablet on January 27, and a significant chunk of Steve Jobs’ presentation demonstrates some new ways of playing video games, I wouldn’t be surprised.

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Yup, Apple is Holding an Event on January 27th. Join Us There!

If the rumor that Apple was holding a press event on January 27th had turned out to be false, we would have had to reassess everything we think we sort of know about its tablet device. But the event is on, as confirmed by the invitation that went out this morning to members of the media.

Of course, the invitation doesn’t say what the creation in question is–Apple’s invites never get too specific. On the other hand, they’re never deceptive, either. And the fact that this one refers to a single creation and doesn’t even hint at a focus such as music may be evidence that this is, indeed, the tablet. Or at least it’s not evidence that it isn’t the tablet. (How’s that for brilliant tea-leaf reading?)

One way or another, all will be known next week. I’ll be sitting in the audience at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and as usual, I’ll share everything I learn just as fast as I learn it. Please join me a week from Wednesday at 10am for our live coverage. Barring unforeseen circumstances–the new creation isn’t an exciting new iPod sock, is it?–this promises to be a lot of fun.

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The Newton Revisited

Nice piece by John Gruber on what he calls the original tablet–the Apple Newton-and what those who would make or covet slate computers can learn from it. (Unless my memory decieves me, however, the Newton’s problem wasn’t that it stated the same (unpocketable) size and kept the same (high) price–the later Newtons were actually larger and more expensive than the first ones. Palm came along and made a Newton-like gizmo that was smaller and cheaper, and the rest is–well, you get the idea…

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