About Bambi BrannanI work in public relations in San Francisco, California. I truly love my Mac, my iPhone, my husband, both of my pet fish, high heels, dinner out, and chocolate. Not always in that order, of course.
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The Last Word On Apple’s iTablet: Why It Ain’t A Mac
It’s official. Apple has issued invitations to a January 27th event in San Francisco.
Come see our latest creation,
” Apple says. What will it be? Please. It’ll be everything except a Mac.Only The Details Are Missing
Apple’s plans were known for months before the iPhone announcement in early 2007. All that was missing were the details. Hardware. Software. You know, details.
For much of 2009 the pundits announced that Apple would build a tablet computing device.
The details are scarce, but suffice it to say, Apple’s iTablet/iPad/iSlate/iDevice will be smaller than a MacBook Air, but larger than an iPod touch. Think of it as a giant iPod touch.
Outside of that, we don’t really, really know much about it. Touchscreen. Battery. WiFi. That’s it. It may or may not feature an iSight camera, iPhone OS 4.0, built-in 3G connectivity, and… well, we just don’t know. A single model? Two models? Priced from $399 to $999?
Did you get your invitation? Check your mailbox for something that looks like this.
That’ll get you a 10:00 am seat at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, January 27th. Cherish the moment. Wait for the Apple surprise.
What We Really Know It Won’t Be
One thing is for sure. Apple’s iTablet/iPad/iSlate/iDevice will not be a Mac. Many of us want the tablet to run Mac OS X and iPhone OS. My prediction is that it won’t.
The tablet is really more of a very large iPod touch with a new version of iPhone OS to handle whatever surprise Apple pulls out of the hat. Why not make the tablet a Mac? Or, why not a Mac touch?
This device is about the future, not the past. Like it or don’t, the Mac is tied to the past. iPhone OS, the iPhone, and the iPod touch are tied to the future. The Mac is divisive in nature. You love it or hate.
Apple has more iPhone and iPod customers than Mac customers. Why introduce a product which makes those customers choose between something Mac and something Windows (pretty much what most of the other tablet devices are).
The Mac, for all the modernity stuffed into it, is a legacy device—the full featured, does-everything, power device, the digital hub for the rest of us. Apple’s tablet will be something of a digital hub, too, but totally mobile (not so much as the iPhone, but far more than a MacBook).
Simply put, Macs are too complicated for most PC users. Even Windows is too complicated for Windows users. The future is in handhelds and Apple is breaking from the past, first with handheld products that don’t use the name Mac, and now with a non-Mac tablet.
What Will The iDevice Do?
This is the quandary that Apple’s secretive nature forces us tech pundits into. There’s not enough details known about the tablet.
We know it won’t be a Mac, but it might outsell the Mac one day, just like the iPhone and iPod touch already do.
The real question most of us have pondered is relatively simple.
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What will the iDevice do?”
How will it be better than an iPhone or iPod touch? How will it be better than a Mac? What will it do that is so compelling that I will keep my iPhone and keep my Mac? $399 to $999 seems pricey for a device which lets me watch TV in bed or the bathroom.
What do you think the Apple tablet will do that isn’t already being done by a MacBook Air or an iPhone?
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