My rationale is that this would not be cutting into their desktop/laptop market as much as setting the stage for touchscreen devices across the board. Along with the rumors of the tablet there's also been a less credible rumor that a touchscreen iMac may be in the works for the holiday season and over the next few years the entire line would switch over. As a Mac user it makes sense, the laptops have amazing trackpads, the iPods have the click wheel and the iPhones touchscreen is second to none. Ironically the only thing the company hasn't quite been able to figure out is how to design a halfway decent mouse in the past 15 years.
While I love the touchscreen on my Touch, I'm not sure how well that is going to work with laptops/desktops. Unless they come up with a screen that doesn't get marred by fingerprints, I can't envision myself wiping it off every couple of hours. And I've heard the rumors about a Mac touch screen for a couple of years now as well, and think what you say has some merit-which may mean they're not too concerned how the tablet performs (in terms of sales); but getting the technology out there is the important thing. It's all armchair quarterbacking at this point of course, but fun nonetheless.
I read something about a device having an anti-fingerprint layer over its touchscreen... can't remember what it was though. It's definitely possible, the checkouts where I work use touchscreen and I haven't seen a single fingerprint in the 20 months I've worked there... but then again it might be a different type of touch technology, maybe it doesn't support multi-touch or something.
I'd imagine a touchscreen iMac would be tilted back at an angle like a drawing board or like the light table with multitouch that was shown off at TED in 2006. The laptops already have great trackpads so a touchscreen would probably wind up being more like a secondary device unless they come out with convertable tablet models like the PC market but I just can't see them going down that exact route. As far as keeping the screen clean how about a tiny windsheild wiper?
It's rumored that it will run the iPhone OS, That's retarded, why would I just want a massive iPhone? I won't buy it unless it's really really cool or it runs Leopard.
If you follow the link in the first post... it's not really a rumor anymore: "McGraw-Hill CEO, has confirmed that Apple will be announcing a Tablet tomorrow, which will be iPhone OS Based. There is no denying this one. Straight from the man himself. Here's video to prove it."
I'm not sure it was that, but I didn't know anyway I got to play around with one the other day, I can't say I noticed any fingerprints but then I wasn't really looking.
I'm unimpressed with the oleophobic layer on the 3GS, I work with chemicals all day while I use my phone and by the end of it the entire surface is cloudy and much more noticeable then the protectionless screen of my old iPhone.
Engadget also report that the Apple tablet's e-books will be more expensive than Amazon's are with Kindle. What a great start.
$15 for an e-book are they out of their flippin' minds? I wish it would hurry up and be tomorrow so I could be disappointed already.
That's Apple's M.O.. I would expect it to do more than what e-readers do, as that's also typical of Apple.
maybe it can help us roam some EMPTY cities in like little street cars haha but maybe its for BIG kids
I think geekland is going to freak out at the lack of high end features on the tablet. I just don't know how anyone can think it'll be a full OSX compatible machine though - what possible hardware is going to be slim enough with enough battery life to suit all the consumer applications (video, newspapers, magazines, music, photos, games) but beefy enough to be a full development platform? A full dev platform without a keyboard as well. Why not just buy a macbook? This thing has to be all about 'casual' computing or it just doesn't make sense. I'm a programmer and apart from actually coding, 99% of what I do on a computer could be done on a beefed up iPod Touch.
