Will a Mac tablet be on the way, as MacRumors.com speculated earlier this year? That would make sense, given Apple’s strong interest in publishing applications, portable devices and education. Either Steve Jobs is lying, the project has somehow been delayed, or else he is a slave to his earlier dogmas but will change his mind sooner or later.
If a Mac tablet became a reality, it would be fascinating to see if Apple entered the e-book business as it did the music distribution business–hopefully with gentler DRM than the norm. Meanwhile here’s the denial from Jobs, via a mix of paraphrases and quotes that Denise Howell picked up from him:
There are no plans to make a tablet. It turns out people want keyboards. When Apple first started out, “People couldn’t type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.” “We look at the tablet and we think it’s going to fail.” Tablets appeal to rich guys with plenty of other PCs and devices already. “And people accuse us of niche markets.” I get a lot of pressure to do a PDA. What people really seem to want to do with these is get the data out. We believe cell phones are going to carry this information. We didn’t think we’d do well in the cell phone business. What we’ve done instead is we’ve written what we think is some of the best software in the world to start syncing information between devices. We believe that mode is what cell phones need to get to. We chose to do the iPod instead of a PDA.
I’d go along, however, with some contrary thoughts from Russell Beattie, a Mobile Telecommunications and Internet Applications Developer, not because he’s an Apple insider, which he isn’t, but because his logic makes sense. In part Beattie says:
My bet is that in the future we’ll all be moving to tablet PCs and virtual keyboards. Why? Less moving parts = less costs to the manufacturers. Want a “real” keyboard? Go buy one and plug it into the USB port. Tablets are the future – it’s just obvious. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, Microsoft got it right on this one.
Personally, I really love the idea of a tablet PC and have for years. I do a lot of reading on the web and it’d be great to be able to sit comfortably where ever I want to do it. Laptops just don’t work that way, despite their name. I’m really hesitant to buy a M$ Tablet, though. If there was an option to buy a Tablet Mac, I’d get it tomorrow. Browse the web from my easy-chair, come back to the desk and throw it into a dock when I want to do some real work. Why doesn’t Jobs see this?
It doesn’t make sense. Let’s hope he’s throwing us a curve…
The e-book industry should hope the same. Hey, you know how we feel about proprietary formats. But what’s one more? Perhaps if Apple came out with kick-rear reading software to go along with a tablet, Microsoft and Adobe would be more open minded about a Universal Consumer Format for e-books.
Detail: So far I’m not the biggest fan of virtual keyboards, but they’re better than none. And besides, with the USB option to allow a clicky-clacky alternative, I’ll be happy.
