6 ms·

Apple may demo tablet on Jan. 26; Jobs "extremely happy" with final product

15 points by anderzole 17y ago

ilamont 17y ago
We're probably playing right into Apple's hype/secrecy marketing strategy, but it sounds intriguing and quite different than existing e-readers.
- joezydeco 17y ago
  Yup. Here we go again. Four+ weeks of this stuff clogging the top of every blog aggregator.
lispm 17y ago
may or may not. who knows.
blhack 17y ago
I'm sorry, but I just cannot get excited about an Apple tablet. I have a feeling that it is going to be like a macbook air without the keyboard: absurdly expensive, not all that useful, and replaceable with things in the PC world that are better and cheaper. Apple got lucky with the iPod in that they were the first company to do it right. They carried this success into the iPhone, but their iPhone success is starting to wane in light of the Android. I think that an Apple tablet is going to combine all of the things that I hate about the MBA with all of the things that I hate about the iPhone (appstore nonsense, restricting apps like spotify or anything with similar functionality). Good luck to you, Apple, but I don't see this succeeding. edit: I was mistaken about spotify, that is not available in the US at all. The point was that I was trying to find a subscription music service for the iPhone and couldn't. The general consensus among the people doing the same was that Apple won't allow it.
- endtime 17y ago
  You don't see it succeeding? If you'd ended your comment with "...but I don't think I'll be picking one up," sure, that would make sense. But do you honestly think 99% of Apple's customers care about, or even understand, the concerns you have?
  - blhack 17y ago
    But do you honestly thing 99% of Apple's customers care about, or even understand, the concerns you have? Yes, I do. What will the Apple tablet be competing against? It's the MBA all over again. Unless Apple makes a drastic change in their pricing philosophy, this simply will not be something I see most consumers justifying.
    - ugh 17y ago
      Apple’s products sometimes are relatively boring. The MBA is ok but not exactly revolutionary. Others are. And as a consequence I would always wait until they show what they have. I have problems finding a place in the market for a tablet but I’m pretty confident that Apple could find a spot. Or maybe not.
    - CamperBob 17y ago
      What will the Apple tablet be competing against? It'll utterly destroy the Kindle, for one thing, if they execute well.
- petercooper 17y ago
  but their iPhone success is starting to wane in light of the Android. Are you trolling? If so, it's a good one because I'm falling for it :-) The iPhone's success is far from waning. Android as a term is barely known outside tech circles whereas even Mac haters at least know what an "iPhone" is. Apple got lucky with the iPod in that they were the first company to do it right. Far from it. The first generation iPod reviewed poorly and sold poorly. It wasn't until near the end of 2004 - and the fourth generation - that it really "caught on." Apple didn't get lucky.. they got it right after iterating and redeveloping a few times. restricting apps like spotify Did they? I have Spotify on my iPhone right now and enjoy it using it most days. It took them a while to approve it, but it takes them a while to approve almost everything.
  - blhack 17y ago
    Haha, no not trolling. Maybe things are different here, then? I'm in Phoenix and there are Android billboards/advertisements everywhere. One of the more brilliant ones was something I saw in a mall: it was a multitouch surface mounted in a poster-space running a game; kids were lined up to play it. People are genuinely, organically (as in not prompted by a billboard they just drove post) talking about the Android. Cellphones are something that falls under my umbrella of responsibility at work and I have had several people jokingly beg me to lobby for us to switch from AT&T to verizon so they can get droids. Also, on spotify: are you in the US? I was trying to find my little sister a subscription-based music service she could use on her iPhone and couldn't.
    - DannoHung 17y ago
      Dude, Spotify isn't available in the US, period.
    - dandelany 17y ago
      Anecdotes != evidence. I hate when people make claims like this based only on their own biased perceptions of the situation.
      - dandelany 17y ago
- lispm 17y ago
  Haha, we'll see. The Mac 128k could not run any useful program and was very expensive. You could not even develop software on it. The iMac did not have a floppy drive, no serial ports and no printer port. It had though so called USB ports (whatever that was). It was immediately useless for many people who could not attach their printers and insert their floppy disks. The 5G iPod was extremely expensive, had a firewire port and no USB. I did not even work without a Mac. PC? No chance. The iPhone? Ballmer: 'the most expensive mobile phone on the planet'. We know what happens, when PC enthusiasts predict the fate of Apple products...
- DannoHung 17y ago
  > their iPhone success is starting to wane in light of the Android. Qualify this, please.
- madh 17y ago
  Maybe, but all I know is that every time I use my iPhone at home (not in a mobile situation) I wish it were bigger. A well-done tablet will be fantastic particularly if they find the right size. Such a produce will even spur development of similar devices from competitors, some of which may run Android.
- raganwald 17y ago
  I have no problem getting excited about an Apple Tablet. However... I can't get excited about rumours and speculation. There's nothing actionable about all this crap unless you're an iPhone developer and you decide to support full screen resolution and not make an assumption about the screen size. Other than that... I suppose this might make some folks hold off on netbooks. Are there any other tangible,a ctionable consequences of this kind of post? Or is it all the tech equivalent of guys in a barbershop arguing about whether Muhammed Ali was the greatest fighter who ever lived?
bdfh42 17y ago
For the sake of Christmas if not our collective sanity - please stop posting this sort of crud. Who cares about posts about what a consumer goods company might market at some indeterminate time in the future? I for one could do with a holiday from this sort of nonsense. Apple fanboys click away!
- poutine 17y ago
  Well, the reason why speculation about Apple is posted so furiously is that a lot of people do care. After all, Apple controls some 90% of the high end PC market (>$1000). Don't like the posting? Don't read it.
  - bdfh42 17y ago
    Think about it - you are prepared to get excited about complete guff about what might - but usually turns out to be certainly not) be. Interesting world view. My Christmas present to you is to free you from such lunacy - boom - you are free and need no longer worry about what might be - you can just enjoy what is.
    - CamperBob 17y ago
      All they have to do is scale up an iPhone to something that's comfortable to read, and they will own the entire market. At least they'll sell one to me. :-P
- petercooper 17y ago
  Who cares about posts about what a consumer goods company might market at some indeterminate time in the future? Those of us who are want to launch products on the new platform and get a step on our competitors. That's why I read HN for the most part - I can keep a good pulse on not only new technologies, but what other entrepreneurs are thinking. Imagine if.. 4 years ago you had even an inkling of what the iPhone and iPhone App Store model would become in 2009.. you'd probably be richer than you are now, even if you were ignorant of tech entirely and only bought Apple stock ;-) Heck, even knowing six months before app fever hit, you'd have cashed in if you were quick enough as a publisher or developer. I want to know everything about this Apple tablet - even the pointless speculation - because anything might be the scrap of information I need to connect a ton of dots together and come up with an idea or a product that could make me a ton of money. I did just that when people were ranting under the radar about Ruby and Rails in 2004 and I've made quite a bit of money from being quick off the mark.
DanBlake 17y ago
I see a reference in this thread to it being a macbook air sans keyboard. I think its much more likely that its a 4x sized iphone.
NathanKP 17y ago
Sounds like hype. We haven't even seen anything yet, so it is all speculation about how great this is.
- joezydeco 17y ago
  But STEVE is INSANELY HAPPY with it! Whatever it is! So it must be great!
quizbiz 17y ago
We can all guess what this product will be like, probably a tablet resembling an enlarged iPod Touch/iPhone. But I can't wait to find out how this product will surprise and feature something new and unexpected. That's what Apple delivers so well, they continually innovate instead of just rebranding/repurposing. It will be interesting to see how the upcoming presentation will deliver an innovation.
Keyframe 17y ago
I am looking forward with joy on the coming tablet explosion market. Be it crunch..joojoo, apple or whomever makes it "just work" and easy to carry around. I NEED that device! One thing about apple hardware though to be cautious is that history tells us to skip their 1st generation. edit: my ideal tablet would be the size of what joojoo showed, about A4 with wacom surface like cintiq so I can carry it around and draw/paint in corel painter + photoshop. I know this is a few generations of tablets away, but one can dream. Basically a portable cintiq.
bdfh42 17y ago
Have you noticed that every post that is BORED - BORED BORED - with mindless speculation about new possible maybe crappy consumer goods from a once computer company get voted down? Well all the intelligent folks have,
weaksauce 17y ago
Here is my prediction for the tablet if it is shown on the 26th. It will have three methods of input: 1. Multitouch screen of course. 2. Pen based as well for note taking but the primary interface is the multitouch. 3. Front facing camera with dedicated hardware for eye tracking. You heard it here first: There will be eye tracking on the new tablet. (of course this is just speculation but so is the article. Hearsay rumors.)

15 points by anderzole 17y ago

We're probably playing right into Apple's hype/secrecy marketing strategy, but it sounds intriguing and quite different than existing e-readers.

joezydeco 17y ago
Yup. Here we go again. Four+ weeks of this stuff clogging the top of every blog aggregator.

lispm 17y ago

may or may not. who knows.

blhack 17y ago

I'm sorry, but I just cannot get excited about an Apple tablet. I have a feeling that it is going to be like a macbook air without the keyboard: absurdly expensive, not all that useful, and replaceable with things in the PC world that are better and cheaper. Apple got lucky with the iPod in that they were the first company to do it right. They carried this success into the iPhone, but their iPhone success is starting to wane in light of the Android. I think that an Apple tablet is going to combine all of the things that I hate about the MBA with all of the things that I hate about the iPhone (appstore nonsense, restricting apps like spotify or anything with similar functionality). Good luck to you, Apple, but I don't see this succeeding. edit: I was mistaken about spotify, that is not available in the US at all. The point was that I was trying to find a subscription music service for the iPhone and couldn't. The general consensus among the people doing the same was that Apple won't allow it.

endtime 17y ago
You don't see it succeeding? If you'd ended your comment with "...but I don't think I'll be picking one up," sure, that would make sense. But do you honestly think 99% of Apple's customers care about, or even understand, the concerns you have?
- blhack 17y ago
  But do you honestly thing 99% of Apple's customers care about, or even understand, the concerns you have? Yes, I do. What will the Apple tablet be competing against? It's the MBA all over again. Unless Apple makes a drastic change in their pricing philosophy, this simply will not be something I see most consumers justifying.
  - ugh 17y ago
    Apple’s products sometimes are relatively boring. The MBA is ok but not exactly revolutionary. Others are. And as a consequence I would always wait until they show what they have. I have problems finding a place in the market for a tablet but I’m pretty confident that Apple could find a spot. Or maybe not.
  - CamperBob 17y ago
    What will the Apple tablet be competing against? It'll utterly destroy the Kindle, for one thing, if they execute well.
petercooper 17y ago
but their iPhone success is starting to wane in light of the Android. Are you trolling? If so, it's a good one because I'm falling for it :-) The iPhone's success is far from waning. Android as a term is barely known outside tech circles whereas even Mac haters at least know what an "iPhone" is. Apple got lucky with the iPod in that they were the first company to do it right. Far from it. The first generation iPod reviewed poorly and sold poorly. It wasn't until near the end of 2004 - and the fourth generation - that it really "caught on." Apple didn't get lucky.. they got it right after iterating and redeveloping a few times. restricting apps like spotify Did they? I have Spotify on my iPhone right now and enjoy it using it most days. It took them a while to approve it, but it takes them a while to approve almost everything.
- blhack 17y ago
  Haha, no not trolling. Maybe things are different here, then? I'm in Phoenix and there are Android billboards/advertisements everywhere. One of the more brilliant ones was something I saw in a mall: it was a multitouch surface mounted in a poster-space running a game; kids were lined up to play it. People are genuinely, organically (as in not prompted by a billboard they just drove post) talking about the Android. Cellphones are something that falls under my umbrella of responsibility at work and I have had several people jokingly beg me to lobby for us to switch from AT&T to verizon so they can get droids. Also, on spotify: are you in the US? I was trying to find my little sister a subscription-based music service she could use on her iPhone and couldn't.
  - DannoHung 17y ago
    Dude, Spotify isn't available in the US, period.
  - dandelany 17y ago
    Anecdotes != evidence. I hate when people make claims like this based only on their own biased perceptions of the situation.
    - dandelany 17y ago
lispm 17y ago
Haha, we'll see. The Mac 128k could not run any useful program and was very expensive. You could not even develop software on it. The iMac did not have a floppy drive, no serial ports and no printer port. It had though so called USB ports (whatever that was). It was immediately useless for many people who could not attach their printers and insert their floppy disks. The 5G iPod was extremely expensive, had a firewire port and no USB. I did not even work without a Mac. PC? No chance. The iPhone? Ballmer: 'the most expensive mobile phone on the planet'. We know what happens, when PC enthusiasts predict the fate of Apple products...
DannoHung 17y ago
> their iPhone success is starting to wane in light of the Android. Qualify this, please.
madh 17y ago
Maybe, but all I know is that every time I use my iPhone at home (not in a mobile situation) I wish it were bigger. A well-done tablet will be fantastic particularly if they find the right size. Such a produce will even spur development of similar devices from competitors, some of which may run Android.
raganwald 17y ago
I have no problem getting excited about an Apple Tablet. However... I can't get excited about rumours and speculation. There's nothing actionable about all this crap unless you're an iPhone developer and you decide to support full screen resolution and not make an assumption about the screen size. Other than that... I suppose this might make some folks hold off on netbooks. Are there any other tangible,a ctionable consequences of this kind of post? Or is it all the tech equivalent of guys in a barbershop arguing about whether Muhammed Ali was the greatest fighter who ever lived?

bdfh42 17y ago

For the sake of Christmas if not our collective sanity - please stop posting this sort of crud. Who cares about posts about what a consumer goods company might market at some indeterminate time in the future? I for one could do with a holiday from this sort of nonsense. Apple fanboys click away!

poutine 17y ago
Well, the reason why speculation about Apple is posted so furiously is that a lot of people do care. After all, Apple controls some 90% of the high end PC market (>$1000). Don't like the posting? Don't read it.
- bdfh42 17y ago
  Think about it - you are prepared to get excited about complete guff about what might - but usually turns out to be certainly not) be. Interesting world view. My Christmas present to you is to free you from such lunacy - boom - you are free and need no longer worry about what might be - you can just enjoy what is.
  - CamperBob 17y ago
    All they have to do is scale up an iPhone to something that's comfortable to read, and they will own the entire market. At least they'll sell one to me. :-P
petercooper 17y ago
Who cares about posts about what a consumer goods company might market at some indeterminate time in the future? Those of us who are want to launch products on the new platform and get a step on our competitors. That's why I read HN for the most part - I can keep a good pulse on not only new technologies, but what other entrepreneurs are thinking. Imagine if.. 4 years ago you had even an inkling of what the iPhone and iPhone App Store model would become in 2009.. you'd probably be richer than you are now, even if you were ignorant of tech entirely and only bought Apple stock ;-) Heck, even knowing six months before app fever hit, you'd have cashed in if you were quick enough as a publisher or developer. I want to know everything about this Apple tablet - even the pointless speculation - because anything might be the scrap of information I need to connect a ton of dots together and come up with an idea or a product that could make me a ton of money. I did just that when people were ranting under the radar about Ruby and Rails in 2004 and I've made quite a bit of money from being quick off the mark.

DanBlake 17y ago

I see a reference in this thread to it being a macbook air sans keyboard. I think its much more likely that its a 4x sized iphone.

NathanKP 17y ago

Sounds like hype. We haven't even seen anything yet, so it is all speculation about how great this is.

joezydeco 17y ago
But STEVE is INSANELY HAPPY with it! Whatever it is! So it must be great!

quizbiz 17y ago

We can all guess what this product will be like, probably a tablet resembling an enlarged iPod Touch/iPhone. But I can't wait to find out how this product will surprise and feature something new and unexpected. That's what Apple delivers so well, they continually innovate instead of just rebranding/repurposing. It will be interesting to see how the upcoming presentation will deliver an innovation.

Keyframe 17y ago

I am looking forward with joy on the coming tablet explosion market. Be it crunch..joojoo, apple or whomever makes it "just work" and easy to carry around. I NEED that device! One thing about apple hardware though to be cautious is that history tells us to skip their 1st generation. edit: my ideal tablet would be the size of what joojoo showed, about A4 with wacom surface like cintiq so I can carry it around and draw/paint in corel painter + photoshop. I know this is a few generations of tablets away, but one can dream. Basically a portable cintiq.

bdfh42 17y ago

Have you noticed that every post that is BORED - BORED BORED - with mindless speculation about new possible maybe crappy consumer goods from a once computer company get voted down? Well all the intelligent folks have,

weaksauce 17y ago

Here is my prediction for the tablet if it is shown on the 26th. It will have three methods of input: 1. Multitouch screen of course. 2. Pen based as well for note taking but the primary interface is the multitouch. 3. Front facing camera with dedicated hardware for eye tracking. You heard it here first: There will be eye tracking on the new tablet. (of course this is just speculation but so is the article. Hearsay rumors.)