Comments on: Take Two iTablets and Call Me In the Morning

By: Dan Macler

Dan Macler — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:27:36 +0000

Ok, my 2 cents are that I would definitely NOT buy one of these until at least the 2 MAJOR flaws are fixed. The absence of flash technology is a glaring omission on all of Apple’s portable products. How in the world can you say that you can surf the web effortlessly when tone of the most popular technologies won’t even work? Secondly but even more grievous, the lack of a camera of any kind is absurd. The iPad is intended to be an in between device somewhere between a laptop and an iTouch. NO CAMERA? What was Jobs thinking? It’s still a make believe product completely unfinished most likely to allow the future sale of the same product with at least the camera built in. Shame on Apple!

By: Wanda Lichtenberg

Wanda Lichtenberg — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:33:09 +0000

If the screen is so small, the user has to wear tri-focals to view it, and the keys are tiny, it seems to me that the target market will be a younger generation that mine. Smaller does not always make it more desirable. P.S. I could be wrong about this, but I believe Apple presented the iTablet at a West Linn Middle School recently.

By: Paula

Paula — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:21:12 +0000

“Just being an iPhone with a 10 inch screen would be enough.”

Holding it up to my head to take calls would be inconvenient.

By: Ed in Sac

Ed in Sac — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:29:12 +0000

I thought it was supposed to be a device to allow the “usual pulp” publishers to go completely electronic in distribution. In addition to the “tablet” they must also have some sort of distribution/subscription service set up.

Then again, it could just play Solitaire?!?

By: MiamiDave

MiamiDave — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:46:42 +0000

We always need to remember that this is Apple we are talking about. The iPod is in fact just an MP3 player. It wasn’t the first one, and you can argue that when it was launched it wasn’t even the best choice because of the price, but it quickly became the most popular one. Same thing here. There are other netbooks and other tablet like devices, but I fully expect Apple’s entry in this space to be spectacular.

By: Barrett

Barrett — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 06:05:54 +0000

George: Methinks Mr. Anderson was having a little fun with the apochryphal Al Gore “Internets” bit (and poking a bit of fun at our previous Commander in Chief for good measure). Gotta know humor when it’s presented to you.

As to the forthcoming iWhatchamacalit: I merely predu=ict it’ll be interesting enough to give Mr. Bezos at least a wee bit of heartburn for at least a few months. Yes, Jobs was the one to infamously slag the Kindle by stating “nobody reads any more), but I simply ran the phrase through my reverse-engineered RAD generator and came up with this translation: “It’s interesting, and we’ll have something that’ll stomp it in two years or less.”

Me? Like Anderson, the last thing on my mind is latching onto yet another gadget, however svelte and sexy and possibly useful in some yet-to-be-ascertained way. If anything, I’m trying to REDUCE the gadget-count on my person while out and about. Since I’m still a big fan of the “classic” Palm OS, I just scored myself a Palm Centro, the last smartphone, near as I can tell, to support the Palm OS before Palm went ga-ga with WebOS on the Pre. This cuts my handheld gadget-count by one. Progress!

- Barrett

By: Willy

Willy — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:37:08 +0000

To George – when Kevin said Gore invented “the internetS”, that pluralization should have clued you in to the fact that it was a joke.
Kevin – What if it is in fact a “Color Kindle”? And like Jonathan wants, an iPhone with a 10-inch screen? Even if it only had 3G web connection – there’s always Skype. If THIS is what they are announcing, the only thing I would demand is very long battery life. Several days, at least; A week would be spectacular. I want one!

By: Alan Youngblood

Alan Youngblood — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:13:48 +0000

…and who would have thought Apple could have sold a $400 5 gig MP3 player in 2001?

Alan

By: Doc Holliday

Doc Holliday — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 22:31:52 +0000

I predict Apple will introduce…. [drum roll]… NOTHING!

The tablet PC concept has already been done to death. It didn’t work before, on a fundamental level. I doubt it will work, now. On any level.

It won’t have a keyboard, so it won’t replace the MacBooks. Who will want to run apps from the App Store on an 8″ or larger screen on a device that cost $800+? Even if it runs a full version of OSX and runs every application a regular Mac runs, why would you want to do that when you don’t have a keyboard, mouse or other input device? I can’t see myself editing photographs in Photoshop with the tip of my finger. It would probably have a solid state drive, which will drive the price way up, but no optical drive. It would probably be heavier than a Kindle, (which is a waste of money, I can get books a lot cheaper than through Amazon, it’s called a library, they’re free), the ‘buzz’ is that Apple will charge more for the books than Amazon, the battery won’t last as long as a Kindle and it won’t, initially, be as well supported as the Kindle, (if you want to pay $300+ just for something to read a book on, plus $10 a book). And it will break when you drop it. The market for accessories will be huge – cases, covers, screen covers, something to protect it from being dropped, to protect it from being lost, et cetera. If it doesn’t run standard Mac software, you will end up having to buy all brand new software. If it doesn’t run Windows, it will be a giant step backwards in compatibility, (I can’t believe I just said that.)

Apple already has a tablet – the iPod Touch or the iPhone. Introducing something else that does the same thing will gut the sales of these devices. iPhones and iPods are Apple’s cash cows. They are practically like printing money. Why would Apple shoot themselves in the foot by introducing something that would torpedo them?

Sorry, no tablet.

Of course, I could be wrong. Apple could shoot itself in the foot. They could make something that will end up in DigiBarn in six months…

By: mark

mark — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:03:02 +0000

This article failed in it’s goal to “make some sense of it”, but rather served to perpetuate the doubt about what “might be” and what “could be”. I don’t care what it is, or what it does, I’m definately going to buy one!

And, on another related note, while you inadvertently compared Jobs to W.C. Fields, the reality is that they were/are both showmen; masters of salesmanship, proving further that with the right schtick…there’s a sucker born every minute.