Long-awaited Mac Tablet finally coming Q3 2008?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 25 May 2008 15:11

Opinion and Analysis

O’Grady then talks about all the cool things you can do with a Mac Tablet, including voice dictation, handwriting recognition and haptic feedback, as well as pairing with a Bluetooth keyboard for faster keyboard-based data entry.

If the Mac Tablet could indeed be paired with a keyboard, but had no ‘stand’ on the back, accessory makers would no doubt create them in short order, giving users the best of both worlds – true Tablet touch functionality in ‘Star Trek’ PADD style, or traditional keyboard input, presumably also with a wireless mouse if desired.

No other specs are yet on offer, such as memory, the number of USB ports, storage types and sizes (whether mechanical or SDDs), battery life or more.

We can probably surmise, given the iPod, iPod Touch, iPhone and MacBook Air, that any Mac Tablet would forego the consumer-friendly option of an easily removable battery.

But that’s about the only prediction we can reliably make. Perhaps a Mac Tablet would come with a built-in 3.5G HSPA module from Ericsson, allowing users to simply pop in their own SIM card for mobile broadband.

Naturally, other wireless options would have to include 802.11 a/b/g and Bluetooth.

But the glorious large touch screen and accompanying touch interface, along with what would no doubt be an ultra slim device, would blow the whole tablet market wide open.

Whether a stylus for drawing capabilities would be part of Apple’s game plan is yet to be seen.

But I, for one, sincerely hope these rumours are true.

Why? Because a Mac Tablet would show Microsoft and its partners how to do a Tablet right, and would dramatically spur innovation in the PC tablet world, while Mac owners smugly ignore all PC tablet options and just go with the Steve Jobs tablet flow.

We’ll see in a few months time – and look out for any potential hints come June 9... if Jobs doesn’t surprise us with a Tablet based “one more thing” on the day itself!