News Photo leaks of Apple Tablet glass

I smell hoax! I will bet my girlfriend that the finished product WILL NOT look anything like that.
Come on, you cant really believe that?

 

At first I thought it was just one of those giant iPhone mockups that the highstreet mobile phone shops have in their window for the iPhone.

 

Yea I can't see that being the actual design, but idk. I can see the potential this could have.

I would be more excited if it was google doing this though.

 

Imho a 10 inch iPhone would be useless. Where would you use one?
Travel with it? Your better off with an iPhone - its smaller. If you need to do some work, a 10inch tablet will not cut it anyway.
Carry it around with you every day? LoL
At home? Again better off with the notebook.
Read books / magazines? You need a ereader. (at least I dont like reading books from a laptop screen).
I think Apple will come up with something better then 10inch iPhone. Although if it is the case, they will fail to sell it to anyone but fanboys.
I'm not a big fan of Mac's, but I do love my iPhone.

 

Looks like more a rotten apple than a fresh lovely one. If they can make something new with brand new and sleek looks, I'll be impressed, other than that it's just meh

 

I think the idea is to tap into the netbook market with something a little different, Apple have a ready made user base for their products so whether its good or bad it'll still sell by the bucket load.

 

Regardless of what I think about the usefulness of eBooks, their USP is something that the iSlate lacks, which is the e-Ink screen. The idea of using a non-backlit screen to conserve battery life to real extremes and reduce eye tiredness is something that the iSlate cannot do. However, the £200 is an excellent point. £200 is a lot of money. In fact, for what I think we can safely assume will be almost certainly twice £200, why would you buy a computer that only comes into it's own when;

Regardless of the questionable hygiene of using a touchscreen while on the crapper, none of those situations are what we would call necessary. That's important, because it highlights the intended use of the iSlate; this is a convenience or lifestyle item, not intended for work. That shines through in all the design decisions - runs a mobile OS that isn't Windows Mobile, doesn't have a keyboard, has expensive multitouch screen. You can't do serious work on it anymore than you could on an iPhone - you simply cannot type on a touchscreen with the same efficiency that you can type on phone buttons, let alone a real keyboard. Sure, you can read emails on it, but your replies are tortuously slow and anyway that's something that a Blackberry can handle without trouble and yet magically still fit into your pocket.

The biggest problem with the iSlate is that for the money Apple will be asking, it's very difficult for the average consumer to justify a computer that you cannot really use for work. Expensive computers are not always impossible to justify; a gaming desktop - everyone needs a home computer - or even an expensive laptop like the Air - because they have performance advantages on the go. Either you can use for work. The iSlate is much harder to swallow because not only is it another thing to carry, everything you can do on it you could do equally well if very slightly less comfortably on an iPhone, a laptop, or even a convertible tablet hybrid like the HP TX. That's a big issue, because while the hybrid is a tablet you can hold or have on your lap exactly like the iSlate, it will also do a million things the iSlate cannot, because it has a keyboard for actual typing. Because of that, and in total contrast to the iSlate, if you need to do any work on the move, the convertible tablet could handle it. If you have an iSlate and need to do work on the move, you'll have to bring a laptop with too, a laptop that can do everything the iSlate can. I just cannot envision a situation in which what is basically a huge iPhone would be of more use than a netbook and an iPhone.

Therefore, situations where an iSlate would be preferable to a small convertible can be summed up as 'a short period of non-essential browsing or reading,' which is a very small niche for £400+. For £400 I'd sit at my desk or put my MacBook on my knees. If you have £400 or thereabouts to spend on a convenience item that the average office worker would have to own in addition to a laptop, good for you. But by looking at the general penetration of other tablet products into the market - nil - I fear you're in a minority. If Apple can sell these by the bucketload, it's not on the strength of the product so much as the strength of their marketing.

I love netbooks and I love my iPhone. But the iPhone is a phone - something I have to have with me - and it fits in my pocket. What can you 'achieve' on an item which other than reading your emails cannot help your work? Regarding netbooks, netbooks are £200, not £400. Netbooks have a keyboard for taking lecture notes. Netbooks are good for more than just surfing the internet and playing Football Manager; in fact, they can run a real OS. Some of them are even tablets too. For the record, I own/have owned three iPods, a MacBook, and an iPhone. Mac do make good, if overpriced, products. This isn't one of them.

 

hmm, it's cool but I don't see myself buying one soon

 

lol really??? this has to be a joke... wow apple sure is running out of design ideas lol

 

1) Good point regarding battery life, the Apple tablet won't be able to compete with an eReader. However I would never consider spending £200+ on something that only displays book pages - and badly IMHO.

2) Yeah, that'll be me. I'm looking forward to using Mail while on the toilet seeing as I mail so much now on my Mac and iPhone. However it isn't convenient to carry my Mac into the toilet with an extension cable, and my iPhone does the job ... but lacks in so many ways. A netbook would suit me fine, but if I can get an equivalent that syncs with my Mac and iPhone and makes tasks easier than on iPhone then it could be a winner.

3) "That shines through in all the design decisions - runs a mobile OS that isn't Windows Mobile, " ... I am a little confused what you mean in the paragraph about it being mainly a lifestyle choice but mainly the line quoted here. Is your personal opinion that Mac OS is a lifestyle thing and not a serious contender to a Windows OS?! I would certainly 100% disagree with you because all I do now on my PC is play games and decode/encode videos. All of my work, browsing, mail, messaging and listening to music is now done on my Mac. It is a personal choice of course and I'm sure there are others out there who have both formats and maybe prefer doing their work on their PC. But I really do think it can contend with a Win OS easily.

In all though, you made some great points that got me thinking which is a rarity in a news thread on an Apple product. Usually the posters are limited to "omgzor i fuxin hate apple" or similar.

One thing I would say is that we really need to wait and see what the price will be, what the true specs are, the functionality of the software and how it actually works in our hands. If it looks like a fatter iPhone ... I may just give it a miss without giving it the break it deserves. ...

 

Hackintosh would be my first suggestion, it's not like there's a shortage of netbooks that'll do that. The Nokia 3G one is my favourite for the unibody-esque design. That said, why does the Mac need an extension cable? Won't the battery last? Or are you on the bog for more than a couple of hours at a time lol

No, I probably should've left the bit about Windows Mobile out because the issue is not the brand of mobile OS, but the mobility of it. I'm only slightly familiar with the Windows Mobile OS, but I know the Mac mobile one well and the general impression is that neither is a suitable basis for doing any real work. They are, by design, too limited and offer too little third-party support to be taken seriously; this is why neither of them has ever made it big on anything that could handle something better - think netbooks, for example, which will run 7, XP, X, various flavours of open-source...

...Only 10% of computer owners use a Mac, but 85% of those also own a Windows PC. Fact. The problem is that few Windows programs are readily available on Mac, so even the most ardent Mac fan must run Windows if he wants to be able to do everything. That lack of compatible programs will cripple the average office worker, for whom ease of communication and compatibility is everything. For example, if your employer is enlightened enough to offer multi-OS support on your office software, you are in a lucky but absolutely tiny minority. Also, you are in the equally tiny minority of being knowledgeable about computers; I'd bet that half of Britain's computer users would be completely stumped by OS X, let alone by the mobile version of it that isn't compatible with any of the programs commonly used in an office - like Office (even the Mac version). OS X is brilliant, don't get me wrong, but the mobile version is much less featured and even less compatible with general programming.

This is true. If it's £50, I'm all over it. But much more than £150... When would I use such a machine? And what for?

 

if apple doesnt put their full OS on it, and dont put a few USB ports/capability to connect keyboard and mouse, it will only be used to spot true apple fanboys. as noted by PureSilver there are devices that can add better functionality with integrated keyboard and mouse and the fact they come with full OS, so the software i have on my desktop and full laptop will work on my netbook albeit on a smaller screen and or slower, but for quick things it works. as if apple have a cut down OS will they provide for free apps for that device, or will they have to be bought?

 

It cracks me up to see how much attention people are lavishing onto this mythical device which sounds like it will be rubbish anyway and all the while MS is putting out demos of their Courier which is everything this should be and more. Apple Pr departments deserve a huge bonus.

 

agree, a full OSX is the only way to push this tablet.

but, knowing Apple, and their "user experience is first" and obsession to control everything. im thinking it will be an enlarged iphone. therefore, it'd be a flop. who needs an enlarged iphone?

 

Regardless of what eddtox says above, this is some good debate guys. I've got to say i'm in support of PureSilver - pretty much said everything I was going to say but in a far more thorough and eloquent manner.

Johnny and Ape, if the neccessity to read a digital magazine or send a couple of emails in a slightly more comfortable format is all you need to justify the purchase then fair enough.

Obviously I'm not taking the figures you said literally but it made me think. How much do we reckon these will cost?

I was looking Play earlier and it cost £459.99 for an 8GB 3G (not even a 3GS!!) sim-free.
Factor in the 10.5" OLED screen - isn't a 15" OLED tv around £2000?
The large amount of solid state memory - 32GB or even 64GB probably wouldnt cut it.
You'd need a far superior processor.
And a seriously bleeding-edge battery to keep the whole thing running for decent amount of time.
Basically everything the phone has but specced up hugely.

My guess at a price is £900 as a conservatively low estimate.
Either that or you'll get tied in to an extortionate 3G broadband package with an inhibiting download limit.

So what's your best offer?

 

That's the $64,000 question. The biggest problem is that unless this thing is sold in conjunction with a mobile phone network operator, they won't be able to mask the cost in monthly instalments like they do with iPhones. 3G isn't cheap here and I reckon you're looking at a £25/month minimum for such a device so obviously dependent upon mobile internet. If it is sold with a SIM card, that gives you a second phone bill to pay and something far too large to act as a phone. What's also problematic is selling it without the 3G connectivity already enabled (i.e., selling it without a SIM) goes against the Apple ethos of having everything sorted and packaged ready for you to turn it on - asking their consumers to go from ritzy Apple stores to rundown Carphone Warehouses to barter over 3G allowances is a bit of a non-starter. Worse, knowing that since this will almost never be used as a phone, and has a big screen, you can bet the networks will clamp down on your data usage to prevent you strangling the local network by downloading photos at their actual resolution or something. The connectivity is going to be the hardest part of the problem for Apple's sales people.

My pricing guess will be that Apple started with a price in mind when they started designing it. There is, after all, no point in making a product they simply cannot sell even at unit cost. I reckon if this is over £800 they won't sell one of them. Like I said, Apple make expensive products (and refuse to sell cheap ones to avoid brand problems) but they are all within certain boundaries - none of them is the most expensive product in their sector, none of them are beyond comprehension, and £800 is a MacBook over here, which is a fully featured laptop with a 13" screen. If it's £600 they won't sell many - nothing like the torrents of MacBooks and iPhones they sell. £500 is my absolute maximum - I just cannot imagine who they think would pay more than £500 for a toy-like 10" screen, basic hardware, and heavily curtailed functionality instead of a mediocre Dell laptop. I'm betting somewhere between £350 and £500, though I'm prepared to be unpleasantly surprised.

 

In all honesty I haven't even considered what price is too high for me. It would depend on several factors including functionality and software integration. £900 and £800 are out of my comfort level. £700 is a possible, but for that I would want to be able to (amongst a lot of other things) hook it up to a 1080P TV - and I don't think that is likely. £600, now we're starting to touch the comfort level, but for that I still want to visit an Apple store and shoulder barge the frothing fans out of the way and get a good feel for it. £500 and we're hitting a point where it would become very handy as a replacement for my iPhone in bed, and on the sofa with my other half, a remote control for the TV and my 2 HD Skybox's (which my iPhone already does with Tioti TV app, it would be fantastic with the larger screen for TV listings). Not forgetting iWork integration and Mail. It is rumoured to come with iWork installed ... but we can chalk that up to 'just another rumour'. It's rumoured to include a DVD drive ... but how much room does that leave you inside a 10" device for cooling, CPU, RAM and display controller? As for the phone function ... I can't imagine for 1 second that it comes with a built-in ability to call out, however I would expect it to hook up to the iPhone and tether the iPhones ability. Maybe even enabling video conference over WiFi ... again, just rumours. - forget that last bit, for a second I forgot just how slow the iPhone is even on WiFi.

Realistically I think we can agree it won't be < £500.

One thing to bear in mind is that Apple will add the usual Apple-Tax, but they still need to compete with the forthcoming Google pad and Microsoft pads. It will be interesting on the 27th (?) when they officially announce it. Even then I don't think we'll get the prices until a couple of months later, and by then the competition will have hotted up.

The only sure bet is that 33% of us will be correct, it'll either be bad, average or good.

 

how much is this drip marketing worth, it's not even subtle lol

 

The fact of the matter is that decent tablet pc's (especially slates) are still very expensive. Just haven lake at-the TabletKiosk Sahara or even its little brother, the NetSlate , which is an atom-powered netbook-like device and still starts at $1300ish. That's without an OLED screen and the apple-tax. The Sahara, on the other hand, is much more in the realms of current laptop specs, but starts at $1800 with a Celeron M ULV processor an 1GB of ram and will set you back a whopping $2400 for a Core 2 Duo version with 3 GB of ram. Once again, no OLED screen and no apple-tax. Draw what conclusions you will, but I can't see apple releasing a comparable device for the same price as a sim-free 3GS.

 

Exactly!