News Apple planning low-cost tablet?

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009/05/22/apple-planning-low-cost-tablet/1

Could Apple be planning a low-cost multitouch Mac-based tablet as a competitor to the popular netbook format it so publicly derided?

 

as long as it can run common Mac OSX programs rather than another iPhone OS, im getting it!

low cost, multi-touch, Mac OSX, what can go wrong?

 

..Yeah. Apple and 'low cost' don't go together. At all.

A netbook offering with multi-touch? Yeah. Believable, understandable.

Low cost in real world terms? Not a chance.

Low cost in comparison to a 17"MBP with all the trimmings, maybe.

 

Believe it when you see it ..

The fact that 'Apple' and the generally accepted definition of 'low cost' don't go together all that well?

I'll believe it when I see it, but can't help thinking that the market for 'proper' tablet PCs, as opposed to glorified PMPs like the iPhone or iPod Touch, is still too small. That said, I could see a couple of our designers going for a multi-touch machine running 'proper' OSX but it doesn't really float my boat (but then, I develop software)

I'd much rather see them (re)release something along the lines of the old 10" iBook - that struck a nice balance between portability and usability even if it was fearsomely expensive at the time.

 

Netbooks appeal to people who want to browse the net, check/write emails etc. on the go. Sure, the keyboards are compact, but you can type at a reasonable speed on them. Introducing a multitouch tablet that costs >£300 just sounds ridiculous. It's not the same market as the netbook - have you ever tried writing anything lengthy using handwriting recognition?

Tablets are normally used for image editing etc. I highly doubt a 'low cost' panel is going to be able to handle this kind of thing.

 

Being as one of the major complaints I have heard about the iPhone as a "proper" smartphone is the lack of a keyboard, a possible decision to make a 7-10" web tablet without a keyboard seems to be a bit of an error.
And anyway, you can already buy a Modbock can't you?

 

waitaminute.
Apple and low-cost?
Dude, that's a oxymoron

 

For serious Mac users, like my wife, a nice big desktop isn't going away and the laptops are just too expensive and large. A low cost mac based small notebook (netbook) that can do the basics (surf, email, look at photos, etc.) would be an ideal second machine for her to use elsewhere in the house or on the go. However it still have to be "notebook style" in that it has a real keyboard for typing on AND it has to be competitve with all the inexpensive PC notebooks out there. i.e. in the $500 area or so.

IMO Apple releases this and they have a potential big seller. I know we'd buy at least one and maybe 2, one for each of us. My current machine is MacBook Pro dual booting to XP which is what I use most of the time but it's still overkill for surfing, blogging, photo reviewing and email purposes.

 

the words Low Cost and Apple never go hand and hand so Im wondering what the price really will be, lol typically anything in the eyes of Apple that they consider to be low cost tends to be about 25% or more expensive them anything anyone else is offering running the same hardware.

 

Yeah, $500-$700? A product from Apple? Good joke.

 

In B4 Nexxo and his awesome tablet

You could use an on screen keyboard anyway, and it would be much better than the usual ones since it's multi touch.

 

Inexpensive Apple? Yeah whatever.

What's the point of netbooks? Cheap price. Is Apple going to be cheap compared to others? I don't think so. What will the point of buying one be? It's Apple. It doesn't really even matter if it has no proper keyboard, it's more expensive than competitors and fails at something like battery life. Just put that marketing machine into action and you'll have a market. iPeople will just suddenly feel like smudging a small screen with multiple fingers is the best thing in the world.

 

Yep, albeit a long time ago - Palm's 'Graffiti' was pretty easy to use for long-ish periods of time once you got used to the different stylus strokes. Good for taking notes, perhaps, but I'd hate to have to write code that way.

If I had a tablet machine, chances are the first thing I'd do is hook a proper keyboard up to it. Kind of defeats the object, really ...

 

affordable apple? thats nuts!