With just over 24 hours until Steve Jobs sashays onto the stage, iSlate in hand, there are still plenty of burning questions about the Apple Tablet. So what can Cupertino’s new slice of technical wizardry learn from the mighty iPhone in order to succeed?
Turns out the iPhone can teach Apple’s tablet a few things, from its strongest successes to its daftest failings. Dive in and we’ll reveal all in our back to school lesson.
Steve Jobs tipped a wink about the arrival of the Apple Tablet at Apple’s event on Wednesday during the company’s Q1 2010 earnings call yesterday. And Apple COO Tim Cook threw more fuel on the fire…
The Apple Tablet isn’t official yet. But already Apple’s next-gen dream machine is facing up to some stiff competition, as the world’s biggest gadget purveyors line up their own take on the much-vaunted iTablet. Everyone from HP to Foxconn has one in the locker. If Apple wants to sit at the top of the tablet table, these are the finger-friendly delights it’ll need to beat.
Frog Design which help develop Apple’s classic Snow White industrial design language and the Apple IIc, Apple’s fourth personal computer, also built an Apple Tablet prototype. It’s now revealed images of the previously unseen device, just in time for Apple’s Tablet launch on Wednesday.
Gossip about the much-hyped Apple Tablet, due to drop on 27 January, isn’t anything new. In fact, chatter about an iSlate has been non-stop for years, well before we first laid eyes on the iPhone. So just how far back do Apple’s touchscreen machine dreams go? Join us on an odyssey of fax-friendly tablets and proddable phones as we trace the journey to the launch of the vaunted iTablet.
For all the hype and hullabaloo, just imagine if Steve Jobs rolls up in San Francisco next week and doesn’t unveil the fabled iTablet. Then what? Well, if the gossip in our ultimate rumour guide turns out to be off colour, just what other goodies could Apple have lined up to woo us with? Here’s our pick of the 10 alternatives to the iSlate.
Apple’s forthcoming tablet has been called many things – the Apple Tablet, the iSlate, the iTablet – but it seems its fighting hard for another name. Apple has filed multiple requests to gain control of the ‘iPad’ trademark. The name is currently controlled by Fujitsu which uses it for a small device used in US retail stores.
Apple has approached several UK mobile networks about selling the Apple Tablet (which could well be called the iSlate or the iTablet). Some predict that the negotiations are a repeat of the battle for the original iPhone but with O2, Orange, Tesco Mobile and Vodafone now selling the iPhone 3GS, could we see the iSlate on multiple networks?