With an Apple event for their new iPods in a couple of days, the Apple rumor mill is tripping over itself as usual, but I find myself not particularly caring. Maybe it’s because my 4th generation iPod Photo is still going strong, or that my Palm Pre makes a pretty decent MP3 player, but the main Apple rumor that I find myself interested in is the elusive Mac Tablet, and we’ve been hearing about this one for at least a year now. This is also a case where I care more about an Apple product’s hardware than software. OS X is great, sure, but what I really want is a solid, reasonably affordable slate tablet (as opposed to a convertible tablet, which most PC manufacturers make). I know asking for Apple to make the “affordable” option is almost laughable, but at the moment, the only real alternative is the Fujitsu Stylistic Tablet PC, which starts at $2000, and I think even Apple could undercut that. Assuming that they don’t go completely bonkers and release the “oversized iPod Touch” that some people are claiming, I see two possibilities:
First, the “netbook” rumor, which is that this would be Apple’s first Atom-based PC. Considering that OS X seems to run decently on hacked netbooks, and that Snow Leopard is supposedly more lightweight than Leopard, I can see this happening, with hardware along the lines of:
- 10″ 1024×600 Multitouch LED display
- Intel Atom N280 1.66GHz
- 2GB DDR2-800 Memory
- Nvidia Ion Geforce 9300M
- 32GB Flash Storage
Of course, there are some possible tweaks, mostly in the CPU. It’s possible that they might wait for the Pineview Atom chip, the N450. While it’s the same clock speed, it does support x86_64 extensions, and given Apple’s recent push towards 64 bit with Snow Leopard, I could see them doing this (Remember, this likely isn’t coming in the immediate future). The other route they could use is going with the nettop version of Pineview, specifically the D510, which buys them both dual core and hyper-threading, but at the cost of more energy use (also even the nettop Atoms use less energy than mobile Core 2 processors). Again, with Snow Leopard’s supposed improvements in multi-threading, this would make sense.
Even if they went with Pineview, I’m guessing they’d ignore the chip’s onboard GMA 500 in favor of something from Nvidia, likely their Ion solution (which can be either a Geforce 9300M or 9400M), as the GMA 500 probably wouldn’t do OS X justice, and also taking into account that they moved all of their products off of Intel GMA graphics earlier this year.
Finally, I imagine that any kind of Mac Tablet would have some sort of flash storage, likely similar to what we have in the iPhone/iPod Touch. While it’s not necessarily going to be much faster than a hard drive, it will help in power consumption and noise.
A second possibility is a “beefier” tablet, using components found in notebooks rather than netbooks:
- 12″ 1280×800 Multitouch LED display
- Intel Core 2 Duo ULV 1.6GHz
- 2GB DDR3-1066 Memory
- Nvidia Geforce 9400M
- 64GB Flash Storage
This model’s hardware is similar to what’s available in the Macbook Air: A low-voltage Intel chip, DDR3 Memory, and a Geforce 9400M. I’ve left this using flash storage, as I think the goal here should be no moving parts, and using a solid state drive would bring the price up too much. Of course, you can mix and match from either of these two lists, really, they’re just two examples of what Apple could potentially do.
In terms of ports, I imagine either configuration would have a MagSafe power adapter, two USB 2.0 ports, a headphone jack, and (possibly) a Mini DisplayPort output. Airport Extreme and Bluetooth 2.1 are a given, but I doubt either model would feature an optical drive (though a USB one would definitely be an option).
Finally, pricing: As they’re configured above (and I’m probably dreaming here), I’d like to see $799 and $999, respectively. The first number is probably more on the mark than the second, as Atom parts are fairly cheap. The most expensive part of the laptop would likely be the display. The second machine is probably under priced, and a $1199 price tag might be more likely, but that still undercuts the Fujitsu by $800.
And now for how Apple can completely screw this up. One of the rumors floating around on the internet is that Apple’s Tablet will be a 10″ iPod Touch, which would be quite the disaster. For starters, I’m guessing a majority of the apps in the App Store would need rewriting to support multiple resolutions (unless Apple made the even more laughable decision of releasing a 10″ device with a 320×480 resolution display). The other option being a separate App Store for the tablet. Even then, a 10″ iPod Touch wouldn’t really offer anything that the current models don’t. The primary appeal of the device is having quick access to information and the internet in your pocket. Not only would hauling around a 10″ version be more cumbersome, but at the size of a netbook, an operating system as locked down at the iPhone OS is just laughable, not to mention that you’d be paying a lot more for the privilege of running one app at a time (sure, they might remove this restriction on a larger and more powerful model, but I wouldn’t say it’s a sure thing).
While undercutting Fujitsu’s slate tablets is easy (they basically have no competition right now, which is one of the reasons their prices are so high, a big iPod is in a completely different market and is instead competing with other internet tablets which aren’t running full featured operating systems, and these devices are priced well under $2000. While there aren’t many (if any, unless you count the Kindle DX) devices in that size range, there’s likely a reason for that. A device that big should have more functionality than a netbook.
Assuming that Apple makes the smart choice here, and they do it soon, I’ll probably be picking it up on day one. The only thing left is what would it look like? While they were way off on the date, I think Gizmodo did a really nice job on their mockup, as well as guessing what it would probably be called.
;)
