MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Rumor: Is this Apple's new Newton or UMPC?

cstross · 12-27-2007, 08:58 AM

A bluetooth-and-wifi equipped Apple tablet with an 800x480 screen and the touch interface would, indeed, be a joy and a delight -- as long as it had a working HID in its bluetooth stack so you could add a keyboard and mouse where necessary, and as long as it had an open SDK.

In fact, it'd be a very serious threat to Nokia's web tablet business (at one end) and Microsoft's Origami/UMPC business (at the other). Not to mention eating Archos' video PMP business along the way.

It wouldn't be a dedicated ebook reader, though. That's too small a niche market to attract Apple (although they might release ebook reading software for it; and there's always Adobe, and the OS/X port of FBReader to keep us happy).

I'd see it as being positioned to straddle a bunch of niches -- a big media player (better than the iPod Touch), a post-Newton PDA with multitouch, a remote control/remote terminal for the Apple TV home media hub, and a thumb in the eye to Microsoft for their UMPCs. And I'd buy one in a split second (subject to provisos about bluetooth, peripherals, sdk, and so on).

But I'm not convinced it'll happen this way. Note that the iPod Touch lacks bluetooth? Given bluetooth, a working HID, and an open software environment, the Touch would slaughter Palm and Windows Mobile in what's left of the dedicated-PDA market. It's that good. But it'd also cannibalize sales of the iPhone, because you could just buy a cheaper Touch (with no phone contract) and pair it with your existing mobile phone. Apple won't release a product that destroys an existing successful product line -- that's one of the lessons they learned from the disastrous 1990s. So any new tablet Mac will have to be different enough from the iPhone that it won't eat into its user base.

12-27-2007, 08:58 AM	#5
cstross Cynic Posts: 86 Karma: 514 Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland Device: Lots, started with a Psion 3 circa 1998	A bluetooth-and-wifi equipped Apple tablet with an 800x480 screen and the touch interface would, indeed, be a joy and a delight -- as long as it had a working HID in its bluetooth stack so you could add a keyboard and mouse where necessary, and as long as it had an open SDK. In fact, it'd be a very serious threat to Nokia's web tablet business (at one end) and Microsoft's Origami/UMPC business (at the other). Not to mention eating Archos' video PMP business along the way. It wouldn't be a dedicated ebook reader, though. That's too small a niche market to attract Apple (although they might release ebook reading software for it; and there's always Adobe, and the OS/X port of FBReader to keep us happy). I'd see it as being positioned to straddle a bunch of niches -- a big media player (better than the iPod Touch), a post-Newton PDA with multitouch, a remote control/remote terminal for the Apple TV home media hub, and a thumb in the eye to Microsoft for their UMPCs. And I'd buy one in a split second (subject to provisos about bluetooth, peripherals, sdk, and so on). But I'm not convinced it'll happen this way. Note that the iPod Touch lacks bluetooth? Given bluetooth, a working HID, and an open software environment, the Touch would slaughter Palm and Windows Mobile in what's left of the dedicated-PDA market. It's that good. But it'd also cannibalize sales of the iPhone, because you could just buy a cheaper Touch (with no phone contract) and pair it with your existing mobile phone. Apple won't release a product that destroys an existing successful product line -- that's one of the lessons they learned from the disastrous 1990s. So any new tablet Mac will have to be different enough from the iPhone that it won't eat into its user base. Last edited by cstross; 12-27-2007 at 09:01 AM.