Report: Apple Tablet Coming In Two Flavors: Webcam And Education

Leander Kahney ()

gizmodo_apple_tablet

Gizmodo’s Brian Lam talked to a high level source who claims to have seen and handled prototypes of Apple’s upcoming tablet.

* The tablet is real (we already knew this though — CoM’s sources have also confirmed it).

* 10-inch screen.

* Looks like a giant iPhone with the same Home button and a shiny black plastic back.

* Two editions: One with a webcam and one for education.

* Will sit between iPod/iPhone and a MacBook, costing $700 to $900.

* Will also function as a secondary screen and/or a touchpad for iMacs and MacBooks, like this 7-inch external USB monitor form MiMo.

* It’s been under development in one form or another for six years, but the first prototype was built at end of 2008. Time to market is 6-9 months, pegging the device’s release date this holiday season.

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But just as Lam — who is a great reporter and a straight-shooter – was was about to get to the juicy bit — what OS the tablet will run — his iPhone dropped the call. Classic!

Writes Lam: “My call dropped on some windy road off Skyline Drive. Fucking AT&T.”

UPDATE: I contacted Lam, who said his source didn’t know the tablet’s OS. It’s the biggest secret surrounding the device, he says. Entrepreneur and ugly dog-lover Jason Calacanis just tweeted it runs a modified version of the iPhone OS, citing a developer. Maybe. Here at CoM, we like the idea it’ll run Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

8 comments »

About the author

Leander Kahney

is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: Inside Steve’s Brain, the New York Times bestseller about Steve Jobs; Cult of Mac; and Cult of iPod. Leander has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Guardian in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

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Posted in Apple, Hardware, News, Reviews |

  • HD Boy

    Why shouldn’t it run Mac OS X when tethered to Apple’s small keyboard and wireless mouse and the iPhone’s OS X Mobile when being toted around. If Macs can run Windows or Linux, surely this device could run both forms of the Apple OS.

  • joh

    OS X is totally unfit for any touch oriented device. Icons, buttons, scrollbars and everything else is too small and cramped to be used with fingers and there’s plainly too much going on on the screen to be usable with such a tablet.

    The OS is a major reason why PC-tablets never took off. Windows on a tablet was a pain and OS X would be not much better. You need some simple UI with large and clearly structured elements like the iPhone OS. No multiple windows, no desktop, no menu bar, no scrollbars. Anyway, the tablet will not be Intel, so even if it would run Snow Leopard, no third-party apps would be able to run without porting them to the new platform. It will also be much more constrained in terms of hardware, power and screen resolution than iMacs and MacBooks, so current Mac apps just wouldn’t work good enough. Forget it. A tablet with OS X would be a bastard, a hack, unelegant and hardly usable.

    My personal take: It will run a modified iPhone OS, with more resolution and more room for toolbars and such. Existing apps will need some adaptions, but this should be quite easy for developers. With basically the same SDK iPhone developers will be up to speed in no time. And it will be a phantastic platform for games, especially since the larger screen should relieve them from many restrictions of the iPhone…

  • Darcy McGee

    Man, it is REALLY going to suck when this doesn’t get announced this fall.

  • Robert

    Hell yea i like the idea that this thing would run snow leopard. That would throw so many people for a loop and maybe we’ll start seeing suped up versions of netbooks to compete with the tablet. If snow leopard is the os for this device i will be one happy camper!

  • edgar

    cool, i want it haha, i would love if the back wasn’t like the iphone’s…?
    and i hope they dont put a home button haha, but it looks nice anyway.
    and i also hope its like 500 or 600 or 100? =p

  • ged

    Bill Gates says: Is that an overlarge iPhone in your pocket or are you pleased to see me?

  • http://www.twitter.com/jazzyl jazzyl

    Cant wait for this tablet to be realeased

  • Lloyd Aldrin

    Any idea what the difference between educational and webcam is? I should think that webcam would be crucial in the world of education. I know that I make a lot of use of the webcam on the (totally lame) HPminis my middle school students use.