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A Mac Tablet Mockup – For Your Consideration


Image © 2008 John Ellenich

7″ Screen, 1.6GHz Atom, 1GB of RAM, 32 GB of flash storage, Wifi, bluetooth, modified iPhone OS (Snow Leopard)

Flickr user tacojohn has a vision of the much-rumored Mac Tablet Apple has been said to be working on since at least September 2007.

Ahead of Macworld next week in San Francisco, the Apple rumor mill has been busy ginning up interest to counter the let-down of Steve Jobs’ decision to skip Apple’s final appearance at the popular trade show, and Tuesday a TechCrunch report cited a trio of three independent sources close to Apple who say to “expect a large screen iPod touch device to be released in the Fall of ‘09, with a 7 or 9 inch screen.”

“Prototypes have been seen and handled by one of our sources,” according to the report, and “Apple is talking to OEMs in Asia now about mass production,” the publication said. It added there were some early concerns among Apple managers over the potential market for such a device, but implied those fears have been quelled by the blistering success of the App Store:

“The difference now is the iTunes app store, which has thousands of games and other applications that are perfect for a touch screen device with an accelerometer.”

Looks cool to us.

Via AppleInsider

About the author

Lonnie Lazar

Lonnie Lazar is a writer, musician, web designer attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

Email the author | Read more posts by Lonnie Lazar.

10 comments

    As long as it’s not a closed system like the iphone I’ll be happy. I also hope it’ll support pressure sensitivity and a stylus… but somehow I doubt that.

    The larger iPod Touch must still be pocketable. The “concept” is a Mac that we have with us all the time, everywhere we go. I simply won’t buy another mobile Mac that I have to lug in a case. And imagine what an anywhere, anytime Mac can feature as services!

    Nor should anyone have to buy more than one Mac. So the “MacTROU” (for The Rest of Us) must be untethered, like the Kindle, using EVDO. And better than the Kindle, this gizmo connects to all your files on MobileMe.

    Apple can charge whatever it needs to for the mobile Mac, for the connectivity, and for a subscription to MobileMe.

    I will buy one! But PLEASE, give us *REAL* OSX (and not the iphone OS) PEN INPUT and a BLUETOOTH KEYBOARD !!!!

    I’ll have to get some bigger pockets.

    [...] Mac Mini, outro rumor bastante recorrente é de um Mac Tablet ou algo do gênero. Hoje, novamente, vejo mais blogs divulgando notícias a respeito desse produto, que em tese, viria com uma tela entre 7 e 9 polegadas, CPU [...]

    I would love to see it as a device that *** folds in half *** so that it fit in my pocket. I could easily deal with an iTouch/iPhone that was twice as big when unfolded and twice as thick when folded.

    Even cooler is if it would look and act like a regular iTouch when folded.

    “not a closed system”: Are you new to Apple? Apple controls—and it works.
    “pressure…and stylus”: Not usually compatible, different sensors.

    “pocketable”: How big are your pockets? The iTouch/iPhone are about as big as a pocket device can be. There’s no magic here like a roll-up screen and atom-sized electronics.

    “EVDO”: Sure.

    “pen input”: not going to happen. You do know that typin gis faster than writing, right?

    “bluetooth keyboard”: What? How about a mouse, printer and external drive as well?

    “not a closed system”: Are you new to Apple? Apple controls—and it works.
    “pressure…and stylus”: Not usually compatible, different sensors.

    “pocketable”: How big are your pockets? The iTouch/iPhone are about as big as a pocket device can be. There’s no magic here like a roll-up screen and atom-sized electronics.

    “EVDO”: Sure.

    “pen input”: not going to happen. You do know that typing is faster than writing, right?

    “bluetooth keyboard”: What? How about a mouse, printer and external drive as well?

    [...] Apple News, Rumors, iPod + iTunes, iPod touch You may be sick of hearing and seeing rumors of an Apple tablet device as they have been around for as long as touch screens have [...]

    Look at me! I can take a MacBook LCD and turn it sideways, add some hands and a little logo and voila! A crappy mockup of a non-existent product. (Nice job on the lighting, by the way)

    I used to like this stuff. Then it became kind of boring. Then tedious. And now every 15-year old kid with a freeware paint program gets in the act and it’s downright annoying.

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