iTab Tablet Pricey and Crippled, But Plays Motion-Sensing Games

With all the speculation about a tablet Mac from Apple, it may soon be possible to buy one from a small company that plans to convert a batch of iBooks into tablets.

Though it has not yet been built, the iTab is a 12-inch iBook with the screen removed and the keyboard replaced with a touch-sensitive screen. The company plans build 100 iTabs as it sells them on eBay, starting at $1,500.

According to the iTab website:

“The iTab is built one at a time from modified Apple iBooks. It has the same specs and hardware as the originating iBook (except for the touchscreen and the lack of keyboard, trackpad, and one less USB port). Its screen will be fastened to the body of the originating iBook, making it more durable. The width and depth of the iTab is the same as the iBook. Its height should also be the same, but might vary slightly.

As well as missing a bunch of hardware, the iTab will have no warranty (Apple’s not going to fix it) and the touch-screen doesn’t work with Apple’s highly-regarded InkWell handwriting recognition, which seems like a major drawback. Isn’t that one of the key features of a tablet? To enter text, users are recommended to buy the KeyStrokes virtual keyboard.

There is one cool feature though. Thanks to the iBook’s built-in sudden-motion sensors, which are designed to park the hard drive heads in the event of a fall, the iTab will play the Labyrin3D maze game simply by moving it up and down and backwards and forwards in space. (You can also play the same way on any of Apple’s new laptops, but you won’t have to deal with the screen flapping about).