Rumours of a new Apple Tablet

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Published Tuesday, March 25, 2008 by Malcolm Hollingsworth

There are fresh rumours about Apple creating a tablet style computer. Having been using the Apple iPhone myself for the past month I have some thoughts on what they may be planning and how I would like to see the device appear.

Size and resolution

The tablet should be around 9-10 inches diagonally with a widescreen resolution of 720p. This would give a device roughly the size of an A5 sheet of paper, as long as the depth was similiar to the current iPhone, would be a great device to use almost anywhere.

Upscaled iPhone or Downscaled Macbook?

In order to create something powerful enough to use but keeping costs in check the device should be based on an upscaled iPhone operating system rather than trying to fit everything from a MacBook.

By using the same style of processor from the iPhone but hopefully a bit faster the device can be made less expensive, if you took at the Apple iPod Touch you can see the same playform as the iPhone but without the phone part and the costs are low.

Connectivity

In order to make the most out of a tablet it needs to connect to the outside world. I would expect to see wifi for wireless networking, I would like to see some means of connecting to the internet while I was away from home or work, but I do not want to pay for another contract. I would love to see an infrared port on the top for reasons you will see below.

What would you use it for?

Well I for one would use it everywhere and for everything, on my couch or in my office. Here are a few real world examples I can think of;

Watching Video
If the tablet can show 720p that means the resolution would need to be at least 1280x720, this would allow you to watch downloaded TV, films, trailers and music videos from iTunes.
Controlling my TV
With the infrared port, I think this could become the best TV remote ever. It would be great to be able to see a live TV guide showing me everything I could watch, with thumbnails and previews of upcoming shows, select the show to see more information and choose to record it. This could become a platform on its own with content providers providing extras straight to the device.
Reading eBooks
Whilst not a favourite past time of my own, eBook readers are starting to become popular devices and a colour screen with help set the tablet apart from the single function book readers.
Games
The iPod Touch and iPhone could be really good game platforms, if a development kit is launched, I can see all three devices becoming great game systems, but the tablet would provide a bigger screen size so virtual controls could be placed on the screen and still have lots of room left for the game graphics.
Web Browsing
A tablet would be just the device to have in the living room to quickly check something on the web, the display resolution would allow perfectly rendered web pages to appear on screen and a combination of virtual keyboard when required and touch controls would make it a very pleasant experience.
Email
Just a tablet would be a great web browsing experience, emailing would be a perfect partner for this device, a virtual keyboard could pop up to allow you to tap out quick emails without having to start up a laptop.

Other benefits a tablet would have

A tablet based on the iPhone platform would allow an instant on experience, so there would be no waiting for a laptop to start just to check your emails or browse a web page, just touch the screen and your ready to go.

Size would be one of the best things of the device, given my belief that the tablet would be about the same size as an A5 sheet of paper it would be very easy to hold and also have the baility for a virtual keyboard to appear to use your thumbs with in the bottom corners of the screen.

If a development kit is launched then there would be no limits to what applications could be created and for some examples; cokking assistant with proper sized receipies and videos tutorials, shopping lists with a rich interface to all the products including where there are in each store, security alarm systems, GPS device you can take with you and when your in the car it doubles as the cars screen, magazine viewer with video content built directly into each page, those are a tiny few of what would be available.