Mainly Macintosh

Excitement mounts as Apple's announcement approaches

Newspapers, magazines, and professional blogger web sites have been gushing for nearly a year that a new tablet computer is coming from Apple soon.

They have gotten the facts wrong more on this story than any other I can recall.

This is obvious by the multitude of conflicting claims:

1. release date: Summer 2009, October 2009, January 2010, mid-2010 - if you do not know, then just say you do not know
2. name:  iTablet, iSlate, iPad - Cheers, a product where nobody knows your name!
3. appearance: at least17 different photo-realistic images have been published, all different - no genius bar required to tell you at least 16 of them are wrong!

The safe assumptions seem to be that the tablet will have some form of touch screen input, will not require a keyboard, and might be able to run existing apps created for iPhone and iPod Touch.  Clearly, the screen size will be different.  I suspect Apple and all parties involved know that now.

The idea that people will be able to read a lot of professionally-written material seems likely.  After all, if you are using your fingers as an input device, reading is more practical than writing.

Due to the demise of professional journalism, I think it is more correct to say there will be a wealth of commercially-published material and access to a lot of free blogs.  Each time I read another smear piece clearly written to enhance a commercial competitor of the subject of the article, I wince.  Professional journalists do not make a living doing this -mostly.  Sadly, it looks like some bloggers and columnists do these days.

It is no secret that Americans have been spending less for print on paper in the recent decade.  Paper takes up space, is environmentally unsafe, and so forth.  Newsprint on newspapers gives some people a runny nose due to allergies and gets on the fingertips.  If this next generation of computing device does not start showing up in landfills in 3-4 years, Apple will have done us and our planet a big favor.

Labels: apple

posted by John Collins @ 7:36 AM