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November 07 "Asus is helping Apple build a Tablet PC."Finally, finally: There is another area where Apple wants to catch up with Microsoft, they are developing a Tablet PC: "Asus is helping Apple build a Tablet PC." is the quote of the day that Cnet UK brings to us (http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39029450,49293967,00.htm). Some folks of them sat together with some Asus guys who told them that Apple is developing a Tablet PC. They call their sources credible because Asustek is "Apple's contract manufacturer".
We'll see if they get the marketing right (they did with iPhone and iPod Touch, didn't they?) and appear as the saviour of the Tablet platform. From my point of view Tablets were never failing (here my prediction from 2005 in German: http://www.tomshardware.com/de/tablet-pcs-die-produktneuheiten,testberichte-1092.html, IBM has launched several Tablets in the meantime, Dell is about to do that very soon) but always suffering from wrong expectations Microsoft sent out when launching Tablet and then again when launching UMPCs. As I'm not happy with my HP TC4400 Tablet (fan on too often, battery lame after 7 months, support says that would be a typical problem) and want to buy a new Tablet next year I'm very curious what the design will be.
From the photo they show in their article (http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39029450,49293967,00.htm) it is a slate model, say there is no keyboard attached (of course you can add a USB keyboard).
Yes, Vista has some pen actions for navigation, but half harted implemented.
There is no predicted launch date, no specs etc. From the picture it looks like a 13 inch wide screen Tablet under 2 kg of weight.
Would be nice to see Parallels (www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/) and Fusion (www.vmware.com/products/fusion/) would support ink in virtual machines with ink enabled Vista versions (Home Premium and up).
Wondering why they don't work with Motion Computing who have most experiences with slate PCs, Asus has not (or is Asustek behind some of the Tablet brands from manufacturing?).
fscklog (http://www.fscklog.com/2007/11/baut-asus-apple.html) call Apple Tablet one of the classic rumours and this time "maybe not absurd". Hm, it never was.
Don Carlos (http://blog.wiekool.de/?p=270) would probably buy this "iPhone in big size" but wants waits for a "thin 10-12 inch" device, why not wide 13?
Maclife would position it as a living room device. That's not enough (http://www.maclife.de/index.php?module=Pagesetter&func=viewpub&tid=1&pid=5106).
Harald Weiss from ZDNet.de is sceptical because Steve Jobs stopped prototypes several times (http://www.zdnet.de/news/hardware/0,39023109,39158881,00.htm).
My prediction always was: Yes, they will do it if they have a killer app - with the touch navigation of iPhone they now have a killer feature - perhaps that's enough for them. By the way, will Microsoft Office 2008 have ink?
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