Mac tablet or big iPod?

Mike Halsey | Sep 29, 2009 | View Comments

Stories have been circulating today about a new Apple Tablet that could be announced in January 2010 and on sale by next summer. Gizmodo broke the news today with this rather lovely looking image of what it could look like.

Now I won’t repeat what they have to say, I’ve got other ideas and I want to ask a question.

Is this a Mac Tablet or just a big iPod?

You might think I’m being a bit Appleinflamatory (if that’s a word) but it’s good question and raises important issues about where Microsoft have been failing for years, the (and this is really ironic given this is my first article here), the connected internet.

For years now, Windows Mobile has been flailing around as the bastard half-son of it’s desktop version. It’s not really been suitable even for the hardware it’s been running on let alone everything else.

Microsoft’s answer to this has been lots and lots… and lots of different editions of Windows over the years.

When Apple launched into the smartphone market their first generation model was running OS X. Nothing more or less, just a slightly trimmed-down version of OS X. It was a clever move because it was an established platform and it demonstrated clear as anything the flexibility of the OS to be used in a wide variety of form factors. It became inevitable that the version of OS X used on the iPhone would eventually find its way onto any Apple tablet.

So what is it, if it exists? It’s not a tablet PC, not in the way Microsoft have defined them anyway, and it’s not a big iPod either.

What I believe it is, is the tablet format done correctly for the first ever time. If Apple ever produce a tablet, we’ll inevitably get something that has the power and flexibility of a PC with the interface usability of a good smartphone.

And to add fuel to the fire there are also rumours of a totally new Microsoft tablet design called courier which would be Microsoft’s way of doing things… yet another bespoke system and not a super-streamlined system like OS X.

One thing you can’t say about Apple is that they don’t know how to create excellent cross-platform code. :)