The (Apple) Tablet is Back!

Now that Apple is done updating its products and making a lot of ripples across the entire world wide web, rumors of the Apple Tablet are back with a vengeance. And while we did have a feeble rumor about new quad-core MacBooks coming in to match the new iMacs, Phil Schiller has made it clear in no uncertain terms that we will have no more new Apple products this year. Thus the Tablet now gets our undivided attention.

So we dive in headfirst into the speculations and leaks. First we have the venerable executive editor of the New York Times, Bill Keller. I would like to remind you dear reader, that this newspaper is high up in the good books of Steve Jobs and it is one of quite a few newspapers and publishers that are rumored to be in the know about the Tablet.

And that rumor has turned into near certainty as the editor let slip the words ‘Apple Slate’ in his speech to the digital group of the newspaper. The event was internal and video was never meant to be published but it happened anyway.

In the video, he talks about the future of the industry and mentions the Apple Slate as an impending device. If that is not confirmation, I do not know what is.

There has been evidence before this of Apple’s interest in the print media. The iTunes LP/Extras feature seems to be just the right feature to get rich visual media into the iTunes store. There’s already a comic book in there, which set off a huge round of speculations on its own.

Then we have the (literally) small matter of a SIM tray. The one that holds the SIM card in devices like the iPhone and the iPod Touch 3G. While this might sound mundane, there is a clear dissimilarity between the SIM tray that is found in the current iPhones and the SIM tray that has been made for a future Apple device.

As you can see from the images, the thing is bigger than the existing tray and there is a metal framework within the new tray versus the full plastic tray that is used now. Over all, the design is completely incongruous to the current iPhone design and parts of it (like the metal frame) are completely unnecessary. And the size makes us believe that it is made for something larger than the iPhone.

So what else does Apple have that needs to have a SIM card and is larger than the iPhone and smaller than MacBook? Nothing right now and the only thing that fits the bill is the future tablet with 3G.

The next rumors (yes, we have more) happened down south in Australia. Apple has apparently been contacting several media houses there in order to check whether they would be interested in selling their content on a new portable device. The newspaper article that reports this says that Apple is projecting the device as something that is too large to fit into your pocket but small enough to fit into a handbag.

Riddle me this – what else could it be? The size, the content, the secrecy, everything checks out. Of course, none of the said media companies have commented on this story. They are probably buried under too many reams of NDA to even entertain such thoughts.

But there’s no law against speculation and when the prospects are so very rosy, we love to speculate.

The rumors are starting to come in more frequently now and if they have already reached Australia, it must mean that the device is nearly done. Well, Q1 2010 can’t come fast enough it seems.