Poor bets placed on Apple taking dual tablet route in September - Page 3

If they're launching a big iPhone-OSX based pad it must be ready with new software. I guess they might have had time to make a mini version of the iWork suite. But since software is the most important it'd be weird to RELEASE it in September with just tiny iPhone apps on it (assuming it runs iPhone apps) For this device to take off and be competetive agains low end netbooks there really has to be a lot of software available from day one. I don't think it's enough with iWork, internet, iTunes and Cocktail... or heck what do I know.. maybe it IS enough to get the ball rolling, and the developers working.

Ok you're all wrong. Yes Steve hates the Stylus as sole input device but the new hybrid device will let you choose your finger or a stylus but the big innovation will be a cross platform Newtonian tablet type device that will allow you to run either Snow Leopard natively and also Windows seamlessly. A bilingual tablet. Microsoft will fall.

Thanks for pointing out that this didn't come through clearly. I should have been more explicit instead of sugar coating it. The phrase should have been "this is obvious to the intelligent".

if you can't see that a 6" or 10" devices is different from an iPhone the do you really belong in an Apple store? Seriously I don't think you think about what you are saying.

As to marketing and the catch as to why we need the device in our lives you have a point. One thing that I constantly hear in this thread is that the device needs to run Mac OS and Powerpoint / office like applications, this is a huge conceptual disconnect if you ask me. No matter the size a tablet isn't going to cut it as a laptop replacement. So what will the draw be.

For a smaller tablet it will do fine as an enhanced iPod Touch. For the rumored 10" device I actually don't see a good way to market the device right now. As a Mac OS laptop replacement it is dead in the water, at best it might fly as an Apple TV / iPod Touch hybrid.

So while you are right that that 10" device needs a marketing plan and a reason for us to need it you are wrong to think Mac OS will effectively drive sales. It won't based on past history and likely would lead to high dissatisfaction due to poorly running software and people trying to use it as a laptop replacement.

So what will be the draw. Well an evolved iPhone OS will be a big help here as you need to make operation of the device as fluid as possible. Beyond that I believe the answer is services. Since the platform isn't going to cut it for document production it needs to consume media and data real well.



Dave

I'm liking your posts in this thread, they tend to be very informative. It seems like many people think "big iphone" when they think of a tablet running iPhone OS, which then leads to the thought "that would suck". Which is true, but as you explained it doesn't have to be that at all. The iPhone and the iPod touch just happen to be the only devices running iPhone OS at the moment, and a lot of the limitations placed on those devices are due to hardware concerns. Hardware concerns that a tablet may not have.

I think what will be the determining factor for the OS is whether the device is designed to be an appliance (like the iPhone) or a hybrid, i.e. a mobile device with phone capability.

If it were the latter, Apple could open up iPhone OS X to support things like multitasking on that particular device type. (You can do multitasking, today. Apple just won't approve the app for app store distribution).

I have no knowledge of this, but I suspect that Snow Leopard (and most Apple apps) already run on ARM as well as Intel.

So the choice, for Apple, is which OS better meets the needs of the tablet device and its projected users.

Maybe it makes sense to use iPhone OS X on tablets smaller than, say, 7", and Mac OSX on larger screens.

Thanks again for the support. I'm not sure why people have such a limited view of iPhone OS, but to repeat it is very powerful and feature filled.

Yep, it is there except for what Apple consciously limits. There is no reason why Apple can't selectivly address those limits for other devices.

What people need to realize is that iPhone OS is as close as the world has come to running UNIX on a cell Phone. It isn't quite UNIX due to some missing elements but no other embedded production OS has come closer.

Well what can be ported back. What people need to realize though is that the kernels are very similar. Apple has all but stated to that many improvements made to the kernel to enhance performance on iPhone are making their way back to Snow Leopard. So next month when everybody is all excited about Snow Leopard I do hope they thank the iPhone team.

In any event folks there is a lot of cross polination going on here. Apple has really benefitted from the iPhone effort.

This stuff will come I'm sure. Memory is a big issue especially on older iPhones. The only thing I wonder about is the overlapping windows/apps. We are still talking small screens here and I wonder if Apple might do a dock/expose implementation that allows for on app on screen at a time with the dock being the switch to pop up other apps/screens. This would allow for useful multitasking even on iPhone sized screens.

The catch is they are built as Intel binaries for debug and are not shipped with that code.

Less is more! In this case less leads to more opportunities.

Some of the posts here do amaze me though. It is like people are expecting their iPhones to look and behave the same as they do today five years from now. The only way that will happen is if you never update. Apple has actually been moving iPhone OS ahead at a rapid rate.



Dave

So? The Tablet is being touted as a netbook / laptop alternative, ergo, it needs features more akin to a full blown OS than a stripped down subset.


There may be very little difference between what emerges from your anus and your mouth (1), hence your understandable confusion, but please consider that not everyone necessarily suffers from your own affliction, so it would bode you well in life not to mistake other peoples considered opinions for excrement, equivalent though your own may be.

(1) that includes what you type with your fingers, since you obviously need things to be spelt out (vis a vis file system)


I know it has a file system, but the user is kept from it, which was my point. While everyone these days seems all gooey eyed over flash memory, it is still not affordable in useful quantities, so HD mass storage is a must. So as well as the file system interface you need the HD support stuff and... in half the time it would take Apple to write 1.5 of these necessary add-ons, they could have just written a touch interface for OSX.


You need a 'the' between 'dis' and 'Iphone'.


I think you meant 'than the iPhone'. The problem with people who think the touch OS is enough to take on the full spectrum of possible tablet applications in the real world, is that they are so preoccupied trying to extract their tongue from their iPhones dock connector, they haven't had time to give the matter much thought.


OSX is legacy crap?

You obviously don't have any computational needs beyond what's capable on an iPhone.



What in an Ipone?

Full OSX with a touch interface would provide a more flexible and useful device with less expenditure of unnecessary effort on Apple's part, than the reinventing of the wheel bloating the touch OS would require.

I really don't think so. A built in "rest" or whatever you choose to call it goes against Apple's design mantra. If anything, I wager they'd include/sell an add on. Anyway, other rumors have these things being very thin and light and although I dislike speculation, if true, it would seem that holding these things might not be the pain that it would initially appear.

Like a clip on an iPod eh? Never happen. It happened cause it made sense where it was needed, just as this rest would make sense. You'll need both hands free to do some proper typing on this device, so you can place the tablet on the desk and pop out the rest.

No doubt Apple would do it in the most aesthetically pleasing manner too, with durable, hidden hinges and seamless lines. The very design I said it could be first is like those "touch bins". The ones with a divot the size and shape of the iPhone's home button, you press it and the rest pops out, and you can press it back in to close it. It was stretch across most of the width of the device, be around an 1 1/4" tall also, and when pushed in would be practically invisible, and be of the same material as the rear of the tablet, likely aluminum. I couldn't see a more Apple way to do this. This tablet needs to be practical to gain global adoption. If Apple expects to create a whole new category here, and I suspect they do, this thing needs to be practical, and to be that it needs a stand/rest of some sort. And what's more practical, and cool, then one you cannot possibly forget, that has a mechanically sweet action to it, and that's basically hidden when in the closed position. If you think about this predicament enough you'll find I'm right on this one. At least if I'm not totally right you can see I'm looking at the real world use of this tablet/slate computer in a logical manner.

OMG then they could be trying to sell aliens in area 51?

Hmmm... I've been thinking about this 10" screen thing.

Do any of you know how thick the actual screen (display) unit is on a MacBook Air, or iPhone for that matter? I imagine they're different, but it has me speculating wildly that...

This new tablet could have a double-screen. OK, don't laugh. It could basically be fold-out, so that when a traditional computer interface is desired, screen #2 folds out from the back and is propped up by some sort of latch. And screen #1 (on your lap) is the keyboard.

I realize there are just a FEW problems with this, but it'd be damned cool, and might solve a few problems w/ practical use that we've been discussing.

@wizard69
You responded to my post stating that most iPhone apps already run on Intel through the simulator. You said:

"The catch is they are built as Intel binaries for debug and are not shipped with that code."

That is true... but got me thinking:

Apple could allow (additional) Intel binaries of iPhone apps to be distro'd through the app store to run on the simulator (Maybe Fat Binaries and Thin Installs)... no big deal!

Except, now many of those iPhone developers have a whole new sales territory: Intel Macs...
...hmmmm Or an Intel Tablet.


Then there is this thing that has been swirling around my subconscious, percolating up, every now-and-again, to bother me.

Snow Leopard is reported to have an optional install of Rosetta:

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/08/17/mac-2...-snow-leopard/

If Snow Leopard runs on Intel Only, why does it need Rosetta?

Will Snow Leopard/Rosetta support running apps compiled for the PPC CPU?

Are there any other non-Intel CPUs supported by Snow Leopard/Rosetta/

Which ones?

Why?

...hmmm...

To argue why I think you are missing the point here. Nintendo warned that they would lose sales of the DS to the iPod touch next quarter. Why touch the other screen when you can touch the actual data you want to interact with. Having two screens is like avoiding what you really want to do, touch the actual stuff you want to interact with. It's like having a mouse to move another mouse. Wouldn't you just rather grab the mouse you want to move. Also there's the additional aspect of cost, weight, thickness. Having one screen reduces all these, probably greatly.

$10 it's a add on Anyway with luck we'll find out in September.

Yeah, it's a last resort. If you have only Intel Mac(s), but desperately need that one app that hasn't been ported over to the Intel platform. I think you are confusing two different things. It's "now" the OS itself that won't run on Power PC computers, not Power PC made apps that won't run on a Snow Leopard Intel Mac. It's like a riddle LOL.

Totally agree. Holiday sales account for 75% of big ticket items, especially electronics. Back to school is not even close. If Apple can't deliver the tablet by this holiday season, they will lose a year's jump on the competition, and they know this.

With luck we'll find out in 2010. With a miracle we'll find out in September.

Sure, unless the thing I want to interact with is a keyboard. I'm actually in full support of a bluetooth external board, but for those who don't want to futz with that, they'll rely on the onscreen keyboard - which sounds sketchy to me in context of a 10" display. That's been one of the bigger issues with this tablet concept, to me -- if it's a full-on computing device that can be used for more than touch-driven apps, it needs a keyboard, and I can't figure out how that's going to be implemented in a usable fashion.

Of course you're right on the cost factor, but I don't know how to break out the cost of a second display, so I'm not sure how much that jacks up the price. As for weight... eh, I'm no expert, but it doesn't seem like that would be too much bother. How thin are these things anyway, these days?

Who has said anything about a laptop alternative? If I were Apple my goal would be to supplement your computer, not replace it. Netbooks, despite running a full blown desktop OS do not replace laptops due to their hardware restrictions. A tablet would have similar hardware restrictions and even could perform any task a netbook is capable of while running iPhone OS. In fact it could perform the same tasks quicker because the operating system was tailored to the devices restraints.


But the third party applications still wouldn't have a touch interface. Also, do you really think that writing a finder application for iPhone OS would take as much time as making a touch interface for OSX? Although, I don't believe they will even make a finder app for iPhone OS. Like it or not, I think the file system will remain behind the scenes with applications "knowing" where to find files of a certain type. Visible file systems will probably die a slow and painfull death on all platforms, with tags taking their place.


On the contrary. I used to believe that a tablet had to run OSX, then I put some thought into it and it became obvious that iPhone OS would be the better choice.


Sadly you haven't justified that in any way shape or form. Apple is about user experience, what you describe just doen't bring that positive experience. Nor would I believe that it would save any effort. Sorry if you feel ganged up on, it just seems like a lot of people disagree with you. Sometimes that's a hint.

I know an Apple Tablet does in fact exist because I saw it on Star Trek NG.

That means any of the forum posts can be AI homepage material, too. Our member's speculations are just as credible.

It might make more sense in that case to write an emulator for ARM. I never liked the idea of fat binaries, better to just execute iPhone apps as is. Actually a good place to do this would be within Dashboard.

Yep.

You can implement an emulation for just about anything. Frankly on the tablet I don't want to see emulation but rather I want to see native apps. This is another reason why I see ARM in this tablet.


Dave

Lol.. How about leopard skin..

That really makes sense! iPhone OS X for just iPhone and the iPod Touch!

There's been a lot of discussion of the different size touch screens for a tablet; the necessity (or lack of) a full QWERTY kb; and the OS (iPhone OS X vs Mac OS X).

Previously I posted that a pack of 3x5" index cards was about the right size for a device with a 6" diagonal (approx) display that would slip into a shirt or pants pocket. This size would give a 800x480 pixel display if it used the iPhone resolution of 163 ppi.

But it would still have a smallish touch screen kb.

Now look at what Nokia is doing with this [display] size:

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/08/19/nokia.n900.reviewed/


By enclosing the 800x480 display in an expanded case they have allowed room for a slide-out QWERTY kb. Whether this is full-sized or somewhat under-sized is difficult to tell. And while you may be able to stuff it into a pocket, it appears very bulky.

*

Then there were discussions about a larger, say, 10" diagonal screen size. Someone posted that folding an 8.5x11" sheet of paper in half yielded a surface that would support a screen with an (approx) 10" diagonal.

For comparison, I have a hard-copy of Grisham's book "Bleachers" which is just slightly larger and about 5/8' thick... a very comfortable size. It is a nice size display for reading (books) and easily supports 16:9 or 16:10 video. While it wouldn't fit into a standard pocket, it would nicely handle a full-sized QWERTY kb on the display (move a few keys).

So, maybe, this size solves a lot of user needs/complaints for a full-sized kb.

*

Then there is this:

http://www.macnn.com/blogs/2009/07/2...in-patent.html

If I understand this correctly, it may offer the best of both worlds for a tablet:

1) front surface, full-screen touch display with capability to type or draw with fingers or stylus

2) back surface, full surface touch area with pressure sensitivity and haptic feedback.

I wonder how feasible it would be to hold the device, by the edges, with 2 your palms and touch type with your thumbs and fingers, on the back.

Grab a copy of Grisham's book and try it!

*

Oh, and you could have something approximating a full-size QWERTY kb on the back of that 6" tablet... or even the current-size iPhone.

*

A lot of that discussion revolves around people that think the know how they will use a device. They may not have practicle experience though so their demands are wanting.

Yes an interesting size but not significantly larger than the iPod Touch. I've favored a larger format around the dimensions of a paperback book. This gives you a larger screen in a size people are familiar with and are willing to carry arround with them. The screen would be closer to 7" in diagonal depending on the aspect ratio choosen.

There are a couple of reasons for this size. One; the screen would present about as much info as a paperback book, thus ideal for a huge catalog to be converted to ebooks. Second; the size allows for more PC board space for an additional flash chip while at the same time offering up a lot of space for a battery. Third; as has been alluded to the size is accepted by people for portability. People carry paperbacks everywhere, yeah it is a tight fit in some pockets but that has never stopped people if there was something they wanted to read. Finally; the size is big enough that gives people a choice over the current Touch size.

Think of it as iPod Touch Trashy Novel size.

Freting about the keyboard makes little sense, especially if the device is targgeted at the consummer market. It just isn't that important on a device designed to consume media.

oh come on if you can't tell that that keyboard is substandard you aren't looking objectively. As to bulk what did you expect from something with two housings? Slide out keyboards are stupid on devices you want to carry in a pocket. Apple is on the right pathe here but they do need to get down to 3/8" thickness. It is a constant battle between thickness and battery life but a larger device should allow for a thinner but high capacity battery.

What is interesting here though is Nokia and their N800 series which I seriously considered buying befor going the iPhone route. Unfortunately it was like Nokia had a good idea in a tablet but no sense at all about what should go into the electronics. The thing was ham strung with far to little flash memory and honestly RAM could have been better too. Video performance kinda sucked also. The key to these devices is to have as much inboard flash memory as possible, it is a key element in making the devices useful.

It looks like on the N900 they are trying to learn from their mistakes. The problem is by the time the N900 comes out 32GB of flash won't be enough. Nokia needs to debut with bleeding edge features to regain interest, especially in a bulky device like the N900. That is hardware then they have all sorts of software issues to address. In the end Nokias N series devices seem to be like Apples AppleTV with far to little effort put into the product.

Honestly I think the two sizes in common discussion serve two different needs and two different users.

So we are back to the keyboard now! Let me just say there is no such thing as a full sized on screen keyboard. What you say, to which I reply full size keyboards are three dimensional. Anybody that talks about an on screen keyboard as a full size replacement hasn't thought about it in depth.

It is apparrent that Apple has from their patent fillings but I'm not convinced there is a two dimensional solution that replaces a real keyboard. Some of this feeling comes from experience with on screen keyboards in industrial apps. In the end people punt and screw a real keyboard inplace on the machine.

Nope it will just generate more complaints especially if people get the dumb idea that the platform can replace a laptop. As to the ten inch model Apple might be able to actually produce this with a viable slide out keyboard if they can concentrate the electronics and battery into a third of the housing. With unibody tech they have the potential to do this ruggedly and keep the device thin.

While I would be willing to try I'm pretty confident the experience would suck. Especially for a guy with big hands.

Again your entire post seems to be focused on the keyboards. The on screen keyboards seem to be the best tech going for the smaller devices. So I don't expect much change there. A larger tablet offers more opportunity for alternative keyboards. All that being considered people have to accept that these devices are not there to be laptop replacements nor are they for the production of large documents.

This pull I see from the crowd that thinks these tablets are a replacement for desktop or laptop computers is going to lead to a lot of disappointment. Tablets can't really fill those roles. At least not without adding the keyboards and other attachments to turn them into a kludge of a laptop or desktop.


Dave

How's this for a new connectivity option: instead of conventional wifi networking Apple could promote mesh wifi. MANET (Mobile Ad Hoc NETworking) is one of the most significant technologies promoted by the OLPC initiative. Every wifi node already has a radio receiver and transmitter but it is always treated as an end node. With software changes it can route packets to other mesh wifi nodes.

The prospect for portability and ubiquity of such a device could provide a test bed for these mesh networking ideas. Like other P2P concepts it might scale successfully because adding more 'clients' also directly adds more 'servers'. It would be a radical move but in its own way so was wifi.

I failed to suppress the pedantic impulse. The apps you get from the App Store have binaries compiled for the ARM architecture cpu. During development the source code is compiled to x86 binaries in order to run in the iPhone simulator on the Mac. You can't actually run your ARM apps in the simulator (there are also issues of cryptographic signing but that is secondary).

Your point remains essentially correct that iPhone apps could easily be recompiled for running on x86 machines like the Mac or Apple could reintroduce fat binaries that include binaries for multiple processor types like the 680x0 and PowerPC apps from about a decade ago.

However, I doubt that an Apple tablet would use an x86 processor. They bought all that processor design expertise for some reason and a processor for this device is a logical place to play that card.

Which is why iPhone OS is so compelling: It's OS X, optimized for mobile use. It's not stripped down in any significant way in terms of its native capabilities. There are certain design decisions that Apple made about the way the UI behaves that are specific to the needs of the iPhone, but they're superficial and easy to turn off for a tablet.

Repeat "iPhone OS is OS X optimized for mobile devices" until you understand. It's not "lite." It's not "stripped down." It's OS X optimized for mobile devices.


The Newton didn't have a conventional filesystem interface either. It had a "soup," a database-like system, and that did not stop it from being 10 years ahead of its time in terms of flexibility and capability. As people have been trying to tell you, the full filesystem is there, and so whether and how Apple decides to present it is an implementation detail, not a serious issue. If they wanted to port Finder to iPhone OS, the hardest part would be reimagining the UI for a touch screen--something they have plenty of experience with. Or they could elaborate on the iPhone's implicit presentation of the filesystem. They have nothing but options here, because iPhone OS is OS X.


Unless you have your email in GMail and your documents in Google Docs, to pick one implementation out of the air. Apple is building a gigantic server farm in North Carolina. Why? Maybe if you have a cellular connection, a wifi connection, a giant server farm and a Mac that you sync with, you don't need mass storage in significant quantities. If you do, get a notebook or an external drive.


They already have: It's called iPhone OS. Finder is Cocoa now, so it could probably be ported over without too much effort.


Carbon is legacy, and while I wouldn't say it's crap, precisely, it's poorly suited to the touch-screen machines. Carbon apps would need to be totally and painstakingly reworked in order to run on a tablet, and given the size of the average Carbon app, that's not likely to happen soon, if it happens at all. But if you take out Carbon and add a touch-screen API to Mac OS X, you have... iPhone OS.


What does any of this have to do with computational needs, and why would a tablet address them any better than the iPhone does? I will tell you right now that no matter which OS X the tablet ends up running, and no matter what its filesystem interface looks like, I will still do all of my graphics and programming work on a Mac. There is no reason whatsoever to give the tablet theoretical capabilities that are not practically accessible through a fingertip touch interface to a light device with a small screen.

The things I would use a tablet for would be acceptable with a slightly larger version of the iPhone's on-screen keyboard-- haptic feedback would be nice (there is a JailBroken app for that).

But, I hear the voices of others, like "must have full QWERTY kb". Philosophically, I disagree; the QWERTY kb, is archaic Civil War era technology. Like Windows, it is an accepted standard because it is everywhere. I think we can do much better with today's technology, and am looking for ways to provide "a better solution", without abandoning the QWERTY advocates.

There just has to be a solution between the "Thumb Tango" of the text-messagers and the "Flamenco Rasgueado" of the QWERTies.

I don't believe that I would use a tablet for heavy: text entry; programming; video compositing or rotoscoping-- there are better, more precise, devices for that. But, If it's handy, and I need to make some quick changes, or generate some ad hoc content-- I think the Tablet would be great!

And, I look forward to the day that the mouse and keyboard get out of the way and no longer come between me and my content.

.02

I agree that an Apple tablet (or any Apple mobile) will, likely, not use an 2009-2010 era Intel CPU. The PASC chips should give Apple a significant advantage in mobiles, for the next few years (at least).

What I was trying to get across was that there are ways to allow apps developed for the iPhone to run on the Mac, too. Say you bought one of those $100 GPS turn by turn apps. Wouldn't be nice if you had a MacBook (with GPS) to be able to run it on a larger screen?

This is the feeling I get, that is an iPhone keyboard is suitable for my needs on a tablet. What I have a problem with is the idea that an on screen keyboard will be suitable for mass text entry like one does with a laptop. I see lots of entries here from people thinking the can do note taking on a tablet or other forms of document creation. I just don't see that happening with an iPhone style keyboard. Apple has some interesting patents that might lead to a bit of keyboard feel but that has yet to debut in a product.

Not to sound like a broken record but I just think expectatins are way to high and over extend what is possible on a tablet.


That about sums it up. I certainly want a standard onscreen keyboard available to me but wouldn't object to new input methods.

Well this is a throw back to Newton but handwriting recognition would be nice. Obviously the IPhone is to small for that to be practicle but a larger tablet it might work nicely. I'm still a believer that voice recognition for some things would work really well.

In the end I believe the goal should be flexibility, that is a qwerty keyboard should always be available but the user should have options to choose from.

Precisely. I'm using my iPhone for this entry right now, works great for modest amounts of text but would be terrible for writiing the next iPhone app on. It is also great for quick notes on the plant floor or other places away from a normal computer.

unfortunately I think that day is a bit farther off than many of us want. For example voice input of data isn't that hard anymore, it is common on directory systems. The difficulty comes when trying to parse natural language in realtime. Time for more AI research

Then of course we are a ways from putting the CPU power required into an iPhone or tablet. Which brings up one other thing; all the parameters being tossed about for this devices size leave out it's thickness. I suspect Apple will go real thin with at least one of these devices. So if the rumored ten incher is 1/2" thick just how much horse power can Apple put in there today? I'm going to answer that by saying not enough. Of course they could go for broke and go quad core ARM which might be a good start.

By the way I do think it will be ARM and not Atom. That is in a way disappointing as Atom is the way to 64 bits on a tablet platform.



Dave

$100 on two tablets by march. Who will bet with me?

I'm not going to bet. But I have to disagree and say January is the debut.

I won't bet. But I guess that only one will be announced in January, released by Febuary for public sales.

If hackers for cydia can come up with a relatively stable version of finder for the iPhone OS, i'm sure apple could work one into the system if they wanted to.
BTW, in case its not clear, im supporting you here

Again I have to thank you and the others that have offered supporting statements.

You bring up an interesting point, which is the hacker community, they know full well what iPhone OS is capable of outside the jailed environment. I've yet to jail break my phone but follow the community closely so I've got a good idea of what is possible outside of the Apple SDK. So for the doubting Thomases out there look into the world of the jail broken devices if you don't believe us.

Of course how all of this extends to a much larger tablet is an issue but that is really only an issue of extending the API. For the 6 to 7 inch device many of us are looking for all Apple would need to do is to add multitasking and a lot more RAM to make me happy. Well that and quad cores .


Dave

In the early days I JailBroke one of my 1G iPhones (bought for that purpose) and my AppleTV. Both devices OSs are Mac OS X with unnecessary things left out... but you can add most of them back in.

As to [user-participant] multitasking, that's one thing that I think that the Palm Pre has done well, at least from a UI perspective (I am not convinced that it is anything more than the "switcher" written by Andy Hertzfeld for early Macs). But I do like the way the user flips through these tasks on the Pre.

The iPhone has a facility that could provide an equivalent (or superior) UI for flipping through tasks, CoverFlow. Currently, the CoverFlow API is off-limits to developers, but it can be implemented by other means. I've been doing some experimentation with a CoverFlow implementation, and it would be excellent as a multitasking UI.

RAM... what can I say: More is better; A lot more is a lot better. Though, one of the nice things about iPhone programming is the way you focus on what is important and discard what is not, reducing bloat and cruft. It is amazing what you can do within the limited RAM of an iPhone, It was not too long ago that the big Maimframe [sp] computers had 64K (yes that's K as in thousand) RAM (actually non-solid-state magnetic cores).

CPUs/Cores: Today, multiple CPUs & GPUs are practical... real soon now Multi-Core CPUs will be practical.

So, a tablet is practical & I hope we see at least 1 version this year!