Former Google China president reveals details on Apple's tablet - Page 3

I really hope that they make it with a mobile-broadband card so that carriers can sell subsidised versions of it.

yes, go to spain...

Thanks for clarifying. We are in agreement.

For the record, I've rarely heard anyone call it "iPhone OSX" - but yes it's certainly using the same underlying OS. The OSes seem to be commonly referred to as "MacOSX 10.6" (I know... double the "10"), or "iPhone OS 3.1" (etc).
Hence why I thought it unclear.

[QUOTE=AppleInsider;1541683]The ex-president of Google China has revealed on his microblog supposed details on Apple's forthcoming tablet: 10.1-inch screen with webcam, "awesome UI."

Kaifu Lee, former president of Google China, someone with supposed close ties to Apple, has revealed several details about Apple's tablet on his microblog (translation from Gadget Mix):

"The Apple Tablet looks like a bigger iPhone that sports an awesome UI packed in a beautiful 10.1-inch screen. The tablet combines the functions of both netbook and kindle, an ebook reader. It has virtual keyboard for text entry and a webcam for video conferencing."


This is what HE is saying, let's wait until the 26th to really see what is announced.

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PS Former President of everything. Who would hire this man, he sucks at keeping a secret.

Is this going to be what Steve and folks were hoping the MacAir was going to be?

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http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=222100232


IMMO, OS X UI is eventually doomed to the Pro Only market as consumers slowly switch to the new iPhone OS/iTablet closed UI.

Apple is leveraging the simplier iPhone/iTablet UI and closed App Store system in order to make third party software EASIER TO USE, thus increasing sales of it's hardware.

Perhaps at first or so generations of the iTablet will depend upon a computer with Windows or OS X, but later versions will be self dependent as the new UI takes over and the rest of the world changes.

The iTablet will sport a SD slot and SSD, I'm almost sure of it.

Actually, the traditional iPod syncing comes from the idea that the device is relatively simple, and contains a subset of things you have on your computer. But it doesn't have to be that way.

As a simple example - imagine you had a 120GB iPod Classic, and a 128GB MacBook Air. It'd make much more sense to have the iPod Classic contain ALL your photos & music, and sync a subset of that to the MBA.

There are already lots of people who almost never sync their iPhones.
edit: and the Tablet is likely to have greater power and scope than an iPhone.


Well, he will tell us that tablets don't sell if they try to run plain old Windows.


Yep. (But I don't think it's 3D that will do that.)


I think it's part of the future. Every 3G phone except the iPhone has a webcam for the last .... 4 years? But yeah it's not a killer feature. In fact... I too would think it was much more suited to landlines than mobile phones.

That said - video conferencing can be great... I have a new baby, and pulling up iChat to talk with Mum is very useful. She can see the baby and feels just a bit closer to us.

Happy New Year everyone. First time I haven't been on Sydney Harbour in 10 years.... damn! ;-)

Do people who use the stupid term 'cannibalize' ever stop to think?

Can you fit a 10.1" device in your pocket or are you going to be seen holding it to your ear while making a phone call?

So much for impacting iPhone sales. Have you ever heard of the iPod Touch?

The whole concept of cannibalism of one's own products is daft. You give the consumers choice - a range of products - and they choose whatever most suits them. So long as they buy one of your products and not a competitors, you have gained a sale - not lost one.

No keyboard. There's very little difference between a Macbook and 13" MBP.


A tablet without a keyboard would be excellent for content consumption (with the caveat that a 10" device must be carried as opposed to stuffed in a pocket) and note taking.

However, unless Apple provides a mobile dock, it's not a laptop replacement for anyone that has to write text a lot (reports, long emails/blogs, presentations, etc). For twitter and chat it's fine. For note taking, probably fine although I might prefer to use a stylus to hand write. Depends on how good the virtual keyboard is. The downside of any virtual keyboard is the screen real estate it takes up.

There are a large segment of users who mostly consumes content on their computers with some light content creation. For them, yes, you could replace a computer with a tablet.

Except that you can cannibalize the sale of high profit items with your own low profit items. Yes, it's better that you do it yourself but the preference is to not do it at all. Apple is very good at stratifying their product lines to maximize the average sale price and margins.

An example of a company not liking the cannibalization of their own products is Intel and Atom. They have constraints of Atom discounts based on usage because it cannibalizes low end Pentium sales which are higher price and margins.

Yes, Spain is the obvious choice.

Kindle is available all over the planet except for Canada. Then, in the fall of this year it finally arrives and people rush out to get it for Christmas. That sound you hear is the collective of Canadian Kindle users smashing the units to justify the new Apple device (sure hope it is better than the Kindle).

Big thing for me would be does it have the wireless to get the newpapers etc...If it is all in color then would see the Kindle losing sales quick. Of course there is going to be a price diff that many people will not be willing to spend for the Apple product.

Actually the 10.1 is measured diagonally, so the dimensions can certainly made just wide enough to fit into a jacket or coat pocket. Only a fool puts their iPhone into their jeans pocket anyway, slacks perhaps, jeans not.

And if it does make phone calls and web cam calls people certainly won't have a issue with the bigger size next to their heads. It will become a status symbol.


The iPod touch is impacting iPhone sales in China as people there are using Skype and other means over Wifi to make calls instead of getting a government approved Wifi less iPhone from Apple.


But netbooks are cannibalising laptop sales at Dell for instance. People are settling for the cheaper "gets on the internet and email" type underpowered netbooks rather than full laptops with cd and dvd readers, more powerful processors etc.

The netbooks margins are thin in comparison to laptops margins. So the company makes less money per unit.

However if sales increase to offset the lost on higher margin items, then that's a good thing. If the market gets saturated, then it's a bad thing.

There are a large number of tablets in doctor's offices and hospitals. Slates have largely been replaced by convertibles though, even though keyboards are hard to keep as sterile. There's just too much text entry that can't be illegible.

An insanely great virtual keyboard might reverse this trend and an Apple tablet that doesn't suck would be very welcome in the medical community.

Yah but in handheld mode what are you doing with that second screen? It's likely folded so you're in slate mode.

If you mostly use that second screen for a keyboard...it's far more cost and power friendly to just have a keyboard and touchpad. Probably thinner too.

Geez.

http://tinyurl.com/ylyearw

Take the ex-President of Google China's claims with a grain of soy. Although so far, he's just parrotted other rumours.

Nicely explained. I seem to recall that the iPhone's OS was a cut down version of the Tablet OS SJ had been working in for a very long time. The inference being the hardware wasn't there yet for the full tablet but was for the iPhone if the OS was stripped down. So I think if this is true the Tablet OS, as you show, is going to be a pretty impressive system. This is IMHO why the folks saying they can't see the purpose of a tablet will eat their words once this new OS is demonstrated. I really hope Apple have the patents sewn up tight so the usual suspects can't rip every new concept off over night.

I think the tablet is going appeal to many. I asked my college friend the other day why he was considering getting a 27" iMac over a Notebook. He said with the iPod Touch he finds he no longer really needs a laptop. He can type, view email, and surf the internet with that.

He is a big gamer and has at least a hundred on his iPod Touch. So, based on my experience and his opinion, a larger screen would really appeal to gamers. There are some killer games on iTunes that will be that much better as Apple increases the power of it's mobile devices, and with a larger screen.

Second, I think the Tablet will act as a Trojan horse eventually making more dents into Windows sales. Currently, Apple sports far more applications on it's handheld platform then anybody. The tablet could get many people to understand that they might not need a laptop anymore. Many of those people will be Windows users. Apple will make up from smaller overall margins, through increased sales and the sale of applications on the app store.

[QUOTE=ncee;1541826]

If he was privy to actual pre-release information from Apple, he would have signed an NDA beforehand, so he may be legally liable for damages for his public comments.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...ealth+national

Which companies specialising in medical equipment can match what Apple can do with OS-hardware synergy?

The sort of device the medical industry would find useful would be beyond the scope of specialist manufacturers to produce - as evidenced by the National Institutes of Health people approaching Jobs. They obviously recognised this truth and acted accordingly.

I think the iSlate will have a very pronounced applicability to the medical profession and will be adopted with glee. As I have said before, I think Steve's recent close encounters of the medical kind would likely have predisposed him to helping out the medical profession by supplying something they were asking him for previously.

Not if his buddy told him. His buddy would be liable not him.

This gentleman is no longer in Apple's "circle" of information. He's an outsider looking in, and his comments are just summing up what ALL the 2009 Tablet Rumors were.

Also Mr.Lee declined a personal offer from Steve himself to comeback to Apple sometime ago. His reason? Microsoft \. ... Who turns down a offer from Steve!?!? Those who do have lost all credibility IMHO.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/15...ool-with-that/

From his lack of tenure with companies, he could simply be another executive troll trying to put his name back out there.

With that said 2010 will put Apple even further ahead again.

...............

Quadra610 said something similar (I guess great minds think alike )

I believe the textbook industry is on the verge of a tipping point. In the past, educational institutions and professors seemed unaware, or unconcerned, with the textbook costs. Now, more and more professors are structuring their syllabi around non-textbook materials. Or, they're sticking with older editions so students can take advantage of the used book market.

At least that's what it seems like to me.

Publishers will need to do something to compete with this dynamic, right? A lot of schools are publishing podcasts and experimenting with iPod touch content, maybe an uber-popular tablet would be a catalyst.

Who turns down a job working for a maniacal, control-freak? Probably the same guy who leaves for a bigger pay check.

Anyway, I see your point.

But tell me, why are these medical professionals interested in a consumer hardware device that has an app. store, an MP3 player, a video player, games, an internet browser, etc etc? How is a device that has all of those things considerably more compelling than a device that was designed specifically for the medical profession and does't have all those frivolous extras? How can they be sure that these consumer devices are going to withstand the use they need to endure? There's a reason why Apple have very little presence in this sort of market...

Now that you mention it I recall that being stated, too.

I am baffled by your "anti-iPhone OS camp" comment. I am not anti-iPhone OS. Never said so, ever. It's fine, works on my phone just peachy. I was responding to a poster who noted that his MacBook was getting a bit heavy, like mine has become. We were postulating how this rumored tablet might be substituted in our world for a more compact portable platform (the MBA is thin, not compact - it's footprint is still 13" or 30% larger than a 10" product). In order to do so, and be a viable travel companion for business, it would need to do more things along the lines that Mac OS X does than what iPhone OS X does.

I am not expecting to pay less, where did you pull that one out of? I never noted a price point. Nor do I really care, frankly.

And you could put two lousy USB ports on a tablet and it would be more fully featured than a MBA, so it doesn't take a whole lot of effort, creativity, innovation, time, space or expense to make that happen.

After all of this, you then discuss "assumptions" that I made. This is relatively humorous. Hopefully, you can see your own irony here.

I had the same thought. That guy needs to be taught a lesson whoever he is. Time for the rabid Chihuahua torture technique.

I've read that Jobs was approached by medical interests about a handheld device in the past. Product liability in a lifesaving business could be a serious headache. But then he has recently been through that system and must have seen the obvious needs up close and personal.

Also in the home, a more easily sterilized keyboard would make sharing a device safer.

Any links?

Do I understand that your assumption is that a professional only wants a product designed specifically for them, rather than a less expensive product that not only does what he or she needs but does other things too? I have no way of knowing the answer but the number of iPhones that seem to be being used by many medical professionals indicate many are open to the idea.

I think in the past your are correct in that this was more than often the case. These days technology changes so fast that focussed products such as you suggest run the risk of being out of date, poorly integrated with modern communication systems and far more expensive. Don't forget too Apple are so far ahead in UI that no manufacturer focussed on, for example, the medical profession is anywhere close.

No shÃ*t, I never would have thought...


A product sized just for Colombo.



There is an HP netbook with a 16:9 10.1" screen, so I think that would be about as narrow as anything Apple is likely to use: Dimensions: 10.3″(H) x 6.54″(W)

Oh so pocket friendly, that.


Really? I would say more fool anyone who buys a mobile phone too big or too expensive to put in their pocket - but I am sure that will go down like a lead balloon.


You reckon?



Does seem to be well colour coordinated with your beard there, I must say. Such sartorial details are so lacking among the young these days. As a fashion statement, it says more dork than chic if you ask me.


You are making a fundamental error of logic. You are implying those people would buy an IPhone - paying through the nose for it - and then make just as many calls at their carriers likely hefty prices - if they did not have the option of the Touch available. They wouldn't, they would just look for another - cheaper than the iPhone - solution.


More fallacious logic. The margins on luxury cars are much higher than on Nissan Micas and the like, but that does not mean if you stop making Micras, everyone will buy a Merceeds S 600.

We are in a fairly serious recession, not everyone has the disposable income they had a couple of years ago. That might have had some bearing on spending patterns.

While the search showed mostly dedicated tablets, many doctors use normal tablet PCs. Yes, consumer grade tablets.

The extras you describe simply are unused.

Apple had a reasonable presence in this market although without a tablet it's dropped quite a bit. I've seen several offices switch from macs to tablet pcs.

Oh, did you also miss the iphone medical apps?

First of all, Jobs doesn't really build things that cannibalize what he has already created.

They either replace, compliment or enhance whatever you have or introduces an entirely new paradigm.

To Add

Agree. Except that I do play the odd game, but my kid does on his and my wife on mine.


Agree. My MacBook Pro is always next to me sitting with the family watching TV. Sometimes to close.


Agree. More important, my wife will love having one of these. Her hand-me-down Titanium is starting to lose favour.*


Agree*


Agree somewhat.

My agency is already considering the possibilities.* Certainly for presentations and equally important, there are some unbelievable custom business/enterprise apps already out there.

*CaveatI would suggest that this device will connect via Wi-Fi.

Certainly Wi-Fi would address most of the connectivity issues at home, at work, in the University and in most client offices. As well, as Wi-Fi becomes more ubiquitous, I still have my iPhone to fill the void.

I am in the process of developing an enterprise app solution. It will use as little of the keyboard as possible for data entry. Simple interfaces, predesigned check boxes/buttons and a lot of type-forwarding. I have been quite confident that the iSlate would be iPhone App compatible and am really encouraged by the recent news. It doesn't require rocket science to realize that upgrading an iPhone app re screen size independent will be no more that a couple of clicks away, particularly having done considerable due diligence working with the iPhone SDKs. If anything, Jobs will update the current SDK to do so, much like he has done with virtually OS transition.

I am predicting that walking into even the most PC centric offices with the new iSlate/enterprise apps will blow their minds.

And equally, my Macs that I have now and the future ones I plan to get will be even more important. I need them for creating/education/data mining, etc. But for the rest of the family not so much. Considering that I am one in three, optimistically, our family would need 3 of them to satisfy us all. Pessimistically, one would do.

So, I would suggest that there are a lot of families that satisfy the same criteria. Now extrapolate that around the world, and WOW.

P.S., Without cannibalizing anything. We will still keep and use everything that we have now. Just a little less.

I am SO with you on this desire! I use Filemaker for my business and at times need to be more mobile with that information. I want an "official" version, but have been using FMTouch as a nice, viable alternative while waiting. If you have not yet heard of it, check it out in the App Store (I'm just a satisfied user, that's all).

that's a real deal breaker for me. (just kidding.)

I would expect that it wouldn't be up to any individual professional as to what device they use - it would be decided by some much larger entity who would roll out a whole army of devices at once to a wide range of Drs. Maybe it's different in the US, but in the UK it's up the NHS to decide what equipment Drs use, and to roll that out to about 30,000 Drs means it has to be tested and pass very stringent tests, plus it has to be proven to be value for money, and offer a tangible benefit over the existing IT system that's in place. I just don't think an expensive Apple consumer tablet would meet any of those requirements.

I said possibly, not guranteed.

That depends, if you think back i know i recall hearing that this thing had a SIM tray to it. So lets say AT&T has it, positions the iPhone @199 for 2 year contract and this at 299/399 for a 2 year contract. If this runs a variant of the iphone OS...the only thing a iPhone would be able to do is call and text (and since there are text apps and Skype that is a strike against the iPhone) if this has access to the same exact apps the iPhone does. Also this rumor pegs a webcam, so we know it has to have a speaker and mic then so that doesnt make this strictly a netbook/ebook reader/web surfer anymore.

Now on the flip side. Lets say this thing again is on contract for 2 years at 299/399 or has an initial price of 599/699, but it runs Snow Leopard but with a touch UI implemented and has support for Apples Magic Mouse and Bluetooth Keyboard. Again assuming its a full OS X build, and anything that would run on a traditional mac would on this...i would easily sign a 2 year contract for a device like this (people are suckers for that cheap initial price even though they would probably pay more in the long run), or pay 600-700 if it gets major school support and i can do all my school work on it, even if i would have to pay 120 for added keyboard/mouse. That would hurt the 999 macbook.

Also, Apple has cannibalized its own products in the iPod and iPhone already, as people now have less reason to buy an iPod when your iPhone does the exact same thing with more capability, thats a huge selling point that it IS an iPod in a phone. This is becoming such a common thing that before long the PMP market will be shrivel massively as phones with this power become more common, even dumbphones pose as PMP now.

10" is fine, if it starts out as a folded in half or in quarters???

Flexible screen??

5" x 5" opens to 10" x 10"?

2.5" x 2.5" unfolds to 10" x 10"?

Flexible screen?

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