Mac Tablet = Kindle?

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
Hi,



I think the Mac Tablet will look like this...



Thin, multi touch, OLED screen, true keyboard, long battery life, WiFi, 3G and iPhone OS... price: $500



Your opinion?









Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    olternautolternaut Posts: 1,376member
    Whatever Apple comes up with its going to compare to the kindle how the iphone compared to the cell phone market when it first debuted in 2007.
  • Reply 2 of 6
    irelandireland Posts: 17,799member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Olternaut View Post


    Whatever Apple comes up with its going to compare to the kindle how the iphone compared to the cell phone market when it first debuted in 2007.



    Not really. A cellphone is a cellphone. A Kindle and a touch-screen Mac tablet would be different devices for different purposes. The kindle is designed to read books, the Mac touch would be designed with that in mind. Not that it won't be able to read books too. Battery life and easy on the eyes are why anyone would why the kindle, Mac touch won't have those features.
  • Reply 3 of 6
    hobbithobbit Posts: 532member
    The one thing the Kindle 2 really lacks IMHO is a touch screen.



    Using a rocker switch to jump from word to word seems so clumsy compared to just touching the word.

    Especially with many words on screen (i.e. small font size).



    And the keyboard needs to go too, replaced with an on-screen keyboard. That Kindle 2 keyboard is not for touch typists anyway, so any on-screen keyboard is sufficient IMHO.

    Without the keyboard the device could be made a lot smaller - or the screen bigger.





    But I definitely expect the MacTablet (or iPodTablet) to be a higher-end reader too just like the Kindle 2.

    And MacOSX has decent text-to-speech too.



    I wonder how far off the Apple tablet's price will be compared to the Kindle 2.
  • Reply 4 of 6
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,479moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Ireland View Post


    Battery life and easy on the eyes are why anyone would why the kindle, Mac touch won't have those features.



    It could possibly have a read mode where the screen brightness dims and the contrast etc is adjusted for the best viewing experience. After looking at some Google Books on the iphone though, I think the iphone is Apple's mobile venture for the foreseeable future.



    If you get something slightly bigger, it's not the best of the iphone and the best of a laptop, it's the worst of both. You can't use it for calls and it's not really a pocket device and it will be slower than a laptop with an almost unusable screen size for OS X desktop use.



    I don't see Apple making a Kindle size device at all but rather a device with a screen that OS X would be usable on like a 10" tablet and keep the separation between mobile devices (phones, PDAs) and portable devices (laptops, tablets).
  • Reply 5 of 6
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    It could possibly have a read mode where the screen brightness dims and the contrast etc is adjusted for the best viewing experience. After looking at some Google Books on the iphone though, I think the iphone is Apple's mobile venture for the foreseeable future.



    A thousand lashes for you Marvin! I love my iPhone but it is far from being a tablet. The screen is just to small.

    Quote:

    If you get something slightly bigger, it's not the best of the iphone and the best of a laptop, it's the worst of both. You can't use it for calls and it's not really a pocket device and it will be slower than a laptop with an almost unusable screen size for OS X desktop use.



    I have a pocketable, always with me device in iPhone. This is not the sort of portability I'm looking for in a tablet. Rather what I'm looking for is a larger device that maintains the portability of a paper back book. Like a paper back book you would grab this tablet when you know you will need it.

    Quote:



    I don't see Apple making a Kindle size device at all but rather a device with a screen that OS X would be usable on like a 10" tablet and keep the separation between mobile devices (phones, PDAs) and portable devices (laptops, tablets).



    Well I could see Apple doing that as they have come out with a lot of stupid products in the past that ended up in histories trash heap. The problem is that won't inspire people to buy as it is to big and such a tablet has never been a raging success.



    Rather what Apple needs to do is to leverage Touch on a smaller device with the OS feature set tailored for it. This to enable acceptable handheld performance and overall ease of use. These will not be platforms for general purpose computing of the old style.





    Dave
  • Reply 6 of 6
    irelandireland Posts: 17,799member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin


    I don't see Apple making a Kindle size device at all but rather a device with a screen that OS X would be usable on like a 10" tablet and keep the separation between mobile devices (phones, PDAs) and portable devices (laptops, tablets).



    Totally agree on that. 10" would be really the perfect tablet size. Even 11" possibly, but I see it being 10" if they make one.
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