PC World: Rumored Apple Tablet Is a Train Wreck

One might suspect bias. Michael Scalisi:

Given the rumor mill chatter, it sounds like the mythical Apple tablet is all but a done deal. People seem to be talking with certainty about how, either later this year or early next year, Apple will unveil a multitouch tablet with a 10-inch screen, 3G wireless broadband, and iPhone OS possibly subsidized by a Verizon Wireless contract. It would basically be a big iPod Touch.

I’m no Apple hater, and I welcome an Apple device to the (don’t call it a) netbook market, but I’ve got to think this device would be a flop. This concept is such a train wreck from start to finish that I don’t know where to begin.

Slate’s Farhad Manjoo has a different take. Apple’s rumored tablet PC augurs the next phase of the netbook craze:

At the moment, the laptop market is dominated by two kinds of machines: a bunch of cheap netbooks that don’t do much, and a bunch of expensive Apple notebooks that do a lot and do it very well. (Seven of the top 25 best-selling laptops on Amazon are MacBooks.) Consumers are fleeing the middle range, which seems to make sense—if you want a laptop to surf the Web, why spend $800 on a machine that runs Windows Vista when you can spend $400 on a machine than runs the more highly regarded Windows XP? On the other hand, if you want a laptop to use as your main computer, why spend $800 for a machine that runs Windows Vista when you can spend $1,000 for a virus-free, hassle-free system that runs the Mac OS (and can also run Windows)?

But I argue that there’s gold buried in the gap between these extremes: The success of the netbooks speaks to a desire for second PCs, for machines that we can use on the couch or on the train, rather than at a desk. Their popularity seems of a piece with customers’ growing appetite for simpler, less frilly gadgets. The netbook is like the Flip camcorder of laptops, a device whose myriad limitations seem to enhance, rather than detract from, its appeal. But we need a better such machine: Someone needs to build a good-looking, easy-to-use, and not-too-terribly expensive portable computer that aims to do one thing well—surf the Web.

Yet another take, this from WIred’s Brian X. Chen. An Amazon challenger:

Judging from the company’s past moves, we’re betting that Apple’s tablet will be a media-centric device, focused — at least in part — on shaking up the publishing industry.

Apple is already prepared to blow Amazon and other e-book makers out of the water with one key weapon: iTunes. Having served more than 6 billion songs to date, the iTunes Store has flipped the music industry on its head. It also turned mobile software into a lucrative industry, as proven by the booming success of the iPhone’s App Store, which recently surpassed 1.5 billion downloads. Apple has yet to enter the e-book market, and making books as easy to download as music and iPhone apps is the logical next step.

TechCrunch’s MG Siegler tends to agree, calling the rumored device The Kindle In Technicolor (With Laser Beams).

Here the Financial Times article that started tongues-a-wagging.

RELATED: In other Apple news, Jason Kincaid says Apple is growing rotten to the core for pulling all Google Voice-enabled applications from the App Store, citing the fact that they “duplicate features that come with the iPhone”.