ultra-portable v. touchscreen ipods

[wyatt23]

i have been following the tablet rumors, and it is possible that apple will someday release some sort of touch screen portable macbook. I'm not pitching any ideas of when and if, but does it strike you as strange that apple is locking down their ipods. maybe the inception of a mobile platform would diminish a need for a ipod touch-esque macbook tablet.

if you could spend 1000-2000 on a tablet type computer, or for 500 you could have an unlocked ipod that could run many similar programs and is VERY portable.

i do not think a tablet would fail. for the most part i don't believe the two products would occupy the same niche markets. but could the locking down of one mobile platform be any insinuation of product separation. i know my girlfriend wants an itouch. she thinks jailbreaking them is fun and loves electronics. But she would perhaps jump for an ultraportable if the ipod mobile platform didn't now exist. would apple cripple a growing jailbreak community for the benefit of keeping that demand for an ultraportable (if and when they finally unveil it)?

apple basically telling us:
mobile computing and applications for computers.
whatever we intend for our ipods.

just some thoughts of a midnight toker. (ps. i don't really think this stuff is going on, but it's fun to beg the question of why apple is blatantly killing a really zealous growing community)

 

[koobcamuk]

i have been following the tablet rumors, and it is possible that apple will someday release some sort of touch screen portable macbook. I'm not pitching any ideas of when and if, but does it strike you as strange that apple is locking down their ipods. maybe the inception of a mobile platform would diminish a need for a ipod touch-esque macbook tablet.

if you could spend 1000-2000 on a tablet type computer, or for 500 you could have an unlocked ipod that could run many similar programs and is VERY portable.

i do not think a tablet would fail. for the most part i don't believe the two products would occupy the same niche markets. but could the locking down of one mobile platform be any insinuation of product separation. i know my girlfriend wants an itouch. she thinks jailbreaking them is fun and loves electronics. But she would perhaps jump for an ultraportable if the ipod mobile platform didn't now exist. would apple cripple a growing jailbreak community for the benefit of keeping that demand for an ultraportable (if and when they finally unveil it)?

apple basically telling us:
mobile computing and applications for computers.
whatever we intend for our ipods.

just some thoughts of a midnight toker. (ps. i don't really think this stuff is going on, but it's fun to beg the question of why apple is blatantly killing a really zealous growing community)

I could have sworn Jobs wrote about an SDK coming in Feb 2008. How much more unlocked do you want the touch and iPhone?

 

[wyatt23]

well... when we're told that the touch and iphone run os x...

i'd really like to run native os x apps, not safari web 2.0 apps. don't tell me that the ipod hacking community hasn't offered more than web apps ever could.

do you prefer a native instant messenger or web-based? i think native. which is why i'm waiting to see where the itouch lock downs will be going.

 

[Dizzee]

i would absolutly die for a macbook pro tablet.
same thing as everything currently...
but with a swivel screen.
passive multi touch screen, and wacom digitizer.
and a dock.

all that and i would be in love.

 

[mkrishnan]

i would absolutly die for a macbook pro tablet.
same thing as everything currently...
but with a swivel screen.
passive multi touch screen, and wacom digitizer.
and a dock.

all that and i would be in love.

I think a notebook like that would be very powerful, but it would be perceived as "clunky" by Apple -- particularly by people like Jobs -- and you'll never see it out of Cupertino. A lot of those technologies conceptually exist. For instance, the XO / OLPC has a combined touchpad / stylus digitizer. And of course Multitouch exists.

What the OP was suggesting -- some "novel" device that is somewhat like no-keyboard tablet PCs (e.g. that run Windows), but with multi-touch and other innovations from Apple's interface technology, might be more like something Apple would make, although it seems like it would be a market Apple would have to grow, because it wouldn't really seem to fit well with the needs of traditional ultraportable users. Traditional tablet users tend to rely heavily on corporate software -- i.e. in marketing and so on -- and again that seems like a market that would require a lot of the sort of work Apple is traditionally reticent to do.