Any plans for Apple notebook?

mseydel

mseydel

truculent
Yeah, I know I'm fishing:
I love my iBook, if only it were a few inches smaller and I could draw on the screen like a PDA without opening it...you see where I'm going with this...
 
Maybe it won't be the iBook update you are looking for but something like a Newton remake. Who knows? There are some rumours on an old device that could be renewd soon..
 
Ugh. I won't get into the whole "Apple-branded tablet PC" thing, but I will say that if you want a laptop computer that doubles as a notepad and pencil, then I know a company that can get you one. ;)

The whole reason keyboards and computers rock is because we don't have to write anymore. Writing is slow, clumsy, and varies from person to person so drastically that it becomes illegible all too often. Why would I want to write on my computer? Isn't that a pain that my computer is supposed to alleviate?
 
Handwriting is still a common form of communication for a lot of people.
While people like ourselves are used to a keyboard and can type ridiculously quickly, many computer users out there still have problems.
A Touch-Screen would also alleviate the need for a Pointing device, pushing an onscreen button with your finger is lots more intuitive than scratching a little white pad below the keyboard to make a tiny white pointer move over the button, then pressing a button below the pad.
When I go wardriving, for instance, or need to dial a number to my bluetooth phone from Address Book, whilst Driving, am often Frustrated by having to move the Mouse Cursor. On occasion I've found myself tapping the image on the screen, before scratching on the TrackPad.
FInally, when compared with (IMO) frivalous tasks like voice recognition, the Processing required for reliable handwriting recognition would ba a drop-in-the-ocean.
 
Look at pdas and Grafitti and Graffiti2 for handwriting recognition on a touch screen. See the masses rushing out for one? Not anymore. Why? Because people are too busy typing away an sms on their cellphone.
 
It's not so much the writing that I would use such a device for, it's the sketching.

If they could do to my Powerbook what Wacom does with Cintiq, I'd be incredibly impressed - have a normal Powerbook that can swivel at the hinge and close back on itself, leaving you only with a tablet canvas with 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity...

I'd buy one. Heck, I'd buy three.
 
Yes, much better, but how many people are looking for that option? I'd love to see a iBooklet tablet but it ain't gonna happen anytime soon, if ever.
 
Wacom makes the Cintiq tablet which is also a monitor for a computer.

So drawing on the screen is almost exactly like using certain Wacoms :p.

The Graphire and Intuous, though, is a somewhat different experience (don't I know it).
 
Drawing directly on the screen I don't think that's coming to apple anytime soon, but think of a trackpad extreme. Look at all the realestate around the trackpad. They could make it double the size and have a few extra features like on some pc notebooks. I know there are some software that can make the trackpad have vitual/horizontal scroll mapped onto different parts of the pad and we already have x, y, z cordinates for depth so all we need is a little bit bigger and heavier duty trackpad to write on. It would be less costly.
 
But the possibility of the next killer hardware from apple would be a simple legal pad/clipboard size pad or smaller that would basically be less than a pound a screen only, no keys button or anything have the ability to be a virtual pad of paper not much else. This could sell for 299 or less. With not much storage space. Run by at most 1MB of memory, maybe not even color. This device would take the place of scratch paper/legal pads since it would be a virtual scractch pad that could be docked to the mac, when if you need to. It may have onboard handwriting recognition though you might have to downlod it to the mac for this to happen. If apple could get this down to 199 or 249 bucks hundreds of millions could be sold. Doctors, Lawyers Acountants I would buy 2 to 3 for my home to throw on the table or at work. Offices, Buildings, Municipal complexes could have these hanging everywhere for input then later in the day take them to the machine, might even be able to connect them via wire/wireless options. If Apple teamed up with digital ink now they could rule the world in 90 days guaranteed or your money back.
 
A recent article in eWeek states that Microsoft is discontinuing the retail Tablet PC line. I guess it will be relegated to industrial projects.
 
See? People don't wanna write on a computer! They're for typing, for crying out loud! ;)

I just don't see Tablet PCs catching on. It's not really a revolutionary idea -- rather, a meshing of two ideas (a computer + a pen & paper), and hasn't been executed very well thus far.

I will say that if any company can get the Tablet PC right, it would be Apple.
 
Voice is the future. Voice commands. Use your iPod to record interviews, then transfer them to your Mac (just like some pdas such as the Tungsten T). Use voice commands. Record a meeting with the iPod then have the voice notes transferred to text and e-mailed to the right people.
Heck, I can use voice on my Nokia 6600 for a number of things, answering calls, making calls, turning bluetooth on and off, etc.
With greater integration with voice commands, Mac can be a leader in this and eliminate the need for a tablet computer as well it's real-life little brother, the pda.
And it gives the iPod more life and functionality.
 
that last thing i want to do is talk to my computer...I am not an auditory person everything i do is tactile. I still like jotting my notes down on paper instead of typing them and I don't think I have used voice navigation on the mac since the quadra 840av I had about 10 years ago... but to each their own. No, telepathy would be nice.
 
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