There is a strong roamer that Apple will introduce a Tablet or a Touch Screen Mac, I think it will happen, and there is enough evidence suggest such move, but how it will be, how it will work, that is the question.

We know that Apple make fancy and good quality Computers, that keep (us) the users happy and entertained, but that does not mean they will sacrifice their profit maximizing to make us happy
In reality they are a company that runs a business, and their business aim at us (the users), to maximize their profits they have to sell more, and make sure we buy more!

What all this have to do with Apple Tablet or Touch Mac?

Apple has to make sure that we will buy the new product without affecting the already existing products, which mean they have to introduce a product that work with current products and not replacing them (as much as possible) in the same time they have to make it very attractive so we buy it.

So how Apple’s Table or Touch Mac will be (my speculations)?

• It will be easy to carry and use like an iPhone and good viewing size like a small laptop or a netbook, a screen size between 7” to 11” which makes it good and nice if not perfect to watch movies and use it to read books and documents (Apple has to take market share in the netbook market, sense it seems very successful).
• It will use the iPhone and iPod Touch OS or something similar, this platform really helped Apple to achieve good position among smart-phone’s already crowded market and it is very successful money machine for apple, with all the Apps and Music being downloaded to the iPhone and iPod Touch, this new Product will probably add the possibility to download movies, eBooks in addition to all the Apps and Music, using the same platform helps apple to use the iPhone’s and iPod Touch’s Apps on the new product.
• Apple bought PA. Semi and licensed ARM CPUs, I think we may see these CPUs in the new Apple’s Tablet or Touch Mac, the invested in low power consuming ARM CPUs and I see no good reason why they should use Intel Atom CPUs specially when ARM CPUs use less power (mean longer battery life) than Intel Atom CPUs.
• The market now getting hot for eBook Readers started by Amazon when they introduced Kindel, and all the success that fallow, Apple will love to have some profits from the eBooks with the new product specially if the size will be similar to an eBook Reader, so we may expect Apple selling eBooks through iTunes.

My speculations are based on the market, technology and “Apple’s visions”, we had good experience with Apple tactics when it comes to marketing new products, they try to make us limited with the options in the products they sell us (and here I say they try), if the people start to complain they lose some of the limitations, it happened before first with iPhone first time release where there was no SDK to develop the current cool Apps there was only web based apps, second example was the disappearing of the Firewire from the first aluminum MacBooks release which later they add the Firewaire back and they rename it to MackBook Pro!

I can see some nice stuff and some limitations will (may) be introduced in the new product (Apple Tablet or Touch Mac), I just hope that they will not put so many restrictions on the new product.

Sarmad Jari