"Well today, we're introducing THREE revolutionary new products. The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary new mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device."
"An iPod, a phone, an Internet mobile
communicator. An iPod, a phone, an Internet mobile communicator.... these are
NOT three separate devices! Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And
here it is...we are calling it iPhone!"
So echoed Apple CEO Steve Jobs in his
Macworld 2007 keynote that publicly kicked off what (arguably) became the most
successful consumer product launch of all time.
Now it seems that Apple is poised to launch
its Tablet Computing entry later this year for a (rumored) price ranging between $500-800; wedging it, from a pricing relativity perspective, at about a grand less
than a MacBook Air with solid state memory.
What computing model it pays homage to (i.e., the Mac
or the iPhone, or more likely a hybrid of the two), and what it means for Apple's hardware-software strategy moving forward, is a topic that I recently
blogged about in the O'Reilly Radar piece, ‘Apple, the Boomer Tablet and the Matrix.’
But, perhaps the real story with respect to the forthcoming Apple Tablet Device is that Apple has already released a tablet computing device.
After all, the iPod touch (with Safari, Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Maps, iTunes, iLife, MobileMe and the 65K application strong App Store baked into it) is already more powerful than most of the netbook offerings, which, by contrast, are typically touted as doing one thing well - web browsing - and a bunch of other things in a "good enough" fashion (e.g., email, chat, audio/pics/video).
All of which begs the question; when Apple releases its NEXT tablet computing device, will they reinvent the iPod touch in the same way that the iPhone reinvented the phone?
My guess is, yes they will.
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