NO!

It's a cellphone+iPod with PDA functions.
It doesn't support handwriting (/hw recognition), it doesn't have a stylus, and it doesn't run a desktop environment OS.

...But dang, I want it!

I say Dave is six months behind. I blogged back in January that it looked like a tiny tablet, and a true tablet from Apple was just a couple of upscaling steps (hardware and software) away.

Short answer...........NO

Long answer........NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Steve Jobs says he hates tablets, Apple will never make a tablet. (I think he is still feeling the burn from the Newton personally.)

But the iPhone is no tablet.

Then again, they are a few short steps away with the iPhone. And if Leopard includes multi-touch as is being rumored .... With a few additions, Apple might end up making a tablet.

He must not have gotten his own memo.

Steve Jobs also said nobody would ever want to watch video on a tiny screen such as a phone or ipod and then a year later he released the video ipod.

But from what I understand, the iPhone uses technology similar to a track pad mouse on a laptop so I would be curious to know whether or not it can even respond to a stylus. The lines are certainly blurring and we must be careful not to get too caught up in what is or isn't a tablet. This was my biggest pet peeve about the UMPC/Origami confusion. "No that's not a UMPC because it doesn't have DialKeys." "Um, but isn't it a PC that's ultra-mobile?" "Well yeah but it's not a UMPC."

It is a device with an alternate form of input.

It's not a tablet, but it is a UMPC. You can store all your contacts, handle your email, surf the web and open documents like PDFs. You can watch videos and listen to music. The perfect companion device.

As soon as this dang Verizon contract is up.....

"It's not a tablet, but it is a UMPC. You can store all your contacts, handle your email, surf the web and open documents like PDFs. You can watch videos and listen to music. The perfect companion device."

It's not a UMPC. If it had a full OS I would say it could be.

Sounds a lot like a PDA or smartphone to me with a very scaled down verison of a OS.

No, it's no tablet, and curreently its functionality is such that you could barely consider it a PDA.

(but, Apple's Newton was both)

No, the iPhone is not a PC. I am writing this from a very UMPC, an HTC Apache (Sprint 6700). It uses the Windows Mobile operating system, has WiFi & Bluetooth, touch screen, and keyboard. Since it has a real OS anyone can write programs for it and users can add and use programs. And it has a phone built in.

The iPhone acts like the old 6600 which did not have an operating system and just ran Java applications.