Hardware
Rumor: Apple Tablet in September
The dueling rumor mill churns out another one. Contrary to reports of a release early next year, which contradicted the previous reports of a release later this year, The Financial Times is resetting the launch back to this year in September.
The talks come as Apple is separately racing to offer a portable, full-featured, tablet-sized computer in time for the Christmas shopping season, in what the entertainment industry hopes will be a new revolution. The device could be launched alongside the new content deals, including those aimed at stimulating sales of CD-length music, according to people briefed on the project.
This other deal they refer to relates to a plan to improve album sales by bundling them with interactive booklet, sleeve notes and other materials. Not sure why a tablet would have anything to do with that since the iPod is still pretty popular for music and a device with a 10″ screen would be harder to carry around, but we’ll see later this year (or early next, or whenever).
Loren Heiny
07/27/2009 at 11:43 am
I’m not so sure where Apple is heading with this music idea either. However, the notion of “interactive booklets” (which might include something that teaches you how to play a song or sing along, etc–another permutation of what’s in latest GarageBand) as part of its music offerings has me wondering if Apple is setting the stage for interactive books in general. That would give Apple a competitive advantage to let’s say what Amazon offers with the Kindle, which pretty much has static content. It could also lay the groundwork for a “book/document” format that would compete against Adobe’s PDF and even Flash animations and programs. Here again, this could lead to something that Apple could use in the iPhone as an alternative to supporting Flash and of course it’s PCs down the road. Of course, this is all a total guess, but with this latest rumor it comes to mind.