Apple tablet: the end for laptops?
Updated on 27 January 2010
Later today in San Francisco, Apple is expected to unveil its first tablet computer. A device completely built around a 10-inch touch screen.
But then you probably know this anyway because articles about it have filled blogs and newspapers for weeks.
Unprecedented for a product we don't even know exists and testament to the uncanny ability of Apple to generate acres upon acres of free publicity.
I've got no new lines on the tale. No rumours I can verify, the web is full of them and they are just a Google search away. So all I can bring to the party is some analysis; do we really need a tablet computer? And if we do, how will it change the publishing and gaming industry?
Tablet computers on the whole are somewhere between an laptop and a mobile phone.
They have smaller screens than your average laptop but are larger than a phone and crucially on the whole they lack a physical keyboard.
Most are operated using "single touch" (one finger at a time, no iPhone style 'pincer' movements) or a pen device. They rely on the internet for some functionality and so either use a wi-fi connection or connect to the web via the mobile phone networks. HP and Microsoft showed one with 'multi-touch' at the Consumer Electronics Show.
The concept of a computer that you completely control using a touch screen is nothing new. They have been around for years, in fact Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said in 2001 that they would be the future of computing and that he used one every day. He told Information Week tablets "make it possible for knowledge workers to bring the power of the PC into more places than ever, and they can do it right away, with the same software they use on their office PC or laptop today".
I think that is geekspeak for tablet PCs are good because they let you use software you are familiar everywhere in a slightly more portable form than a laptop.
Isn't that what an iPhone is already? Apple sold another 8.7m of these in the last quarter of 2009.
It is a computer in all but name with 100,000 applications (many of them free) to do all sorts of things, it is much more than a phone.
The new device (no name confirmed yet although iSlate, iTablet, iPad all talked about on the blogs) is expected to retail at around $900 (£557) so it is not cheap. It is certainly more expensive than many laptops but it will be less powerful, and have a smaller screen. But it will be more powerfullthan an iPhone which can cost £1,500 over the lifetime of a mobile phone contract.
Like those on offer from rivals, it won't have a physical keyboard, you'll have to type using the screen, so it is not really a replacement for a laptop. You will probably need both.
All in all, today's press conference at 6pm UK time is likely to dominate technology news for weeks to come.
