Blogger boasts Apple Tablet is for real

Posted on 24 May 2005 at 15:29

Put Apple's recent talks with Intel together with the rumours (and patent) of an imminent tablet Mac together and what do you get? According to one Tablet PC expert, you get an Apple Tablet running on an Intel Sonoma processor.

Rob Bushway, the owner of a company specialising in Web development and technology consulting quoted 'no less than five sources' in his blog 'saying an Apple Tablet announcement is due soon'.

'The Intel talks are for battery saving Sonoma-like, Powerbook and Tablet tech, I'd heard this three-to-four weeks ago,' he writes, before insisting, 'honest', that he has seen a prototype.

'Instant On, ASUS-Tatung whiteish looking, running a reduced version of OSX, with some funky start-up PDA-like Apple icon menu. Touch only (white touch pen), least the version I saw. Dunno if it will make it to market, but I think what I saw, is what these NDA-signing reporters have saw. Played with it for maybe five mins before it was whisked away.'

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the Apple-Intel talks remains rather more level-headed in its analysis.

'It couldn't be learned what prompted Apple to talk to Intel, and it wasn't clear whether the discussions involved replacing the IBM-made PowerPC chips with Intel chips or merely adding Intel chips,' it writes. 'Apple has praised the performance of the PowerPC inside its G5 computer, but also said last year that IBM's inability to get the company all the chips it needed hurt Apple server sales.'

Nonetheless, the lack of an IBM low-power G5 chip - Apple still uses G4 processors from Freescale (the company formed when Motorola spun off its semiconductor division) in its notebook ranges - is undoubtedly a concern; whether that amounts to a tie up with Intel I guess we will find out when Steve Jobs opens Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference on 6 June.

Apple, as ever, remains tight-lipped on its plans, but at least some of its laptops are due an update. The iBooks were last upgraded in October 2004 and could do with their usual six-month refresh in time for the pre-school shopping season. A wide-screen version would be sure to be popular. The PowerBooks got speed bumped at the end of January and sales were strong in the last quarter, but with the G5 processor almost two years old, they are beginning to feel out-of-date.

Author: Simon Aughton