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Chanced upon this post at ghacks on the possible released of Apple’s Tablet product. While the issues brought up by ghacks is sound and rational, I believe that Apple would have the skills to address this.

  • The OS Problem – The tablet will be a very unique device. It is exactly halfway between the iPhone and the MacBooks. So there are two choices for Apple – scale up the iPhone OS or scale down OS X. Logically, scaling down the full sized OS X would pose a lot of problems in terms of expectations and engineering. Scaling up the iPhone OS makes much more sense. But then, what do you tell the app devs? Here’s a new iPhone OS resolution and specs, make apps for it? The third choice is making a whole new OS. But that would mean forcing users to learn something new and making things more complicated (three OS’ to maintain). We are lazy people.
  • Usability – Will someone please tell me how the hell am I supposed to use this tablet? I am almost certain that I can’t hold in one hand because it will be too heavy. Besides, I would really like to useboth hands on a 10.6inch touchscreen. Also, Apple would be loath to include a kickstand on the device, which would totally destroy the aesthetics of the curved and polished back that it apparently has. So the only remaining way is to keep it on a flat surface parallel to the ground and bend over to use it. As a blogger I already spend too much time sitting badly and getting backaches. I could live without more. So unless Apple makes this thing levitate in mid air, this does not look very useful to me.
  • The Portability Problem – Would you really like to carry around a 10.6inch glass tablet? I thought not. It will fracture all too easily. This structural problem can only be overcome by making A) a toughlid for it or B) a touchscreen built out of shatterproof, bulletproof, extra tough glass that can take a straight punch to the face and stay intact. The second option would make the device far too expensive and the first would make it the lid an almost redundant piece. Detachable or not, it would not be very helpful about the portability and usability.
  • Processing Power and Performance – With battery life already an issue, one must  wonder – how much processing power would this tablet have? Something around 600MHz like the iPhone 3GS just won’t cut it for this large a device. You need to have something fairly muscle-bound, like an Intel ULV or Atom at the very least. Now think of a netbook and think of the frustratingly sluggish performance. Apple would probably need to artificially block multi-tasking on the tablet as well. Bummer.
  • Weight And Battery Life – All that screen space and whatever the processing power is, requires power. And everyone knows that more battery power means more weight. So what would you rather have? A 3-cell battery that does not last long or a 9-cell battery that makes it impossible to carry the device for too long? And let’s not talk about the screen brightness. Forget working under direct sunlight; let’s see this device remain workable in a brightly lit room without dying in an hour.

Think about it. This is a revisit of a previous unworkable idea. If its unworkable now, why would there be so much news on it?

I am certainly looking forward to this. Not just to see if it works, cause i certainly see value in a 5-7 inch device, but i wanna see how the other companies will react to the tablet.