Here is a rumor that Apple is trying again to compete unfairly:

Suppliers in Asia are reportedly telling customers that no 10″ LCD or OLED panels are available, as Apple is buying them all.

“We were designing a product for a customer and we needed 10-inch screens, but we’ve been trying for months and can’t get one from any of the Asian suppliers,” an anonymous source told TG Daily. “We were told that Apple preordered them all. All 10 inch LCDs, and all 10 inch OLEDs too.”

Apple has been known to gobble up flash memory supplies from various manufacturers to guarantee parts for iPods, and more recently iPhones, so a similar issue cropping up with displays comes as no surprise.

The odd thing about this information, though, is that Apple is reportedly buying up OLED panels as well. Rumors have suggested Apple may move to OLED technology for the tablet, as a few devices—digital cameras, cell phones, and notably the Zune HD and Nexus One—have begun incorporating them. However, a 10″ OLED would likely be cost-prohibitive, even at the rumored price of around $1,000 for the tablet. Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner recently told investors that his supply chain checks pointed towards an LTPS LCD display, like the one used in the iPhone, as being more likely.

[Ares Technica >>]

And just like i said previously, the iTablet news is spawning off alot of challengers for apples latest potential game changer.

We have the JooJoo and HP tablet slate to Lenovo’s Hybrid Ideapad. But not much have been said about the price.

As far as ebook readers are concern, if they are unable to reach 150 USD then alot of normal folks won’t bite. Lets hope throughout the year some of these folks hit that pricing range

According John Paczkowski over at All Things D, Apple is planning a “major product announcement” for Wednesday, January 27th — not the 26th as we’ve heard in previous reports. Additionally, the French site Mac4Ever says developers have been given a beta of the iPhone OS 4 SDK which includes a “simulator” for reformatting / scaling applications to a new, tablet-sized screens.

[From Engadget >>]

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.