The China Times is now reporting that the endlessly-rumored Apple tablet isn’t just coming someday—a fair bet—it’s coming soon. It’ll land in October, to be exact, when we should expect to pay around $800 for it.
https://gizmodo.com/apples-tablet-the-story-so-far-5249808
The story of the Apple tablet has been one of hearsay and gossip from the start, and this report, despite coming from a respectable newspaper, is no different. Translation courtesy of the MacRumors forums, and our polygot tipster:
Taiwan’s high-tech supply chain companies said Apple will debut its first netbook in October; Apple will pose itself to tackle the Christmas shopping season. Three corporations – Foxconn, Wintek, Dynapack have received direct orders from Apple.
To anyone who’s been following this story, this will sound familiar: Wintek was the company previously said to have supplied a bunch of touchscreen panels to Apple for use in a tablet—a narrative that lost a little steam after a no-show at WWDC. But bearing a resemblance to previous rumors could mean two things: either the China Times has been able to independently confirm something true, lending it credence; or they—or their sources—are simply echoing rumors. The pricing rumor is subject to the same suspicions:
https://gizmodo.com/apple-releasing-a-touchscreen-netbook-this-summer-5166576
Because Apple will adopt touch screen technology on its netbooks, Apple will not target low-end consumers, avoiding direct competition with Acer, Asus, as well as their less-than-500-dollars netbooks. Apple’s netbook (or a “tablet” as many call it,) will probably be sold at around $800 USD each.
Even assuming this is true, it’s strictly a hardware rumor, and doesn’t answer one of the most important questions regarding the tablet: what the hell kind of OS will this thing run? Two takes. [Macrumors–Thanks, puffnstuff!]
https://gizmodo.com/last-minute-rumor-updates-on-apple-wwdc-09-5266037
