SlashGear Japan
It’s been a few days since the last good Apple Tablet rumor, so what better way to celebrate the start of a new week than a blast through the annuls. The NYT, in the absence of any hard evidence, instead rehashes the story so far, though does at least drop in a few choice quotes from an ex-Apple engineer claiming the company has been working on the Tablet project since 2003.
“It couldn’t be built. The battery life wasn’t long enough, the graphics performance was not enough to do anything and the components themselves cost more than $500″ Joshua A. Strickland, former Apple engineer
The initial devices, Strickland claims, were based on PowerPC processors and suffered dramatically short battery life. In addition, the sort of hardware available for a mobile device at the time was insufficiently powered for the Tablet to be functionally usable.
Steve Jobs is also fingered as an early nay-sayer, with an unnamed Apple executive suggesting that the outspoken CEO demanded to know what Tablets “were good for besides surfing the Web in the bathroom.” Recent rumors about the iPad device – which is believed to have a 10.7-inch capacitive touchscreen, come in 3G and non-3G versions, and prioritize media playback and internet access – have suggested the Jobs is the last barrier in-between a commercial launch and another re-shelving for the Tablet project.
[via MacRumors]
3 Responses to “Apple Tablet work-in-progress since 2003?”
rgathright October 5, 2009
Netbook and tablet computing is not at the point where you can expect seamless operation in this form factor being rumored by Apple. If they attempt a release in the next year, the product will be very slow. For evidence see my processing experiments with the Intel Atom and ASUS 1005HA netbook here: http://bit.ly/44CHFm
NeutralBeeQAL October 5, 2009
Totally agreed but you know it’s going to take off regardless because of the idiotic “Apple distortion field”. There’s an article on OSNEWS regarding tablets which shares our opinion.
I mean c’mon, enough already. I still think the netbook and smartbook craze is stupid and now we can throw in tablets soon.
NeutraliSlate November 12, 2009
Yea we found out the name in 2006. islate.org
Neutral