blag.dh

An Apple tablet has been a rumor for so long I can’t remember when it wasn’t one.  This was something every graphic artist has been dreaming about since the day they first connected a Wacom tablet to their Mac to use in Photoshop.  Apple could have fulfilled that dream, but turned its sights away from the creators of digital content and towards its consumers instead.  Here’s my list of suggestions to Apple:

1. Add a camera.  Two-way video conferencing is something that both laptops and some phones—like the Nokia N900—let you do.  A midway device release in 2010 should have this.
2. This is a caricatured iPod Touch with an uninspired, unoriginal industrial design that I can only guess came out of a cautious, unambitious decision to stick with a design that worked on a previous product (the iPhone) and keep banking on people liking it on anything its applied to; Music players, tablets, printers, patio furniture, whatever.  Give it its own look instead.  Deviate from “what works” and Think Different.
3. Screw e-books.  Have you ever tried to read a full-length book on your laptop for hours on end?  Do you recall that being a fun experience?  Put a pillow cover over your keyboard so you can’t see it and do it again.  This is what reading books on the iPad will be like.
4. Run OS X.  If something as thin as a MacBook Air can run OS X, so can this thing.  Will that jack the price up?  Definitely, but an expensive tablet that everyone wants will generate more sales than a cheap tablet that is passionately hated by even some of the most devout Apple fanboys and fangirls.  That is why there are companies that will convert a Mac into a tablet making bank on what should have been an Apple product since the 90s.  Apple should have taken a hint.  Even so, the price point probably wouldn’t have to go up by much; I’ve seen OS X run smoothly on an Intel Atom-based netbook before, even with Flash running.  Anything cheaper than the total cost of an iBook with a high-end pen tablet would be well justified.
5. Change the name to “Maclet.”  It is [EDIT: should be] a Mac in tablet form.  The name iPad was begging for ridicule, something that would have been [EDIT: was, in 2006] used satirically.