Earlier this month, TiPb threw it’s hat in the ring of next generation handset speculation by predicting Apple would announce an iPhone HD in 2009. It just made sense to us, and apparently it’s beginning to make sense to others as well.
What happened? New York Times writer John Markoff dropped a rumor bomb:
The [unnamed search engine] company spotted Web visits from an unannounced Apple product with a display somewhere between an iPhone and a MacBook. Is it the iPhone 3.0 or the NetMac 1.0?
Jesus Diaz over at Gizmodo seems to be thinking what we’re thinking as well:
here in Gizmodo we are thinking about an iPhone HD with an updated 800 x 480 pixel display, probably coming in 2009.
So, is this just another wunderkind spoofing his or her web browser for lulz and chaos? Or is Steve Jobs already carrying around the prototype iPhone HD in his pocket, practicing the Keynote Boom! for WWDC 2009?
Oh, Apple, you tease! It’s not enough we’ve all heard the iPhone began life as the Safari Pad tablet? That Intel has leaked Atom-powered portable hints? That the rumors start up again every time the blogsphere even thinks you have a “Special Event” coming our way? Do you really have to go and show us your patents?
Apple Insider says:
Much of the 52-page filing describes methods for accurately detecting and deciphering a plurality of simultaneous contacts on a touch screen, which sets the foundation for future tablet-based products that users can manipulate using not only more than one finger, but more than one hand.
Design guru Jonathan Ive, among others, is credited with the innovation, which includes examples of window control, virtual keyboards, and virtual scroll-wheels.
No word, of course, on when or if we’ll ever actually get to hold such awesome mobile power with our own multi-touching hands…
Can’t keep a good iTablet rumor down, can you?
While Windows-based tablets have never successfully penetrated the mainstream market, a vocal contingent have long been clamoring for an Apple Tablet (iTablet, MacBook Touch, Safari Pad, etc.). Modbook rolls their own and Alex Lindsay of PixelCorps/MacBreak Weekly fame contemplated making one himself. Heck, even TechCrunch wants a FrankenLinFox pad!
Will we ever see it? We know Apple has it in the R&D shop. Heck, the iPhone runs software originally conceived of for “Safari Pad”. Steve Jobs has said he’s just as proud of of some things Apple hasn’t released. If it wasn’t right for Apple before, is it now? Only Jobs knows for sure, but MacDailyNews (via Gizmodo) is beating the rumor drum again:
Think MacBook screen, possibly a bit smaller, in glass with iPhone-like, but fuller-featured Multi-Touch. Gesture library. Full Mac OS X. This is why they bought P.A. Semi. Possibly with Immersion’s haptic tech. Slot-loading SuperDrive. Accelerometer. GPS. Pretty expensive to produce initially, but sold at “low” price that will reduce margins. Apple wants to move these babies. And move they will. This is some sick shit. App Store-compatible, able to run Mac apps, too. By October at the latest.In all honesty, we may have passed this story up, but we’ve heard vague reports from reliable sources that Quanta is busy building a touch product for Apple. This latest information seems seems to compliment what we’ve heard.
Sounds like much more of a MacBook Air cannibalizer than over-sized iPod Touch to me, but with Mobile OS X and App Store well on their way to becoming the next great computing platform, who knows how fast and hard Apple wants to seize that high ground?
