Tablet, tablet, will Apple have a tablet?
While a major magazine publisher announces big plans to bring its products to Apple’s fabled tablet computer, the Apple iTablet is now rumored to be delayed until the latter part of 2010.
Although it may seem difficult to delay a product that the manufacturer has not yet admitted exists, the oft-ballyhooed Apple tablet computer is rumored to have been delayed another year. Regardless, Condé Nast, publisher of any number of high profile slick magazines, is preparing its titles for release on the iTablet, a device about which they say they have no inside knowledge. Rumors don’t get much more twisted than this, though twisted has been one of the hallmarks of the iTablet rumor mill.
Condé Nast CEO Chuck Townsend, via a report by Mediamemo carried by AppleInsider, said that his company has been talking to both Hewlett-Packard and Apple about products on which to display their magazine content. Townsend was careful to say that Apple executives have not said that they actually plan to produce a tablet computer. He was equally careful to say, of course, that his company was at work on a digital issues for the nonexistent iTablet, beginning with GQ.
Meanwhile, news out of Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes is that Apple has decided to change one or more of the components that will be used in the manufacture of the iTablet and that the change will delay the introduction of the device until some time during the second half of 2010. We can now rest assured, though, that when the iTablet does at long last arrive, it will do so with a copy of GQ in its pocket.
The latest rumors also include what this column has been speculating for some time: there will be multiple versions of the device: call them the iTablet and the iTablet Pro. Details are much less clear, of course, but it is easy to see the lower-priced model as primarily an e-reader and media player, while the Pro model will have both better specs and more capabilities, including significant business functionality. We all just have to wait a bit longer now than we thought we would before the details become clear.
Related Posts:
