Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Polette,
Speaker 1: and I'm editor here at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: and sitting next to me as usual as senior writer
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, except I'm not saying next to
Speaker 1: you sitting across room. I know. I just didn't want to,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, repeat what we just did a second ago. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We we do these in batches, and we never know
Speaker 1: which one is going to be first, the other one
Speaker 1: my go live second, and then this will seem like
Speaker 1: we're talking from the future instead of like two weeks ago.
Speaker 1: So anyway, let's start this one off before we totally
Speaker 1: get derailed a little listener man. This listener mail comes
Speaker 1: from Tossin and seen says, Hi, guys, I love the show,
Speaker 1: although it did take me a while to get used
Speaker 1: to Jonathan. Hey, Chris Palette, you're the man. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't like Tossin. I think he's great.
Speaker 1: I thought you would. I'm the kind of guy who
Speaker 1: is a late adopter most technology unless I immediately see
Speaker 1: a huge benefit for myself. I owned the first DVD
Speaker 1: player from Sony and the improvement of the experience over
Speaker 1: VHS was revolutionary to me. However, when it comes to
Speaker 1: Apple gadgets, I'm a late bloomer. I got an iPhone
Speaker 1: this past February and I was instantly hooked. So now,
Speaker 1: based on the new computing paradigm that Apple has created
Speaker 1: with the touchscreen functionality, I am eagerly awaiting the Apple
Speaker 1: netbook slash tablet thing. I was extremely disappointed to find
Speaker 1: the news on this is mostly rumor and conjecture about
Speaker 1: release dates. I'd love to hear a podcast where you
Speaker 1: guys can do a little history of mobile computing platforms
Speaker 1: and end with some details anything official from the about
Speaker 1: the Apple to But thanks again and keep up the
Speaker 1: great podcast ps. You guys have slowly become my favorite podcast,
Speaker 1: beating out Josh and Chuck with They're a little too
Speaker 1: preachy for Me topics. Hey, you know we we try
Speaker 1: to beat them as often as possible, preferably when they're
Speaker 1: not looking and we can run. I'd just like to
Speaker 1: say it took me a little time to get used
Speaker 1: to this email like it a lot. I think you
Speaker 1: should write it more. So we're gonna actually focus mainly
Speaker 1: on the Apple tablet, the rumors around it, and what
Speaker 1: we know and you know why there have been so
Speaker 1: many rumors for so long. The mobile app thing will
Speaker 1: probably talk about in another podcast. We've talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about some of the other things like Android and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But oh well, if we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about what we know about the Apple tablet, this
Speaker 1: will be like a three minute podcast. Yeah, we can't
Speaker 1: do that because Emily hates it. Okay, she she's she's
Speaker 1: so tired of us starting an Apple like is it?
Speaker 1: Is it real? No? All right, that's it. Well, we
Speaker 1: have made that joke maybe once or twice. Apparently that
Speaker 1: joke is now old. We we have jumped jumped the shark.
Speaker 1: She's only one person, and you know, no one else's
Speaker 1: she's influential. She's a journalist. I know she's a journalist.
Speaker 1: So let's go on to the Apple tablet. Good lord,
Speaker 1: I want to get out of here at some point.
Speaker 1: So the Apple tablet, Uh, rumors of this kind of
Speaker 1: popped up ages ago, you know, years and years ago. Actually,
Speaker 1: But Steve Jobs has spent the last two years denying
Speaker 1: he's interested in it. That was a rudimentary time frame.
Speaker 1: I'm just making it up. Yeah. Well, but but even
Speaker 1: even before that, there were some rumors based just upon conjecture.
Speaker 1: But then Apple filed some patents a few years ago
Speaker 1: that kind of suggested that they were interested in developing
Speaker 1: a tablet. And it's not like Apple hasn't developed something
Speaker 1: like this before. True, they have a pretty infamous p
Speaker 1: d A that, uh, that kind of is a precursor
Speaker 1: to the whole tablet craze. You know, we've got a
Speaker 1: lot of younger listeners, so I'd like to point out
Speaker 1: what a p d A is, or was a personal
Speaker 1: digital assistant or pd A. Actually, they him on the scene,
Speaker 1: I guess early to mid nineties. They're very first ones.
Speaker 1: Um like the one that you were about to that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, basically they were they were like, okay, they
Speaker 1: were like smartphones without the phone digital planners, you know,
Speaker 1: keep your calendar, send yourself alerts um in some cases email,
Speaker 1: especially when they they got later. But you would have
Speaker 1: to sink those with your with your computer. At least
Speaker 1: at first, they couldn't. They couldn't send information out on
Speaker 1: WiFi at the very first, and of course they well, exactly,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing that that developed over time.
Speaker 1: And then of course, as soon as uh Palm started
Speaker 1: with the Trio and some of the others started making
Speaker 1: sort of converging the two, the phone and the cell
Speaker 1: phone and the the p d A, basically we got
Speaker 1: smartphones and nobody wanted an individual p d A anymore.
Speaker 1: But that came up with the with one of them,
Speaker 1: the very earliest ones, Yes, and that would be the Newton. Yes.
Speaker 1: Actually the Newton will play a part in our conversation
Speaker 1: later on. But the Newton um was infamous in that
Speaker 1: it had some half baked handwriting technology when it went
Speaker 1: to launch. You just guaranteed we're gonna get listen to me. Look,
Speaker 1: it is no secret that the Apple's handwriting recognition software
Speaker 1: was not as good as it needed to be when
Speaker 1: it launched. When it launched, Okay, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: When it launched, saying that the that the last Apple
Speaker 1: Newton to hit store shelves wasn't the best darn electronic
Speaker 1: device to ever grace the planet. It may very well
Speaker 1: have been, but those first ones were rotten Apples. Well,
Speaker 1: I have to say, not being an apologist because I've
Speaker 1: never actually had my hands on a Newton, but I
Speaker 1: think Apple they're delicious. Yeah. Um, I think it's one
Speaker 1: of those situations where Apple found out then what other
Speaker 1: companies I'm not mentioning names, Microsoft, Pista found out later,
Speaker 1: which is the initial perception of the product. Um, it
Speaker 1: didn't seem to matter how much it improved. That initial
Speaker 1: perception really hurts. Yeah, so it's bad if you launch
Speaker 1: a product that one of the most um, most advertised
Speaker 1: features ends up not working that well. It takes it'll
Speaker 1: take a miracle for you to recover from that bad publicity.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you know, there might be one or two
Speaker 1: instances of companies that were able to turn a product
Speaker 1: around and go from uh completely being in disgrace to
Speaker 1: being lauded as the best of the best, But it's
Speaker 1: pretty rare most of the time. If you get that
Speaker 1: first impression and it's negative, it's gonna stick with you,
Speaker 1: just like Chris was saying, and that was the case
Speaker 1: with the Newton. It had a It became a punch
Speaker 1: line really for people who were desperately trying to uh
Speaker 1: to write a sentence and and then you would get
Speaker 1: this garbled message that made made no sense whatsoever as
Speaker 1: the as the device tried to interpret your con scratch.
Speaker 1: Now that that's again a precursor to the tablet days.
Speaker 1: When we're talking about tablets, we're really talking about devices
Speaker 1: that have some sort of uh interface like a maybe
Speaker 1: a light pen or even a touch screen, um, that
Speaker 1: can interact either with a computer or on their own,
Speaker 1: uh like the way Calm tablets where it's very useful
Speaker 1: for people who want to do design work, um, and
Speaker 1: and h illustrations, that kind of thing where they can
Speaker 1: draw directly on a screen and create their their digital drawings. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And um, you know they're the early The Newton and
Speaker 1: the Palm basically sort of set the stage for that,
Speaker 1: you know, because they offered the handwriting recognition. I mean,
Speaker 1: Palm's handwriting recognition was excellent, at least a lot better
Speaker 1: than Newton's original attempt. And of course there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who swear by the improvements made in
Speaker 1: later Newton's but um, you know, now we've got touch
Speaker 1: screens and there's all kinds of ways to you know,
Speaker 1: interact with it. And of course tablets have been out
Speaker 1: for several years. Yeah, you know, the the tablet form
Speaker 1: factor is not a new thing. The new thing would
Speaker 1: be that Apple getting into this game. And UM. Back
Speaker 1: in August of two thousand eight, the Patent Office received
Speaker 1: a patent from Apple for a device that was essentially
Speaker 1: a tablet that was running on os X because it
Speaker 1: was supporting the touch interface and UM, and that was
Speaker 1: really what kind of touched off the the the first
Speaker 1: initial flurry of serious Apple tablet rumors. Now, let's let's
Speaker 1: kind of expand the scene a little bit. In the
Speaker 1: computing world, you've got sitting at a desk. I climbed
Speaker 1: the twelve stairs to my office. No, we're not doing
Speaker 1: an audio drama here. The no. When by saying the scene,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the different level, different kinds of computers
Speaker 1: you can purchase. So you know, with Apple they do
Speaker 1: notebook computers and desktop computers. Yeah, you know now that
Speaker 1: you say that, Actually that that's kind of interesting because
Speaker 1: the Newton was one of the first things that Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs got rid of when he got back. And UM.
Speaker 1: At the time, Apple's products were all over the place.
Speaker 1: They had all kinds of different stuff. They had an
Speaker 1: education only PD a slash new knee thing called the eMate,
Speaker 1: which had only been out for a very short time
Speaker 1: before it was that was one of the products that
Speaker 1: actually was very well liked, and it just never it
Speaker 1: wasn't really given a chance. And that's the reason Apples
Speaker 1: line is the way it is now is because, uh,
Speaker 1: Steve decided to make it into four parts. Basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: you had a desktop, and you have a laptop, and
Speaker 1: you have a consumer version and you have a professional version.
Speaker 1: And of course now they're starting to branch out from that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now that they've got the iPhone and the iPod Touch,
Speaker 1: which in a way are manature computers, and they didn't
Speaker 1: have those products back then. So but even even now,
Speaker 1: this is all all very controlled, right, you know, you
Speaker 1: still have very clearly delineated lines of products. It's not
Speaker 1: like there's a whole spectrum um so. But but one
Speaker 1: of the big questions was that now that netbooks have
Speaker 1: become pretty popular, you know, you had the combination of
Speaker 1: cloud computing on the rise, you had the recession kicking in,
Speaker 1: so people had less money to spend on things like computers,
Speaker 1: and you had these incredibly cheap netbook computers that didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of resources, but allowed you to connect
Speaker 1: to the web where you could use web services right exactly.
Speaker 1: The other part of that people started to ask the
Speaker 1: natural question, which was will Apple get into the netbook game,
Speaker 1: because you know, they don't have anything that's in that space,
Speaker 1: and they could take advantage of that. You know, they
Speaker 1: could throw in because one thing Apple's got, hands down
Speaker 1: is selling style. Apple. Yeah, Apple cells style better than
Speaker 1: most fashion designers. Um. Their products are beauty full, They're
Speaker 1: beautifully designed because they are such control freaks. The applications
Speaker 1: often also look very beautiful because they have to fall
Speaker 1: into certain parameters. Um, They're not necessarily going to be
Speaker 1: the best product or application for every single thing you
Speaker 1: want to do, but it's gonna look really nice. Um,
Speaker 1: but you pay for that style. They are premium products.
Speaker 1: They are more expensive than, uh than PC products. Now,
Speaker 1: before I get all these this listener mail, let me
Speaker 1: go ahead and say if you were to build a
Speaker 1: PC that had the exact same computing power as the
Speaker 1: iMac or whatever counterpart, it would probably be about the
Speaker 1: same price. The reason why you find really cheap PCs
Speaker 1: is a lot of manufacturers will make PCs with materials
Speaker 1: that are like like slower processors, less hard drive space,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever they're they're using, uh, things that Apple
Speaker 1: would not use. They don't want to use products below
Speaker 1: a certain threshold, okay. And also buying what what they
Speaker 1: do and using what they do in the in the
Speaker 1: computers and other devices. It also gives them a very
Speaker 1: narrow set of hardware that they need to support. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, PC manufacturer might use a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff across the board, and then that means that they
Speaker 1: have to spend you know, the time and effort to
Speaker 1: you know, either support it or end of life at
Speaker 1: e O L it, you know. And yeah, the thing
Speaker 1: about a PC is you you can never be sure
Speaker 1: when you purchase one if the company that manufactured it
Speaker 1: is absolutely certain that all the elements inside it are compatible,
Speaker 1: because your video card and sound card might have some problems.
Speaker 1: And I mean these sort of things do pop up.
Speaker 1: Now with Apple products, it's much more controlled, so you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about that. So that's another good
Speaker 1: point point on Apple. Actually, yeah, Microsoft has to worry
Speaker 1: about that because you know, Apples OS ten has to
Speaker 1: work on all the machines that Apple's ever made that
Speaker 1: were compatible with it. I mean, it knows exactly what
Speaker 1: models will and will not work with it. UM like
Speaker 1: snow Leopard for example, not working on the power PC processors. UM.
Speaker 1: But Microsoft has no way of knowing whether you're using
Speaker 1: Packard bell from or a Dell that you bought two
Speaker 1: weeks ago, and the processors and those and the kind
Speaker 1: of RAM that they use and all that other stuff
Speaker 1: are unknown, and so you know, there's some there's some
Speaker 1: issues there. So to bring this back to the Apple tablet,
Speaker 1: because boy did we get off on a tangent there
Speaker 1: just saying there's you know that that's part of the
Speaker 1: functionality there is. They go, yeah, we know exactly what's
Speaker 1: in here, and that's gonna work. Well. The point being
Speaker 1: that there's the space between the iPhone, which is a smartphone,
Speaker 1: or the iPod Touch, which is ani computer. I manage
Speaker 1: your computer slash and P three player. Um, you have
Speaker 1: a big, wide gap between that and your lowest level MacBooks. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a big price gap, and there's a
Speaker 1: big just device yeah or Mac minie. So uh so
Speaker 1: let's say that you know you want to get into
Speaker 1: this netbook space. Well, the Apple executives have already said
Speaker 1: that they would not produce a notebook style computer for
Speaker 1: around five because they would be incapable of creating one
Speaker 1: that wasn't crap. The idea here being that they would
Speaker 1: have to um, they would have to compromise their standards
Speaker 1: in order to create a device that would meet that
Speaker 1: price point, and they're not willing to do it. Now.
Speaker 1: Some people have said perhaps the tablet could fill that
Speaker 1: niche because it wouldn't be a netbook. It would, you know,
Speaker 1: have no keyboard. It would just be a a device
Speaker 1: that you would have a touch screen. Everything would be uh,
Speaker 1: touchscreen enabled. You might have an accelerometer in there as well,
Speaker 1: so that it works like the iPhone and iPod touch too.
Speaker 1: I bet that it's going to have an accelerometer in
Speaker 1: there if they make one. Considering the game's market for
Speaker 1: the ip Yeah, yeah, unterst thing make total sense. So
Speaker 1: this this device would kind of fit in that that
Speaker 1: are that area. You know, you might be able to
Speaker 1: price it kind of competitively with a lot of the
Speaker 1: netbooks that are out there now. As it's turned out,
Speaker 1: the rumors appear to state that it would actually be
Speaker 1: much more expensive than your average netbook. I'm sure if
Speaker 1: your average netbook is around say, four hundred bucks. The
Speaker 1: most recent rumors I've seen for the tablets price range
Speaker 1: between eight hundred and a thousand dollars. Now, when you
Speaker 1: think the lowest priced MacBook, I think is so that's
Speaker 1: a thousand bucks right there. Would you be willing to
Speaker 1: pay the same amount for a tablet as you would
Speaker 1: for an actual full notebook? Depends on what you're going
Speaker 1: to use it for. Yeah, well, I just can't imagine
Speaker 1: doing that. It's it's to me, it's really I mean,
Speaker 1: that device would have to be phenomenal for me to
Speaker 1: sit there and say, you know what, this is worth
Speaker 1: the same amount as a Mac notebook. You'd have to
Speaker 1: see what the market's going to be for that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And the market for a tablet computer in
Speaker 1: general is considerably different from the kind of person who
Speaker 1: would normally buy a laptop or desktop from themselves, because, well,
Speaker 1: at least traditionally speaking, the tablet computer has been aimed
Speaker 1: at UH professionals in certain industries, like the predominant one
Speaker 1: i've seen as medical, because they carry those those um
Speaker 1: computers with them, and it's you know, the tablet computer
Speaker 1: is much easier to carry than say a laptop, because uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's more like a notebook would be, and
Speaker 1: then they can make notes on it with the stylists. Um.
Speaker 1: And it makes a lot of sense actually that that's
Speaker 1: an application that that's sort of a no brainer, and
Speaker 1: you know, I can see artists and things like that
Speaker 1: and people. Possibly there's the idea that people might be
Speaker 1: able to consume media like you know, music videos, television shows,
Speaker 1: all that sort of thing using the tablets. So there's
Speaker 1: that possibility as well. That brings us to the question
Speaker 1: of what is this tablet going to use as an
Speaker 1: operating system? Because there are two two different philosophies at
Speaker 1: play here. There are those who think that we're going
Speaker 1: to see a modified version of the Mac OS okay,
Speaker 1: and then the other people think it's going to be
Speaker 1: the iPhone OS. Well, so it'll be either a smarter,
Speaker 1: slightly smarter version of the iPhone or slightly dumber version
Speaker 1: of the MacBook. Yeah. See, the the iPhone OS is
Speaker 1: very similar in some ways to the two OS ten. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's not so you're saying it would basically be
Speaker 1: something in the middle between the two. Yeah, whether but
Speaker 1: whether what approach did they take do they take beefing
Speaker 1: up the ipot or do they take the opposite approach?
Speaker 1: Where you you what would you do? What would I do?
Speaker 1: I would probably just create a brand new OS really yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's work. It is a lot of work. I mean,
Speaker 1: we don't even know that this tablet's comeing out any
Speaker 1: time since. Okay, let's let's get that clear too. Here's
Speaker 1: here's what I mean. The reason that was the whole
Speaker 1: patent thing was the first step in thinking that there
Speaker 1: was gonna be a tablet. The next step was that
Speaker 1: there was a leak in the supply chain. Uh, not
Speaker 1: like that kind of leak information leak from the supply chain.
Speaker 1: There was there were these Taiwanese companies saying that they
Speaker 1: were pretty creating these these large touch screens for Apple. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they were screens that wouldn't fit on any particular
Speaker 1: device that Apple is currently producing. So that led to
Speaker 1: the whole oh this must be for the Apple tablet thing.
Speaker 1: All of like two thousand nine, up through September, people
Speaker 1: were arguing about when this tablet was gonna be announced.
Speaker 1: We kept on thinking, Oh, it's gonna be announced in June,
Speaker 1: when uh, when jobs comes back. No, it wasn't then
Speaker 1: moll is gonna be announced on nine nine on their
Speaker 1: big event. Note that it wasn't on that either. Um
Speaker 1: there were six. Yeah, that that's actually that is the
Speaker 1: latest rumor now is Macworrel January. Of course that's the
Speaker 1: next big event that it was us. They're not gonna
Speaker 1: they're not gonna be a macworld, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of conjecture that they're going to be kind of they're
Speaker 1: not really at c S. Well, according to the head
Speaker 1: of C E S they don't have a space at
Speaker 1: c S and so uh, and it would be really
Speaker 1: hard to fit them into that. I mean, you've seen them.
Speaker 1: They planned those booths out so far in advance. It
Speaker 1: would be really hard to squeeze them in some place.
Speaker 1: Like you know what, Sony, you don't need that entire
Speaker 1: width of the the room. We're just gonna cut off
Speaker 1: this last you know, half of it. I don't think
Speaker 1: that would work so at any rate. Um, again, all
Speaker 1: we have are rumors, uh, stating that there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a tablet at all. Okay, the latest rumors that it
Speaker 1: would be available February two and that we would hear
Speaker 1: about it either at C e S or some event
Speaker 1: scheduled around c E S so that you know, they
Speaker 1: could capitalize on all the tech news that's coming out
Speaker 1: in January. UM, there were some reports saying that we
Speaker 1: were going to see it as a a September October.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's happening now, since September is over
Speaker 1: and we're into I mean now. Granted, maybe from the
Speaker 1: time we record this podcast at the time it publishes,
Speaker 1: they come out and say it, in which case we're
Speaker 1: gonna feel pretty silly and we're probably gonna record something
Speaker 1: else in this place in a hurry. Yeah, But right now,
Speaker 1: there's no indication from Apple whatsoever. Um. Although there was
Speaker 1: another interesting development that's going back to the Apple Newton,
Speaker 1: and an old friend of Apple has made a return
Speaker 1: after a very long absence. I'm guessing you're talking about
Speaker 1: Michael Chow. Michael Chow, who was one of the people
Speaker 1: working on the Newton back in the day. Um. He
Speaker 1: was one of the champions of the Newton, and so
Speaker 1: he ended up taking a lot of abuse when the
Speaker 1: handwriting recognition feature didn't work out quite as planned. Well,
Speaker 1: based on my research, he was the person who convinced
Speaker 1: then CEO John Scully that it would be a great
Speaker 1: idea if you included the handwriting recognition in this device. Right,
Speaker 1: despite some engineers of arguing that it wasn't ready, they
Speaker 1: went ahead and did it. Anyway, Well, he left the company.
Speaker 1: He's been away for fifteen years, and he's back now
Speaker 1: as a vice president and as the recording as of
Speaker 1: the recording of this podcast, we don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: he's doing, although the rumor mill, of course is flying
Speaker 1: that it has to be something to do with this
Speaker 1: mythical tablet. Well, he did, uh spend some time as
Speaker 1: the general manager for Nike tech Lab, which is uh,
Speaker 1: you know there there they do have a partnership, Uh
Speaker 1: Nike and Apple do um they make a system that
Speaker 1: allows you to collect personal information about your running and
Speaker 1: walking and uh basically you can collect that in your
Speaker 1: iPod and upload that to your computer and do all
Speaker 1: kinds of personal statistics. Wired actually did a great article
Speaker 1: about it, um about how tracking personal statistics is making
Speaker 1: people more interested in you know, well all kinds of
Speaker 1: things really, but you know, workouts. So you know, he's
Speaker 1: it's not like he was completely away from the Apple. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's not like you have to be completely immersed back
Speaker 1: in Apple culture so that he can become one of
Speaker 1: the devoted again. But well, I mean they you know,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing that's portable electronics right there,
Speaker 1: so it's not possibility. But you know, they also have
Speaker 1: these products called iPhones and iPod touches that he could
Speaker 1: also be a I'm sorry, Yeah, I know it's hard.
Speaker 1: They're they're really minor. Hardly anyone's heard of them. But no,
Speaker 1: the uh yes, So we can't really jump to conclusions
Speaker 1: here is what I'm saying. So bottom line, is the
Speaker 1: Apple tablet reality or a myth? We still can't answer
Speaker 1: that for sure. I think the tablet's coming. I really
Speaker 1: do think it is coming. I think they're working on
Speaker 1: making sure it's absolutely as good a product as it
Speaker 1: possibly can be before they go live with it, which
Speaker 1: may be the reason why it's taken so long for
Speaker 1: us to hear anything about it. They're just not ready. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sorry, I didn't mean. I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: a bit surprised if Steve Jobs was, at LEAs at
Speaker 1: first when he said they weren't going to do anything
Speaker 1: like this. I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't telling
Speaker 1: the truth. And there's so much feedback, so many people
Speaker 1: are interested in whether or not the company is going
Speaker 1: to do it that maybe they're going, you know, guys,
Speaker 1: we can we can make this happen. If there are
Speaker 1: this many people interested in it, we could sell these things.
Speaker 1: I just want to do it right. I wonder if
Speaker 1: that that I mean, because Apple has created markets before,
Speaker 1: as you were saying to me earlier, Yes, they have
Speaker 1: created markets before. They the iPhone, in in particular, is
Speaker 1: a market that they created in a way that no
Speaker 1: one else had managed to do. No one else had
Speaker 1: managed to make that in road into the consumer marketplace
Speaker 1: with smartphones the way Apple did, and they did. There
Speaker 1: are some great products that they beat out for that
Speaker 1: market too, and and they they even increased their market
Speaker 1: penetration when they opened it up to developers. Once they
Speaker 1: did that and they created the app store, forget it,
Speaker 1: they they sealed that deal. They became the consumer smartphone
Speaker 1: in the minds of a lot of people. I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody's still not beating out things like the BlackBerry, but
Speaker 1: in the minds of the average consumer, I would say
Speaker 1: the iPhone is right up there. When you talk about smartphones. Well, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the App store has spawned app stores for
Speaker 1: all kinds of other groups. BlackBerry and Palm and Nokia
Speaker 1: all have their own and uh, you know, the tablet
Speaker 1: could take on another device to not just not just
Speaker 1: the Microsoft tablets, It could take on the Kindle. That's true,
Speaker 1: it become it could become an e reader device. Now granted,
Speaker 1: the way to be a very sophisticated device something you
Speaker 1: can replace your iPod, your computer and a knee reader.
Speaker 1: But it wouldn't be eat ink. So it's not gonna
Speaker 1: so your battery, your battery life isn't gonna be the same. Uh.
Speaker 1: It also have a glossy screen because touch screens have
Speaker 1: to use that glass level the capacitance. Touch screens need
Speaker 1: the glass order for him to work. You can't just
Speaker 1: have like a non glossy kind of finished. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could put a finish on top of it. But
Speaker 1: even so, um, if you did that, then it would
Speaker 1: probably affect your experience in viewing other kinds of media.
Speaker 1: So it's not going to be the ideal device to
Speaker 1: read books on, but it could definitely compete in that space.
Speaker 1: You could start seeing books sold in the Apple Store. Well,
Speaker 1: since they already had the Kindle app for the iPod
Speaker 1: and iPhone, you know, yeah, you could just just extend
Speaker 1: it to the tablets. That's the thing is that will
Speaker 1: the tablet run the same sort of apps that you
Speaker 1: can get off the app store or would it be
Speaker 1: a totally different set of software. These are kinds of
Speaker 1: questions that would be very interesting to answer, it Apple,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I mean, we don't. I would love
Speaker 1: to ask things like is it gonna be is it
Speaker 1: gonna just use WiFi? Is it going to use some
Speaker 1: sort of cellular modem? If so, are you gonna have
Speaker 1: exclusive carrier like a T and T you know, three
Speaker 1: G networks transitioning now into four G. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of questions. So and unfortunately testing we have
Speaker 1: just as little information as everybody else out there, because
Speaker 1: Jobs has not returned my phone calls. It's ever since
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I really don't like turtlenecks. He
Speaker 1: just he's been yeah, I know, he's He's given me
Speaker 1: I won't mock turtlenecks. Oh my god, I can't believe
Speaker 1: we made that joke. Let's wrap this up. We've been
Speaker 1: rambling for far too long. So there, that's all the
Speaker 1: rumors that we've heard. Um, well, we'll have to keep
Speaker 1: an eye out to see if what what comes to pass.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm hoping that we actually do see
Speaker 1: a February launch, but time will tell. And so let's
Speaker 1: move on to our second batch of listener mail. This
Speaker 1: one comes from Catherine from Philly as an iPod Touch owner.
Speaker 1: I am still cranky over Mr jobs omitting of a
Speaker 1: camera from the revamped iPod Touch line gaming platform my
Speaker 1: great aunt Fannie. Come on, now, we all know that
Speaker 1: Apple just wants to give people a reason to buy
Speaker 1: the faltering Nano product line. For Chris us Okay, didn't
Speaker 1: get a still camera but video camera instead. But still,
Speaker 1: just wait next year. If the Touches sales dropped too much,
Speaker 1: then Presto camera. I'll just have to hang on to
Speaker 1: my first generation speaker with device until then. Sigh. Catherine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: buck up, I've got a first g Why do you
Speaker 1: have to hate on Apple so much? Catherine? I mean,
Speaker 1: why why do you have this anti Apple bias? Oh no,
Speaker 1: don't go there. It's just nice to have someone else
Speaker 1: to talk to about that instead of getting all the
Speaker 1: email myself. If you have any rants, questions, comments, criticisms,
Speaker 1: and anything like that, you can send your email to us.
Speaker 1: Our address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn about the Apple tablet, we
Speaker 1: don't have an article on that yet because it doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: but we've got plenty of other really cool stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Crispy and I will talk
Speaker 1: to you, possibly about something that's real next time. For
Speaker 1: moral on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com And be sure to check
Speaker 1: out the new tech stuff blog now on the House
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Speaker 1: thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you