One of the reasons I'm waiting to buy a tablet is to see if Apple announces something at WWDC tomorrow. Rumors have been simmering for weeks, but as Mac users are well aware, the days leading up to MacWorld and WWDC are always interesting. This time is a little different, though, with major news sources reporting a move by Apple to Intel chips. Few sources, though, are commenting on the rumor that originally got my attention, that of sightings of an
Apple tablet.
Apple tablet rumors have been around for years, so there's naturally great skepticism. But again, the number of sources, and in particular, the confluence of events with the potential for a switch to Intel processors makes this intriguing.
There's a lot of analysis on the Web (e.g.
eWeek,
Macintouch and
MacRumors ), so I won't do much here. My guess is is that there must be something to Intel story, although whether it amounts to a wholesale migration is far less certain. I would note, though, that if any company could pull it off technically, it's Apple; they've done it before, after all. And more to the point, Mac OS X is abstracted enough from the hardware that it's really just a matter of a recompile to a different target (and since the principal compiler used on OS X is gcc, we know this isn't a big deal). The logistics of delivering two versions of an application during the transition phase, customer confusion and other issues would be far greater than the technical challenges, but Apple's loyal customer base and burgeoning music business would mitigate that to some extent.
As far as the tablet rumor, it there is such an announcement, I suspect the device is more along the lines of the recently announced Nokia web tablet, and not a full-blown Mac OS X computer. I think this would essentially be the long-rumored video iPod, but probably more. Using Intel processors just for this product would make sense, given the better options for mobile processors Intel has. And, while some super-slim version of Mac OS X might drive such a device (so that Quicktime could be used on it, for example), there wouldn't be an intention for the major desktop applications to be ported. Apple could cleanly differentiate its "Pro" products for creative development, where the PowerPC shines, from this consumer-oriented entertainment device. Developers could build software for both using essentially the same APIs and cross compile, if they wanted to create an app on both platforms, but they wouldn't be
forced to move. I think this scenario makes much more sense.
So, would I buy one? Well, if it meets the basic requirements -- document reading, wireless web browsing, and notetaking -- I'd be very interested. And if they do make the big jump, I'll want to make sure whatever tablet I buy in the next few months has the specs to potentially run a future x86 Mac OS X. Guess we'll know tomorrow...