September 21, 2009, 10:43 PM — Since I'm on the record as being unenthusiastic about the prospect of an Apple tablet, it irritates me that it's the most "exciting" bit of rumorage out there at the moment. The current scuttlebutt has Steve Jobs, reinvigorated after his liver transplant, hovering obsessively over the Oompa-Loompas down in the secret Apple Tablet Labs, demanding that the details be right before the thing is released in 2010, at which time it will cost $799 to $999, which the eagle-eyed will note is the price of Apple's low-end MacBook, which, we would like to note, is an actual computer that can do useful things (this very post was typed on one, in fact!) and not a big-screen keyboardless gizmo for watching movies in your chair because you're too lazy to walk over to the computer screen or whatever.
But! PC Magazine's Tim Bajaran says that Apple's competitors think that it's unstoppable, because Apple has done so well in creating a media ecosystem into which all of its various products fall seamlessly, and the Apple tablet will also so fall, therefore the Apple tablet will succeed. Fair enough, but I think that $800 is a steep price for something that does media stuff very well, Web browsing pretty well, and nothing else well at all, no matter how seamlessly it shares files from your iTunes library.
TechCrunch's MG Siegler had a nice post last week about the importance of enthusiasm for your products, enthusiasm that Apple more or less always has exhibited pretty sincerely. (As a companion piece, Jon Gruber digs up this hilarious video of Steve Jobs failing to hide his disgust with the Motorola Rokr phone). This explains why the same rumor-whisperers tell us that the Apple tablet has already been killed twice -- because engineering couldn't work up a product the company leadership (particularly Jobs) could get enthused about. Third time may be the charm early next year -- or maybe January will come and go tabletless, and we'll know that either it wasn't quite cool enough, of was entirely the product of our fevered imagination.
Follow Josh on Google+
