January 12, 2009, 8:55 PM — Isn't that always the way? Mere hours after I put up post on the future of the Macworld Expo, blockbuster rumors come down that Apple may just be ditching its own personal dog and pony show for CES, which happens more or less at the same time. If, as one faithful commentor posited, Apple's talk of problematic product cycles was the equivalent of breaking up with someone by saying "it's not you, it's me," then a move to CES would be the equivalent of immediately following the break-up by going out with your ex's best friend. These initial reports have been met by some skepticism -- John Gruber goes so far as to claim that they were planted by people at CES, to try to woo away Macworld exhibitors, which fits in with reports that Apple-related vendors will be offered their own area on the floor in next year's show.
And speaking of things that I don't necessarily believe ... I didn't talk about it before the expo because the rumors all put it on a post-expo timeframe, but the Apple tablet is back in the rumorsphere. The Apple tablet is, now that Intel chips really live in Macs, the longest-running unfulfilled Apple rumor that I can think of. The current version of the rumor casts the devices as a large-screen version of the iPod touch, and fits it into the netbook market that everyone but Apple seems to think that Apple simply must enter. The problem with the idea of an Apple tablet is that tablet computing has completely failed to show any juice in the market whatsoever (spare me, you four tablet aficionados who love them). True netbooks have real, if small-ish, keyboards, because people use them for basic word processing and long-ish email-writing; I dearly love my iPhone, but if I had to use its keyboard to do anything more than write three or four sentences in a sitting, I'd have to slit my wrists. Even a larger form-factor keyboard will still involve typing on a glass surface with no tactile feedback, which nobody will enjoy doing for any length of time. Conversely, I don't really see the point of a device that you don't plan to do much typing on being much larger than the current iPhone/iPod Touch form factor. Nope, the Apple netbook, if it ever happens, will have a real keyboard, and any tablet gizmos will stay safely in the lab.
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