Robert Cringely is writing about the Tablet PC, and thinks Apple may be ready to enter, as soon as January, a market that Steve Jobs has scoffed at for some time. "'Real computers have keyboards,' Steve has said a zillion times," writes Cringely. "He'll mean it right up to the moment he changes his mind... That moment appears to be coming soon."
Cringely's vision is an entertaining one. But we can certainly expect speculation about this January's announcements to be even worse than normal. Apple always launches something in January - Jobs has to have something to uncover at the MacExpo in the second week of the month - and this time around, it's hard to see what he could be about to do. All of Apple's existing lines have been refreshed recently - speed bumps for the G5, PowerBooks and iBooks, and a new 20-inch iMac.
Cringely's getting his speculation in early. A tablet makes sense, for the reasons he outlines, although it's another product line for Apple at a time when it's pushing hard with music. My money is on something a little more modest - the video iPod we were all speculating about last December. But - like all speculation - this is based on nothing more than shrapnel-sized bits of information, many big assumptions, and my own gadget wishlist.
