Scoble: “iPhone took sexyness away from the Tablet PC”

Robert Scoble attended a blogger talk at IFA fair in Berlin yesterday (leading consumer electronicx fair) and I talked with him for some mintes after the panel. From the conversation:

Do you expect a Mac Tablet (or iTablet or whatever) later this year? There have been these patent filing news

“Yeah, there are rumors again and again, they have the technology, they have multi touch but it is not easy to bring ink to each application.” When saying that he didn’t look like “Hey I’m not gonna tell you that I have seen something but cannot tell anyone.”

Why isn’t Tablet yet mainstream?

“It’s the developers, they do all their stuff with the keyboard, many of them even don’t touch the mouse at all, they don’t think ink, even at Microsoft. And with the iPhone Apple took away a lot of the sexyness of the Tablet PC – multi touch and so on.”

The rest of the conversation wasn’t Tablet related.

Here a picture from the panel:

Scoble in Berlin at IFA blogger discussion

Apple: Another step towards a Tablet Book

Technorati-Tags: Apple,Tablet PC,Tablet Mac,Axiotron,Modbook,Parallels,Fusion

When will we see a MacTablet? Apart of decent hardware you need ink enabled OS and applications, decent handwriting recognition and a killer app.

MacGadget links to an Apple job description in which Cupertino searches for a “Handwriting Recognition Engineer” who shall be “responsible for advancing Apple’s handwriting recognition technology for Mac OS X”.

The technology “may extend beyond Mac OS X to other applications and the iPhone”.

Some months ago it was reported that Asus is helping Apple to create a Mac Tablet. I blogged about that here but have not heard any news since then.

The news would be really exciting if Apple is seeking for more than just one new engineer for their Handwriting Recognition team. With the iPhone you have OS X and a touch screen. Adding a pen it would be easy e.g. to save short notes or new contacts hand written, convert them to text and synch with your Mac. But that alone wouldn’t enable all the great things you can do with a Tablet PC. Nevertheless this is another step in the right direction :)

[Update 04.01.2008, 00:59]

I should have mentioned that Axiotron has already modded a MacBook into a TabletMac called Axiotron Modbook. Price is high but OK price, esp. regarding the current Euro/Dollar relation (around 1800 Euro including 2.4 GHz CPU, 250 HD and 4 GB RAM). In a forum thread several users report that they can use ink under Parallels (or Fusion) in virtualized Windows XP and Vista after installing the Wacom driver and of course under Boot Camp Windows. Downside: Weight of 2.5 kg (5.5 pounds). No European resellers yet, but the US shop ships worldwide.