[読んだ] Apple Wants To Build A PayPal Killer, Say Wall Street Gossips (AAPL, EBAY)

Wall Street gossips tell us that Apple (AAPL) executives have dropped hints suggesting the company is considering creating a service that would allow iTunes Store account holders to use those accounts to make purchases on participating third-party sites across the Internet.

あくまでゴシップ。

[読んだ] Rumor: Alleged Apple tablet to be game console

If you spend any time on the Internet at all (hi!), you've no doubt heard the rumors of an upcoming tablet device from Apple -- supposedly, the company plans to enter the netbook market not with a tiny computer, but with a giant iPhone. And according to a nameless analyst who claims to have seen the device, as reported by Barron's, this new thing will play games.

個人的にはApple tabletはゲームや映画鑑賞のエンタメ系に特化して欲しくないなぁ、と何となく思ってます。
せっかくの優れたデバイスなんだから、使う側も生産的な利用ができる方がいい気がするんですよね。

[読んだ] Apple Tablet Prototype is Real, Nov. Launch Expected, says Report - PC World

Apple Tablet Prototype is Real, Nov. Launch Expected, says Report

Mr. Analyst says Apple is going to have a final design ready in the next six weeks, and the device would then be announced in September for a November launch. The Apple tablet may also break your bank, costing you a whopping $699 to $799. But for those big bucks you'd get a device that would be able to, among other things, play high-definition video. While other features might be nice, it sounds like the Apple tablet's video capability is the feature to beat. The anonymous source says the device's video quality "is better than the average movie experience."

9月に発表で11月に発売。値段は8万円前後。
まだ噂段階ですがここら辺が濃厚な線みたいですね。

[読んだ] Why Apple’s Tablet Will Rock | Cult of Mac

tablet

The tablet has Apple’s modus operandi all over it. Just as the iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone, the tablet won’t be the first tablet. But it will be the first tablet that makes sense for the mass market.

What Apple is doing is rethinking the computer for the home. Netbooks, laptops and desktops are machines that were designed for work. Made to sit on desks, they are computers from the productivity era, designed for offices.

With the tablet, Apple will define a new category of home computers that are made for play, not work. The tasks that home users want to perform are already pretty well defined – videoconferencing, watching movies, listening to music.

Apple is making a computer that makes those tasks easy, natural and well, magical.

Apple tabletがどういうコンセプトにあるのか。
そしてそれはどういう形で具体化されているのか。
まるで見てきたように詳しく書いてある記事ですな。

[読んだ] MacTablet Could Run Both Mac OS X and iPhone OS

possible MacTablet design
The MacTablet should be able to run iPhone OS 3.x. At startup, the user could choose Mac OS X or the iPhone OS. And using virtualization technology, there's no reason it couldn't run the iPhone OS concurrently with Mac OS X, much as virtualizers allow running Linux or Windows on today's Macs (or include an iPhone emulator). The power is there.

かなり突っ込んだ予測ですね。
しかも、従来のMacBookとiPod touchの中間的な位置づけではなく、MacBook AirとiPhoneの間の位置づけで見てるのが興味深いところです。

[読んだ] An Apple tablet could pit iTunes against Amazon - CNN.com [iTunes Storeで電子書籍を販売?]

This illustration imagines what an Apple tablet device might look like.

Judging from the company's past moves, we're betting that Apple's tablet will be a media-centric device, focused -- at least in part -- on shaking up the publishing industry.

Apple is already prepared to blow Amazon and other e-book makers out of the water with one key weapon: iTunes. Having served more than 6 billion songs to date, the iTunes Store has flipped the music industry on its head.

It also turned mobile software into a lucrative industry, as proven by the booming success of the iPhone's App Store, which recently surpassed 1.5 billion downloads. Apple has yet to enter the e-book market, and making books as easy to download as music and iPhone apps is the logical next step.

What can Apple do better with e-books? For textbooks or anthologies, Apple can give iTunes users the ability to download individual chapters, priced between a few cents to a few bucks each.

It would be similar to how you can currently download individual song tracks from an album. It might even have the same earthshaking potential to transform an entire industry by refocusing it on the content people actually want instead of the bundles that publishers want them to buy. (Of course, Apple would likely offer the à-la-carte purchase model in addition to the option to purchase the entire book as one download -- a more attractive option for shorter works such as novels.)

もしApple tabletの発売と同時にiTunes Storeで電子書籍を売り出したら……。
これは出版業界に大きな衝撃を与えますね。

[読んだ] Report: Apple’s Tablet Just Weeks Away | Cult of Mac

apple_tablet_mockup

Apple will release its fabled touchscreen tablet as early as September, the Taiwanese paper Apple Daily claims. If true, the announcement is likely just weeks away. Apple will have to put the device on store shelves by the fall in time for the crucial holiday shopping season.

Financial Timesの記事がきっかけで、来年初めから今年9月に時期が早まったApple tablet。
はてさてどうなんでしょうねぇ。