Tablet Mac in ’07?
Well, first up let’s look at the technical feasibility. The device would have to run Mac OS X or it’s not a Tablet Mac. Not that I’d complain if they resurrected the Newton, but that isn’t what we’re talking about. The device would have to share as much hardware as possible with the rest of the line. The current iMacs, minis, MacBooks, and MacBook Pros are all built on the same basic platform. The only outliers are the Xserve and the Mac Pro and they share their own base platform. Hardware consistency reduces costs. And finally, the device would not have a trackpad or keyboard built-in, opting instead for a touch-screen and a stylus. (For the purposes of this post, I will assume they won’t produce an eMate-style hybrid device.)
Over a decade ago, Apple developed a tablet Mac based on the PowerBook Duo platform. It was called the PenLite, and looked like a PowerBook Duo with the screen on the outside of the lid and the lid glued shut. That technique is so effective that people have modified iBooks into tablets using it. I’m sure that the Apple design team would refine the case so that it was seamless and more iPod-like, but this is a good place to start. The most likely candidate for this conversion is the MacBook, a tablet is not a professional workstation, so the MacBook Pros would be overkill.
Step One: remove MacBook screen, keyboard and trackpad. Replace with a touch-screen the same size as the MacBook screen.
Does a tablet need an optical drive, or external hard drives? Heck does it need an Ethernet port? I don’t think so. Tablets are good input devices — especially in vertical markets such as medicine, and for note taking. That functionality is lost if you’re tethered to a hard disk or you can’t shake it lest you scratch a DVD. The same goes for the Ethernet port: you don’t want to be tethered to the wall, and we have wifi to keep us connected. So let’s lose the non-essentials to reduce weight and cost. As an added bonus, remember that USB is built into the southbridge, but FireWire is an extra chip.
Step Two: remove Optical Drive, FireWire and Ethernet port.
Now, what about the other ports? I think the audio ports are useful enough to keep. And the same for USB, but we can reduce to one USB port if we want. Which leaves the mini-DVI port. Is the tablet going to be positioned as the ‘ultra-portable sub-notebook’? If it is, then we need the port for presentations, if it isn’t, then we can lose it. Still, the video is built into the chipset so we can always add it back later.
Step Three: remove 1 USB port and (maybe) the mini-DVI port.
And now, the internals. The motherboard is about the same size, but there’s a lot of space opened up by eliminating the optical drive. Is there more space that can be freed? Yes, that 2.5″ SATA hard drive is huge compared to the 1.8″ microdrives used in the iPod. Read/write speed will be slower, but this is a tablet not a file server.
Step Four: replace the hard drive with a 30GB-80GB microdrive.
To fill this massive void, well, we have to start by creating a little pocket to hold the stylus.
Step Five: add an internal stylus holder.
But, styli are small so the void is still pretty gaping. The device needs to be fairly cool when running, and if it has a slower Core 2 Duo and a bigger heatsink, it should run significantly cooler than the current MacBooks.
Step 6: Increase heatsink size, optimize cooling.
Of course, a bigger heatsink won’t need the whole of the space, and battery life is a good thing.
Step 7: Increase the size of the battery to take up the remaining space.
Which leaves:
- 13″ 1280×800 touchscreen
- 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo
- Up to 2GB RAM
- 30GB to 80GB hard drive
- 1 USB port
- 1 combo headphone/optical audio out port
- 1 combo line in/optical audio in port
- 1 MagSafe power connector
- longer battery life than the MacBook
- runs cooler than the MacBook
Software-wise, no real changes are necessary. You can click and drag with a stylus, and InkWell handwriting recognition is already built into OS.
So, can Apple do it? Yes. Assuming the removed hardware cancels out the cost of the touchscreen and it could even hit a US$999 price point. Is Apple going to do it? Hell no! Steve Jobs axed the Newton platform — or as he called it: “the little scribble toy”. Microsoft has been pushing the tablet concept hard, but they still haven’t found a big market for it. Which means that the tablet is something the head of the company thinks is a bad idea, and there’s no proven market for it. It ain’t gonna happen.
I’m still hoping the ‘One More Thing…’ is a Newton, though.
