"MacTabletNetbookThingy" Musings
Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 9:30AM Props to Ken Ray of Mac OS Ken for coining the term "MacTabletNetbookThingy" - love it!
There's no point me spending ages creating a carefully crafted blog post about what might (or might not) be included in the fabled device. The only thing we can say is that it exists and will be awesome.
Sorry, that was the fanboy in me getting over excited!
Better men than I have written screeds on what to expect, but one particular blog post has nudged me into some speculation on two specific areas of the device and how it may work. The blog post has just been published by one of the MacRoundtable posse and that's David Sparks over at MacSparky. You can also find links to some other great articles in Davids post.
The two things that struck a chord with me in David's post were:
Microsoft Onenote - I've only used this briefly many moons ago, but it was the secret sauce when using a Tablet PC. One wonders if Apple will take the approach of creating a brand new new single application that has been built from the ground up to take advantage of the new features of the "MacTabletNetbookThingy". Perhaps a new application in iLife or possibly iWork.
The other option is that they make the existing iLIfe and iWork suites fully "MacTabletNetbookThingy" compatible.
My gut feel is that they will have taken the more difficult yet ultimately more "Apple like" approach and re-written all the applications provided with the "MacTabletNetbookThingy" to be fully compatible.
Second Monitor & Processor - OK, this one's personal! David suggests
"You could also run social networking apps, like Twitter, on the tablet while working on your Mac or even watch a screencast about software on the tablet while operating the software on the Mac."
I get a lot of feedback from people saying they like to follow my ScreenCastsOnline tutorials on screen whilst going through the motions on their Mac. The problem is that unless you have a pretty big display or an existing second monitor, it's pretty distracting to swap between the tutorial and the Mac desktop or App.
Running a ScreenCastsOnline tutorial on the "MacTabletNetbookThingy" would be perfect. To be honest, even though I already do an iPhone/iPod touch version of the show, the screen is just too small to view a screencast. OK it you're travelling and just want a quick peek, but it's very hard to follow and see clearly what's happening on screen.
However, a ScreenCastsOnline tutorial on a 10" screen in HD - wow!
I already produce ScreenCastsOnline shows in both 1280x720 and 960x540 and both should play perfectly on the "MacTabletNetbookThingy". The entire archive of over 230+ shows (OK 99% of them) are already in these resolutions.
The MacTabletNetbookThingy could be the best thing to happen to ScreenCastsOnline in a while!
Reader Comments (4)
Well Don, I regularly watch Screencastsonline on my iPhone while exercising on the upright bike at the gym. I find it easy enough to follow (though a few closer zoom in's would be nice ;) ;). It would be nice top replace the iPhone with the MacTabletNetbookSlatePadThingy so I could see things a little clearer, perhaps even read a book.
I doubt they will do a dedicated OneNote like app given the experience with the iPhone. I think they will leave that to their very capable dev community.
Would it get me in a lot of trouble to say that the TomTom iPhone car mount allows for perfect viewing of SCO shows when rotated sideways in traffic jams!
I used to listen to audio only and was sad to miss the visuals but now I have the lot. It's almost a shame when then traffic clears!
Thanks for all your hard work Don. (And because of you I'm now £550+ down but rocking a 256GB SSD in the MBPro and if anything I think you understated the fabulousness of the speed increase!)
Whatever it is called, the Apple tablet thingy announcement will be fun just to see how much if any of the speculation of the future next best thing is starting to come true. I think Macsparky provides some good use case examples that will be the true indicators of how successful the tablet might be. If it is popular it could be huge for more people to have multiscreen multimedia displays for screencasting. This is very exciting for education and prosumer enhancement of content. More information on how the tablet might fit in the Apple computing ecosystem and why PCWorld is wrong about its application in business on my blog .
http://glensharp.com/blog/
I can't wait to see SCO on the "iThingy". I have a little easel that I plan to put it on and place it next to my MacBook Pro. I'll be able to work along side your tutorials, so much easier to learn this way.