iTablet: Ramblings of a madman revisited
“remember my Mac Nano leak? Well, this patent shows that Apple HAS been researching docking technology -slash – turn a portable or tablet into a desktop methods. Maybe now I’ll get the respect I so richly deserve!”
Such are the words of faithful Macenstein reader Doug who is referring to his November 30th e-mail to us in which he outlined Apple’s future plans to bring about a dockable, portable device. We cleverly titled the article “The Macworld iTablet: Ramblings of a Madman, or does he know something…?“. At the time we assumed Doug was just outlining a vision of the future based solely on conjecture (and we’re still 87% sure he was) but a recent Apple patent for an iTablet-like docking station does provide a much-missing dose of feasibility to Doug’s claims.
Patent Application #20080002350
A docking station is disclosed. The docking station includes a display and a housing configured to hold the display in a manner that exposes a viewing surface of the display to view. The housing defines a docking area configured to receive a portable computer; The docking area is at least partly obscured by the display when viewed from the viewing surface side of the display at an angle substantially orthogonal to the viewing surface.
Doug’s original post is long (and by long, I mean some of us here are STILL reading it, a month later). But I encourage you to check it out in light of these recent patent images, and let us know your thoughts.
Personally, I hope this never happens. It seems far too complicated for the average user, and too much could/would go wrong. If it ended up being anything like this popular mechanics video, Steve is going to have to work pretty damn hard to convince us we need it.
Unless of course, the thing actually hovers by itself, like in the video, in which case that would be pretty damn cool.
I owned 3 Duos (remember those? Apple only sold 44K). These were my favorite laptops of all time. These tiny computers were awesome. The mechanism to slide into the base station was solid and reliable. Only thing ithe Duo needed was a CPU chip in the base to offer reduced performance when the laptop was removed and better performance when a second processor was inserted by sliding in the laptop. With all the work on multiprocessors, perhaps Apple has revived a great idea at just the right time?