Apple will debut its "latest creation" in San
Francisco on Jan. 27, according to an official invite
sent to media and analysts, who widely expect the device in question to be a
tablet PC.
In typical Apple fashion, the invitation itself is short on details and
big on style, featuring an Apple logo against a background of messy multicolored
paint splotches. "Come see our latest creation," the invite asks.
Despite no official confirmations by Apple, months of fevered rumor and
speculation have focused on the idea that the company is developing a
multitouch tablet PC. Fueling that scuttlebutt throughout 2009 have been
analyst reports detailing the device’s hypothetical features, including
Oppenheimer & Co. financial analyst Yair Reiner’s Dec. 8 prediction of a
10.1-inch touch screen and a deal with publishing houses to distribute content;
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has also issued a number of reports
suggesting that the device’s operating system could be based on the iPhone OS,
with apps designed for a larger screen, or else a modified version of the Mac OS
X.
In a December research note, Munster estimated a 50 percent chance that a
tablet PC would make an appearance at the Jan. 27 Apple event.
That occasion will almost certainly be hosted by Apple
CEO Steve Jobs, who has also done his part to
tamp down any rumors. After an Aug. 24 report in The Wall Street Journal
suggested that Jobs was devoting a substantial chunk of his time working on the
development of a tablet PC, the CEO himself
emailed the newspaper that "most of your information is incorrect."
With Apple managing to keep its internal leakage at a minimum, the
blogosphere has leapt on any other paltry scraps of information emanating from
third parties. In October 2009, attention focused on New York Times executive
editor Bill Keller, who in a closed-door talk alluded to an "impending Apple
slate." The question remains
whether Keller was referring to "Slate," proper noun, or "slate" as in "upcoming
slate of products." Other reports at the time suggested that Apple had begun
talks with publishing companies over porting their content onto a
device.
Apple-centric blogs have suggested in the past few weeks that Apple may
have possibly acquired the domain name islate.com. MacRumors drilled down into
the domain name registrant history for that site and found that, in late 2007,
Apple Inc. was indeed the Registrant of record for the site. TechCruch also
suggested that the name "iSlate" had been registered three years ago as a
trademark, possibly by an Apple dummy corporation. Whether these discoveries
foretell Apple’s still-vaporware device being named "iSlate" will remain
conjecture, however, until Jan. 27.
Ahead of the event, various sites are also reporting that publishers
could have locked down deals with Apple. A report that The New York Times is
close to charging for access to its Website has been interpreted by some that
the company has indeed signed a content partnership agreement with Apple,
although no official statements from the newspaper seem to support this theory.
"We'll announce a decision when we believe that we have crafted the best
possible business approach," a Times spokesperson told Reuters. "No details until then."
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal has reported that
HarperCollins Publishers are also
negotiating with Apple to make e-books available over a tablet, quoting unnamed
sources close to the supposed negotiations. HaperCollins
CEO Brian Murray has previously alluded to
multimedia-enhanced e-books as a way for publishers to squeeze out higher
margins in the e-reader business, which is currently focused on producing
text-heavy e-volumes for grayscale devices such as Amazon.com’s Kindle.
If such deals prove real, they will likely be announced at the Apple
event along with the "latest creation."
Apple News & Reviews 
