Apple Tablet

From time to time, rumors surface about a tablet offering from Apple. I have to say that a lot of the Apple folks just don't get it. In their mind, a tablet pc is just a regular pc with pen input capabilities, comparatively nothing more than just Mac OS X with Inkwell.

How wrong they are. The pen input capabilities are only part of the story. Here's a simple example. My primary role is as a software designer and developer. I use my tablet as a kind of "scratch-pad", half full of notes, and half full of design diagrams. Because of that, I tend to not convert my hand-writting (what could probably more accurately be refered to as my "scrawling" hehe) and leave everything as a drawing. But the sweet part is that the tablet doesn't care. When I search for a word of phrase, it automatically searches through everything; the notes, the diagrams, the diagram labels; everything. How sweet is that.

Of course, because Microsoft is Microsoft, the Tablet PC software is integrated together. I'm in a meeting, I write something in OneNote, select it, right-click, and make it an action item in Outloook, and it's synced with Exchange.

Now, that's not to say an Apple Tablet wouldn't be capable of doing these things. I'm just saying that most of the comments I've seen from Apple people don't seem to realize the level of integration that the pen has with the Tablet PC.

That's also not to say that the Tablet PC software is perfect. Oh how I long for a OneNote style application based on tagging. That would be utter perfection! In fact, I might just have to write one...