Latest Apple Tablet Rumors Are a Bit Disappointing

Oh Apple, we had such faith that you were going to pull something amazing out of all this hullabaloo about the Apple Tablet. Now with the latest detailed rumors, we’re starting to lose hope.

The most recent rumors got extremely specific about the announcement date (hooray!) and what we can expect inside the Apple Tablet (boo!).

Let’s start with the good stuff, namely the part where we find out that the Apple Tablet is pretty close to becoming official. If the rumors are true, January 19, 2010 is the big day for the Apple Tablet. Of course, that’s just when it will be announced; the actual release date is still a little fuzzy, somewhere in the neighborhood of May or June. That makes sense too because it follows Apple’s traditional timeline for hype.

Now let’s address the less desirable part of the tale. According to iLounge, the Apple Tablet, or iPad, will indeed be running the iPhone OS and come in two versions: one with 3G and one without. Seriously? Would anyone actually want a tablet without 3G? And why can’t we have anything a little more robust than the iPhone OS? I realize there are literally apps for everything, but it’s getting old to wait for developers to create an app that works around the iPhone’s inherent shortcomings.

But it appears that this is the best we can hope for. The Apple Tablet is designed to be an overgrown iPod Touch that will handle all your media but with a much larger screen. So what’s the reasoning behind giving it a large screen (10.7 inches, according to iLounge)? Apparently the tablet is designed to handle books, magazines and newspapers. The 10+ inch screen will have a high resolution to handle all the visuals (close to 720p resolution). Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure magazines will look just fine on the tablet, and I’ll bet quite a few apps (especially games) will benefit from the bigger screen, but it’s a little disappointing that the hallowed Apple Tablet will be more of a glorified PMP/ebook reader than the tablet computer/netbook competitor we’ve all been expecting.

Oh, and if you are indeed excited for the Apple ebook reader, then brace yourself because there’s still a chance Steve Jobs will kill the entire project. It has happened before and the tablet kept coming back, but you never know…

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