Steve Jobs is playing for keeps as is evident by the moves he has made with the inception of the iPod and the iPhone. Love him or hate him, Apple has fought back from the brink with hit after hit and it looks like they’re here for the long haul. But that’s not what’s on everybody’s tongue right now. Enter stage left: iSlab, or iSlate or iThingy. Whatever you want to call it, it seems destined to be the next best thing since toilet tissue.

Just the mere rumor of its existence has sent shivers down the spines of large companies and has News Papers and Magazines clamoring for a Digi-Saviour. Can Apple do to the print industry what it did for the music industry? Honestly, our money is on Jobs. He’s a mad genius when it comes to this sort of thing, and the buzz alone is guaranteed to bring some high-rollers to the table. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Harper-Collins, and Condé Nast are already in talks over the rumored Tablet, and we are pretty sure there will be more. If you’re a non-believer, that’s fine. Consider yourself in good company, but the rumored specs paint a very pleasant picture.

Imagine a kindle – but in color and a larger 10 -11” screen, not to mention ten times sexier. Total access to your library of music anywhere you go and the ability to buy more in a web-based version of i-Tunes that downloads songs over wifi – or better yet, a 3G cellphone network like Verizon’s. It may also have a “Best of TV” service offering a subscription to your favorite Television shows. The inclusion of games is a no brainer, and a faster processor and larger hard disk space can only help matters. Now the clincher – the tablet will reportedly have facial recognition software that will recognize users and perhaps perform tasks meant for specific persons using a front facing camera. Maybe it will be like the chair settings in your car where you just hit the 3rd button and it automatically adjusts the seat because you’re too tall for your wife’s settings and she insists on driving your car even though you bought her a car for Christmas, but she likes the feel of your car better. Or maybe that’s just us.

The price range should be inside of $1,000, and could possibly be subsidized if it debuts with a cell phone carrier. If anyone out there needs someone to test this bad boy out, count us in.

Source:WSJ

UPDATE:

ok, so alot of the above information turned out to be wrong…or atleast a bit premature. This doesn’t mean all the information is garbage though. For starters, the camera may still be in the works. Soooooo glad we were wrong about the price. In approximately 60 days, you can pick one up for as low as 499.99 (16GB)with the 3G unlocked version coming in at a cool 629 (16GB).

Now there has been a lot of chatter, mostly by Geeks with super-powered devices, saying that the iPad doesn’t live up to the hype. I’ll have to agree to a point. But c’mon, what device does? Just because you thought the iPad was going to levitate, pay bills, make your bed, etc… and (surprise!) it doesn’t you wanna get all salty? Look, for 500 bucks your getting a premier device that works super well, and does everything it needs to. The iWork suite looks fantastic, browsing magazines and online content looks like an absolute pleasure to do, and gaming is pretty nice. It is the first and last device I want with me on any trip. Now I don’t own anything Mac branded and even I can tell that this is a great device. Jobs and his boys just aren’t catering to those of us who happen to know what the device should be able to do such as multi-tasking and voice calling with video telephony over wifi etc.

Now to a few more details about the device…

The device is 9.7 inches diagonally, and .5 inches thin. It’s a bit heavy (depending on what your comparing it to) at 1.5 lbs. Battery life is supposed to be 10 hrs of moderate use, and almost a month at standby, though something tells me that if your online playing games, you are gonna need to plug that sucker in a lot sooner. Now I have to give kudos to Apple for making their own performance chip. I really like the way they take a really hands on approach to their product. It really seems like they care about what they put out there.

You have access to three main stores now..iTunes of course, App store, and now the iBook Store. The Screen is multi-touch capacitive and is LED backlit. Take a look at the video below:


source:Apple