The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Steve Jobs is diving into the Tablet project himself. Still recovering from his stealth liver transplant, he’s supposedly knocking things around and causing the usual stress for Apple employees.
Of course, Apple and Steve-o are both denying doing anything other than them sitting around watching their stock price go up.
Just the rumor (and from the WSJ no less) is enough to tell you this project is solid again. Though, keep in mind it’s failed to go anywhere in the past.
As the article mentions (and I’m sure some of you Macheads know), they’ve looked at doing a better Newton for some time. Previously, they ran into brick walls: “the first time because the battery life was too short, and the second time because there was insufficient memory”.
Nowadays, though, outside of battery life issues, the cost of flash memory and other components are low enough that the day of the tablet seems to be nigh. Price estimates still fit into the $399-999 range and are likely to be relatively competitive to netbooks since that’s the real competition for this product.
Of course, you need to add in Apple’s profit dividend into the price. I think $599 and $799 seems like the right prices, differentiated by memory/disk space. Wouldn’t it be cool though if they could have another price point to fit 10″ and 14″ tablet size. Mmmm…tablets…
Time will tell. I think a September announcement would be too early. I think an announcement timed with Macworld 2010 (with something suitably 2010-themed) and availability timed with the 2010-2011 school year to be the best bet right now.
Stay tuned!