OWC and Axiotron announce the ModBook, a Mac-based tablet computer

Dude "licensing issues with OSX" What are you talking about? It's a MacBook with the Keyboard and screen removed. A Wacom Touch screen in it's place...Performance? It's a MacBook from Apple Inc. Nothing is changed from a Macbook's Performance from doing this, except the cool looks you're going to get with this thing in Public. Apple can't say a thing about it, Period! This is no different then having the MacBook Painted. It's voids the Warranty from Apple, but the Painter offers the same as Apple does. I remember someone taking old iMac Motherboards and building a Mac around that, and trying to resell it as a Mac Clone - Now this is something that Apple Shutdown right away. This MODBook again is doing nothing but flipping the screen around and giving it a Pen Input. I hope Apple never comes out with something like this, this is reserved for a nitch market share. It will be a Blast with the WiFi walking around on a Site or a Customer doing IT Stuff - I can't wait to get one. I placed my Pre-Order Minutes after the Release. I got a real high Reservation Number too, so either this is a random Number or this is going to be a Real Hot Item.

The full write-up is available on OWC 's website. Definitely a heavy mod. New display panel, 3rd party GPS, tilted iSight... only the most essential MAC guts are included, more for licensing issues with OSX I assume. Not as pricey as I would have guessed, but very ugly. Hopefully there will be a review on it's performance soon-

@ Enrique - that doesn't mean anything really. MBP Core 2 Duos have been on the refurb page on and off for a while. I've even bought several of them for clients. The refurb stock is updated and changes daily. A good site to track for changes in the Apple refurb section is http://wslrss.com/ , which I believe we've blogged about before.

THE APPLE STORE'S WEBSITE HAS MACBOOK PRO CORE 2 DUO'S ON THEIR REFURBISHED PRODUCTS PAGE!!! They weren' there yesterday - To me, this means that something new is coming to the MacBook Pro line!

Sincerely,
An architect major.

--

I can't believe i'm doing this: "an ARCHITECTURE major"... dude...

--

Maybe he studies architects? ;-p

Sincerely,
An architect major.


--

I can't believe i'm doing this: "an ARCHITECTURE major"... dude.. I just burned you on your life purpose... um..

how old are you?

@ zoffdino

Here's your 3rd alternative: You pull the keyboard and surrounding casing off, pull the LCD's casing off, flip the LCD over, wire in a touch panel on top of the LCD (either giving up or hubing an existing USB port), then attach a new bezel that snugs up to the existing bottom casing.

Bam! Mac Tablet.

Damn. I should have done that.

"Engineered by designers, eh? If that's really the case then we can expect this ModBook to be a piece of art that doesn't work worth a damn. And if it was designed by engineers then we can expect an ugly piece of junk that doesn't work worth a damn.

Sincerely,
An architect major."

Amusing comments from a putative architect but sadly probably quite true (not necessarily of this product, but as a general statement). However, I now fully expect you buildings to be masterpieces and also meet the most stringent LEED standards.

@ Super Weiss - it means i have business unrelated to TUAW (and unrelated to this particular product) with OWC on a somewhat regular basis.

Ok, let's have a quick estimate of how they did this: first you need to buy a MacBook from Apple, remove the screen, add your touch sensitive screen in and put everything back in place. This does not make a lot of sense given that the screen on the MacBook cannot be folded backward (nor the design of the computer allows that).

So here's our second alternative: build a tablet the size of the MacBook and run OS X on that. But has Apple licensed their OS X to any third party just yet. Uncle Steve may announce that "next big thing" next week, which sould be a good thing. But then again, would you want a cheapo Dell to run Mac OS X and be the plunger of blame for anything that happens?

Why they chose to reveal it during the same time as the keynote on Jan 9 is also interesting. Perhaps they will make an on-stage appearance with Steve Jobs?

This gotta be the best MacWorld ever. Just 5 more sleepless nights....