Apple tablet to be surprisingly cheap?

this is totally getting out of hand, "the future of computing" absolutely ridiculous, there seems to be one major thing thing that nobody seems to be picking up on...

E R G O N O M I C S ! ! !

think about it, when we work on a computer, we stare at a screen, an upright screen facing us, and the keyboard needs to be flat in order for it to be comfortable for our hands to type.

this tablet will not have this, if you type flat, in order to see the screen at the correct angle, you would have to totally bend over the machine staring down at the screen.

i think apple will bring out this product but it will not be marketed as a personal computer, theyve got laptops for that.
this will simply be a wifi device with all the iphone capabilities, flash memory, extremely light, extremely thin etc.. usual stuff. oh, and "one more thing.." im pretty sure steve jobs will have some other revolutionary feature, projected keyboard?

i think they will go full on into the magazine industry and completely revolutionise it. they are gonna make sooooo much money in this with subscriptions, netting themselves 30% of every sale like the app store.
its another genius concept.

i will buy one and i cant wait for it, the only thing that bothers me is the constant glare, ive got enough screens with my laptop, iphone and desktop mac!

Okay, just how many years has this rumor been going around and still been false? Why would it be more likely to come now? Seriously

Hope it's true. I bet my parents'd love something like this.

Just noting, 2010 is a Football World Cup year, not an Olympic year. Next Olympics will be in 2012.

Literally just finished watching this episode and then found this article. Gotta say I'm booing Alex for not sharing any more info, if he actually has it. How can he consider himself a true geek, nerd, etc. If he isn't going to share the awesome inside info he gets!

Also would just like to point out that Hodgeman came off as a bit of a douche at times during the episode IMO.

Everyone is forgetting that the tablet doesn't exist now and wont exist anytime soon.

The best price point would be $400-$600. By doing this, they edge in on the PC manufacturers making netbooks.

At that price point you can expect the same functionality as the iPhone - one app running at a time. I predict this product will be as interesting as the iPod Shuffle...

With a subsidized model it could be quite cheap. The question is where the subsidy comes from. I doubt it comes from wireless carriers because there simply isn't enough of a market for multiple cellular data plans. Let's assume most people interested in a tablet device already have home broadband and a smartphone. Can anyone really justify $150/month to access the Internet on a bunch of different devices? Very few in my opinion.

The other possibility is an iTunes subsidy. Probably in the form of an all-you-can-eat subscription model. With a 2 year contract it would be viable to get the price under $500. Figure the monthly service is in the $30-$50 price range but also includes publishers. That's about $2k for Apple per customer over 2 years. Do they make that today off iTunes? (doubt it) They would need to workout a more reasonable profit sharing model with the movie studios and record labels though unless Apple was willing to sell the tablet at cost or make only a meager profit in the short term. As the cost of producing the tablet goes down they will reap the benefits later.

well, you kind of ruined the surprise then, didn't you.