Popular Mechanics new Mac vision...

PM video

Um.. all I have to say here is FAIL.

I'm not sure what turns me off the most, but oddly enough the touch pad being above the keyboard is probably up there. I mean, what the heck?

Odd little docking station.

What do you guys think?

 

Yeah I hope it's nothing close to that or it would be a flop. Too complicated for apple who tends to stick to the simplistic side. Give me a regular ultraportable please.

 

Yeah I agree. As far as tablet goes, thats really out there. If Apple made a slate tablet, I'd like to see a thin (think the new keyboards) that attack to the face of the tablet. Even a convertable tablet would be slick, but this thing is just... Blegh.

I also hope for an ultra portable. With the ability to attach an extra battery!

 

give it to the designer, its VERY origional. but i still dont see it hapening. its like a smaller version of the dell M2010. I agree with hollownail, just do a normal convertable tablet and thats all they need. and aslong as apple did release a docking station (i really want one), then the tablets could really take off.

 

Man... I think docking stations are something Apple really needs to work on. I also wish they would add in the ability to remove the optical drive and put in a battery instead. As well as making the freaking hard drive easily accessible.

yeah, it is original, I'll give them that. And I was impressed by the amount of work that they put into the video.

 

If they came out with a convertible tablet I would be the first in line to get one! I hated using my macbook during class.

 

lol yeah. I HATED typing notes in class. But really... I can't say most people who had laptops in my lectures used them to take notes. half would be playing WoW

But you really do need a tablet to take good notes. And on that side note, there still is no software that Apple has that competes with OneNote or whatever MS note taking software is.

 

I really hope Apple comes up with a tablet.I REALLY do.Now I am having to take notes on my Thinkpad X61 tablet which is very durable and the active digitizer is great.BUT in my opinion vista is nothing compared to mac os x.A thought of mac os x in an Apple tablet with active digitizer.....ohh makes me drool.

 

Oh yeah I'm right there with you nahiyan. I just doubt it would be very affordable. And it's a very hard niche to fill, one that doesn't seem to see a lot of sales.
To really hit that niche, you would have to have something thin, lightweight (3.5 lbs at most) and with good battery life. I've used the Gateway tablets, and they are just way too heavy and big. It's a very hard role to fill with just one tablet. On one hand, you want legal types to use them (or others who do lot of paper work on the road) and a graphical artist type who would want a bigger screen or something.

I just can't help but thing it would have to be no thicker than the MBP and yet, smaller... around the MB size.

 

Please Please Please Please Please Please Please make a tablet notebook, Apple. Hell I'd settle for a tablet monitor.

 

You know that Wacom makes a tablet monitor right?

Expensive... but pretty awesome :-D

 

Yeah I know, but Apple stuff matches! lol.

 

lol yeah. Could always mod it and put a white or aluminum shell on it :-D

 

I hope the docking station that Apple is working doesn't only work for the tablet/ultraportable that Apple is supposedly releasing. To me, if it only works for that new laptop they're cutting off a large part of the market. Somehow, it's need to be able to accommodate all of Apple's laptops (at least this generation, not the powerbooks too old).

 

I have to say I have never waited for any event or let's say any gadget like I am doing for Macworld 2008.A 12.1 inch tablet with active digitizer,as slim or slimmer than MBP,aluminium finish,battery life like the MacBook's........ohhhhh.....wish it came true.

 

I agree SamsungFTW!

 

A docking station won't work for any current MB/MBP. There is no way to do that, there is no dock port on the laptops. To actually make a real dock, it needs a dedicated port.
Which sucks... but at least a port replicated would be a start. However, I wouldn't pay for a replicator, I'd want a full blown dock.

I'm just thinking that Apple, to my knowledge, has never done a dock. And I don't see that changing. Their little dock patent they have probably won't ever happen (silly idea to build the monitor into it).

but to make me pay as much as what the ultra portable would cost... it better have a hot swappable extra battery. If I can't watch 6 hours+ of movies or whatever I'm not interested. I need something that will be small, portable and have a long battery life.

 

no i dont think so. if you look at the mock-ups the whole laptop slides into it. so they could just place plugs inside that line up with where they are on the laptop.

 

Thats on the mock up. I mean on a current mbp you really can't do that. You could use one of those POS port replicators that attaches to each side.
A dock has one connection to the laptop that reroutes your connections, its not a simple pass through like a port replicator. Well, technically I can't define what the true difference is between the dock and port replicators, but all the docks I've used and seen, don't attach to the current ports, it has a dedicated port to connect to. So with one connceted, instead of your audio out on the laptop being enabled, its now rerouted to the audio out on the dock. A dock wouldn't physically occupy the audio out on the laptop.
At least thats how I view the difference.

And thats also why I won't buy that crappy "dock" that some group released for the MBP.

 

To me, it doesn't really matter. You say that generally there's a dedicated port for docking. Well, how often has Apple done something that everyone else does? Everyone else uses Windows (bad idea!) ok, so i think it'll just have a ****load of ports on the inside that match up with the ones on the side of your laptop. But I think it'll be too expensive, cuz a cinema display is like $600 at the least so I bet the dock will be like $1000 or close to it.

 

well yeah, i seriously hope they don't come out with a dock thats integrated with the monitor.
God... such a terrible idea lol.

But here... take a look at this. Bookendz dock
I think thats kind what you were thinking mac would do. Sorry, but IMHO, it's terrible. I doubt Apple would go do something as silly as have a replicator/dock that plugs into all the ports.

 

that would be dumb I don't want a dock like that I want something where it's like an iMac but I can put my laptop inside of it and it would have mini-dvi adapter and output it onto a 20" cinema display wit a bigger hard driver and a wireless keyboard and mouse.

 

Way to many parts that can fail in how they have that. Apple would not be dumb enough to do this, as business who want quality, reliable, computers would not get past repair costs and they would lose business to competitors such as IBM and Dell.

Neat idea though.

 

yes i agree that its crappy i was just telling you how i thought theyd do it.

but yea i wouldnt buy one either. beside the fact that it would be really expensive (probably asmuch as a stand alone 26 inch monitor), i wouldnt like the idea of only using one monitor if i was goin to pay that much for it. if it had a DVI or VGA in that would make me put a little more thought into it so that i could use both screens and also use it as an HD monitor for my 360, but the price would have to be good.

 

lol yeah. I'd be really impressed if they made the Apple dock so you could run dual monitors off them.

Wonder if that would be possible?