“Apple is likely to announce a redesigned iPod touch and slimmer MacBooks at an event in September, analysts said on Monday,” Agam Shah reports for Macworld UK.
“The new MacBooks will be slimmer, might have exteriors made of aluminum instead of plastic and could also have a newly designed keyboards, said Mike Olson, an analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co.,” Shah reports.
“The design of the iPod touch will be tweaked to resemble Apple’s new iPhone 3G… At the same price, the storage capacity of the iPod touch could increase, or the same capacity could be offered at a lower price, Olson said,” Shah reports.
“Apple has held a special event in September to launch new iPods for the last three years, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster wrote in a report. This year, Apple might announce increased capacity of iPods, including the Shuffle and Nano brands, but the products won’t be redesigned, Munster wrote,” Shah reports.
“Over the next few years Apple will also use technology developed for the iPhone in its laptops, including touchscreen-based multitouch technology, Munster wrote,” Shah reports. “The company will replace the trackpad multitouch technology on MacBooks with touchscreen multitouch technology in the next two to three years as the technology matures, Munster wrote.”
Full article here.
A touch-screen only laptop? What an idiotic idea, ergonomically and generally. Oh, how I LOVE fingerprints on my screen. I scold people when they touch my monitors.
I like the photos of the iPod mini-esue redesign of the nano that have floated around.
It would be nice if the touch gained capacity… 64GB? Doubtful, though.
Munster Cheese
This time the new iPods will also be a dessert topping.
Apple will not let fingerprints be an issue…the computer will have a built-in squeegee-esk device.
@ Nick Fury
And everyone will eat it up.
iFog therefore I am!
Translation:- I haven’t the foggiest idea of what Apple inc. will do next, but I could do with some hits please!
Let me restate what I’ve been saying often around here. A touch-screen only computer (something like, oh, an iPhone / iPod Touch) would make the most intuitive computing machine ever concieved.
Throughout the existence of human race, we have been working directly with the objects of our work. Writing, drawing, pounding, grinding, chiseling, sawing, squeezing; it was intuitive and consistent through thousands of years.
Then, some thirty years ago, we invented this keyboard-and-monitor concept; you hit some key, something seemingly unrelated happens on a screen 2 ft away. We forced ourselves to learn this paradigm and accept is as intutitive somehow. We raised some generations of people on accepting this rather unintuitive concept, and we became pretty good at it.
Touching directly the screen on the computer would bring the proper, intuitive concept back. In the same way we use a notebook (the old-fashioned one), or a clipboard, or work on a desk with a pencil and paper. Until Apple, nobody could figure out proper touch interface. IPhone demonstrated that an intuitive and elegant (multi)touch interface is possible.
I won’t venture a guess how many years it will take for the keyboard and mouse to disappear from a standard computer interface, but I’m sure we (at least most of us) will still be working (i.e. not yet be retired).
Since nobody complained about smudges on their notepads, books, clipboards, etc., before, I doubt many will complain about smudges on the screens.
“We forced ourselves to learn this paradigm and accept is as intutitive somehow. We raised some generations of people on accepting this rather unintuitive concept, and we became pretty good at it.”
And eventually I see us screeching madly and dancing wildly around a giant monolith smashing skulls with sticks. It’s all coming together nicely.
Some good useful info in this article:
is likely to announce, might have exteriors made of aluminum, ould also have a newly designed keyboards, the storage capacity of the iPod touch could increase, or the same capacity could be offered at a lower price, Apple might announce increased capacity of iPods.
@ Mr. Reeee @ Predrag
Thinking multi-touch screen is the ideal replacement candidate for keyboard/mouse is ridiculous.
It’s like in the 80’s, some people thought the mouse clicking would replace keyboard typing.
On the other hand, in the 80’s some thought the mouse/GUI were at best a pretty toy… just a toy.
History showed there were mistaken… the same goes with multi-touch but it requires adaptation.
Multi-touch screen is not the answer on laptop, but rather multi-touch keyboard. That’s my guess.
With such a tool, everything is allowed, including handwritting, qwerty/aserty/arab/chinese, etc.
Now I’m not excluding that same technology on a screen, but it’ll be for small little tasks and that it.
Would reach across for hours? No. For few seconds? Why not, to manipulate an image for instance.
But I definitely see myself drawing, handwrite, change the keyboard configuration of my laptop.
The apps will dictate the look of a multi-touch keyboard. A multi- touch screen is better for a tablet.
I’m pretty sure there’s no reason why multi-touch screen couldn’t be adopted across the screen sizes. For a laptop, you keep it in your lap, or in your hands. For a desktop, you keep in on the desktop, exactly the same way a clerk used to work 60 years ago. Upright displays were introduced mainly because of the size/shape of a cathode-ray tube. A multi-touch flat screen (say, 24″ size) can comfortably lie on top of your desk. When you need to type, a virtual keyboard would appear in the area where most convenient (presumably, closest to you). For all other tasks (flipping through documents/messages/images, moving files/folders around, designing/drawing, cutting/pasting, etc, we’d probably use our fingers, although a stylus might also be appropriate for some more precise work. For extremely heavy typists (writers, translators, etc), a blue-tooth ergonomic keyboard is a valuable option. For mainstream users, a virtual one works more than adequately.
“But I definitely see myself drawing, handwrite, change the keyboard configuration of my laptop.”
Whoa. This is spooky. Because we see you that way too. Only a little slimmer, ensconced in velvet and surrounded by cinnamon spice scented candles.
(j/k)
That’s what I hate about Apple – just when you plunk down the dough to get a decent system, they come out with a better one that makes yours new Mac look old. It’s not just a dumb upgrade in CPU speed or hard drive space like a PC, but an entirely new design and capability. I just hope Snow Leopard OS upgrade will enable more gestures on existing *new* MPBs that have the multi-touch pad.
It would be nice if Apple come out with next gen software that turns your iPhone 3G into the latest multi-gesture touch pad to remote control everything Apple, i.e., say control your Keynote slides from your iPhone in hand while you walk around the room giving a presentation.
Sounds like I had better beef up my bank account before September.
Newly designed keyboards?
It’s taken me 20 years to learn Qwerty and now they are going to change it?
Say it ain’t so.
I see a few problems with a new keyboard interface, as surely if it is horizontal on a desk or the bottom of a laptop then everyone will strain their necks looking down at it, and if it is upright then the RSI would be appalling. Presumably the most sensible option is to have a Nintendo DS-esque (but obviously better-looking and without the idiotic A, B, X and Y keys) laptop with a keyboard area that initially stays as a standard QWERTY keyboard but can change at will to a multi-touch screen with graphics tablet and photo manipulation, etc. etc. I’m interested to see if anyone agrees with me. You probably won’t.
Oh, and the squeegee cleaner idea may be a joke but apparently some HP (perish the notion of adopting tech from PCs, and so on) laptops have grease and bacteria repellants on their keyboards. Can Apple not do much better?
Duh – nothing in this article is groundbreaking – obvious things for a next rev.
Bud Why+Zer:
Munster Cheese
More like, <i>”Nigga please!”
Damn uneditable code ruining my joke…
Great. Another worthless anal-yst and their nearly-always-wrong predictions…
A touch-screen only laptop? What an idiotic idea, ergonomically and generally.
Oh yeah? What about the Axiotron? It makes sense for uses that don’t require text entry, like scanning and managing images, but it’s not for everyone.
The QWERTY keyboard is probably the biggest time waster in the world. It was designed to slow down typists as much as possible, so they wouldn’t be jamming letters together on manual typewriters. For some strange reason, the Dvorak keyboard, designed to be as fast as possible, never caught on.
“Let me restate what I’ve been saying often around here. A touch-screen only computer (something like, oh, an iPhone / iPod Touch) would make the most intuitive computing machine ever concieved.
Throughout the existence of human race, we have been working directly with the objects of our work. Writing, drawing, pounding, grinding, chiseling, sawing, squeezing; it was intuitive and consistent through thousands of years.”
I agree for the most part with what you have said. However, realize that Apple is in no position to radically change the paradigm and ask all its customers to unlearn old habits. Instead, there will be a weaning away from the old. It’s already happening with the iPhone – and the horror of “fingerprints on the screen” does not seem to have hurt sales, eh?
A laptop with a touch screen is a tablet, not a laptop, since after all the need for a keyboard has been eliminated. I expect to see tablets within a year or so. But there is still something to be said for a display screen that you do NOT touch. (For one thing, it remains completely in view at all times – which is the way I would PREFER to write long passages.) I can see Apple coming out with a laptop with a non-touchscreen display ATTACHED TO a touchscreen display that functions as keyboard, mouse, and multitouch device. I expect something like this as soon as it becomes economically feasible to build one.
Apple will make tablet-like devices (iPhone, iPod, and tablets) that work one way, and computer-like devices (iMac, Mac Pro, Mac Books) that work with more or less traditional input devices. In some cases, they may mix-and-match (an iMac or Mac Pro using an iPhone like multitouch GUI, driving large screens for presentation purposes.)
Anyone have any idea when in September this might take place (like early or late – or do you recall when they did this last year). I want to give the new iPod touch as a gift to someone, and it would really work out if it’s earlier rather than later. Thanks.
Thinking about buying a Touch, I will now wait! YAY ME!