Reports: Apple Plans To Ship New Device in March

Apple is planning to ship a new device in March. Although it has not been confirmed many reports are speculating that it is the long awaited iTablet device. It is unclear if it will run a version of the iPhone OS, Mac OSX Snow Leopard or a hybrid.

Snow Leopard incorporates may UI improvements which some have speculated was to accommodate multi-touch input technology. If you check your System Preferences you will notice that Keyboard now has it's own perference and users can select to display it on screen from this panel (Fig. 1). It is interesting that this is far easier to access compared to the Universal Access Preference in Leopard which can display the keyboard on screen as well.

Fig. 1 Snow Leopard Keyboard

Similar to the iPhone 3GS the screen may have an oleophobic finger-resistant coating depending on what the final device ships with. It is also unclear of the final size but think the AirBook Screen in terms of size. One draw back may be the use of the AirBook's pop-out USB ports which I find to be very delicate. It is always interesting the way in which Apple makes a device that is sturdy, slim and sexy. All qualities which make the iPhone a great device while the AirBook remains an experimental platform.