Specs

ARM Cortex A9 To Power iSlate?

by admin on Jan.06, 2010, under Rumors, Specs, iSlate

MacRumors ran an article today that the iSlate could be operating on an ARM Cortex A9 processor. This seems not to be based on leaks or any verified facts, but it certainly is an interesting speculation.

The A9 is a new successor to the A8 range of processors that for example power the iPhones. In fact around 98 percent of the more than a billion mobile phones sold each year use at least one ARM processor. The Cortex A9 represents the next generation which supports multi-core designs. The Cortex A9 multi-core processors are expected to scale beyond 2 GHz while drawing less than 0.25 W of power per CPU.

The biggest implication of this would be that the iSlate would not be able to run standard OSX or Windows (and its applications). However, several Linux distributions, including the Chrome OS, have been ported to the ARM platform. Also, the iPhone uses a ported OSX version.

Apple is believed to be one of a few unnamed large licensors that ARM mentioned in their Q3 2009 earnings.

Coincidentally, ARM showed earlier several protoypes of multi touch tablets. Here’s is a YouTube video of them:

iSlate Specs

by admin on Jan.04, 2010, under Specs, iSlate

Supposedly the iSlate specs have been leaked, but it awfully looks like a quickly made up Word document. Anyway it’s something to tickle the geek inside you.

According to the supposedly leaked document, the iSlate will run Mac OS X . Here’s more:

Precision aluminum unibody
7.1-inch multi-touch touchscreen with some sort of “intelligent feedback” and an anti-fingerprint coating
2.26Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
2GB DDR3 SDRAM
120GB hard drive
Built-in projector
Built-in iSight camera
802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Mac OS X 10.7 Clouded Leopard

The iSlate’s surprisingly impressive hardware specs are enough to tickle our geeky-bone, but there’s one specific spec that really gets our attention. According to the supposed leaked documents, the iSlate will run something known as Mac OS X 10.7 Clouded Leopard. The new operating system is expected to be a touchscreen-friendly version of Mac OS X that uses a new widget-based homscreen. It’s not clear if Clouded Leopard will actually do any cloud computing.

As for the impressive specs we mentioned. Take a gander at Apple’s rumored specs for their tablet computer:

Precision aluminum unibody
7.1-inch capacitive multi-touch touchscreen with some sort of “intelligent feedback” and an anti-fingerprint coating
2.26Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
2GB DDR3 SDRAM
120GB hard drive
Built-in projector
Built-in iSight camera
802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Mac OS X 10.7 Clouded Leopard

The Apple Tablet – How It All Began

by admin on Jan.02, 2010, under Apple, Reviews, Rumors, Specs, iSlate

The rumours about Apple creating a tablet computer have been going on since the release of the iPhone. However, in December 2009 they found new popularity when the Financial Times reported that Apple had booked the Yerba Buena Center for Arts in San Franscisco for a significant product announcement on January 26, 2010. Only a couple of days later, Google China’s ex-chief Kaifu Lee wrote on his blog that an informed friend told him that an Apple Tablet appearance was likely. The details he gave were: 10.1-inch screen with awesome UI. Of course

Earlier, MacRumors stated that the Apple Tablet would most likely be called iSlate, because the domain iSlate.com was acquired by Apple.

Expect additional rumors until the upcoming launch of the iSlate or whatever it will be called. Always secretive and tight-lipped, Apple is playing silent observer at the moment and will – hopefully – speak on January 26, 2010.