iPad Plus – Apple Rumored to Have Even Bigger Unicorn in the Works


That’s right, the Unicorn is back! I knew you couldn’t get enough of it, so I brought it back so that everyone could enjoy it again. After all, there’s another tablet rumor, and this one is a doozy.

MG Siegler from TechCrunch has a post up today about a new tablet that’s in the design process. This one though, is less iPhone, more MacBook. Here’s a quote:

Now, before I say anything else, take this information with a grain of salt. While it originated from a good source, it was a second-hand source. Meanwhile, I’ve corroborated some the main details with another source, but not some of the smaller ones. That said, from what I’m hearing, Apple is pretty far along on work on second tablet device. A bigger one. And this one may be much more like a Mac than an iPhone.

First, I’m going to give MG some credit. He says himself that this is all conjecture, rumors, and could be plain old b.s. Better than spreading the rumor like the truth, anyways (cough). That said, I’m not so sure about this one, and here’s why.

What did everyone want from the iPad? Everything they didn’t get, apparently. They wanted video chat, OS X, and a revolutionary form of using the hardware that would be akin to floating on air with magical wings made of dolphin skin – although, free-range dolphin. What they got was a beefy iPod Touch with more real estate. One thing Steve Jobs does well is stick with something, even if it’s not necessarily the bees knees. I don’t see him coming out with a tablet to usurp the iPad, because that’s going to bastardize the MacBook market, which would cut him off at the knees – at least not yet, anyways.

On the other end of things, I do think an OS X-run tablet may be in the plans, but not until the iPad proves its worth. No one wants it to go down the path of the AppleTV, but if it’s not wanted, then there’s no reason to put more r&d into a bigger and beefier model.

But here’s my prediction: 1 year from now, the iPad will come out with V 2.0 that will really kick the product into high gear. In the next 5 years, we’ll see a tablet with OS X, produced by Apple. After all, if the iPad takes off, I’m not sure what would be holding them back.


Kossi Adzo

Kossi Adzo is a technology enthusiast and digital strategist with a fervent passion for Apple products and the innovative technologies that orbit them. With a background in computer science and a decade of experience in app development and digital marketing, Kossi brings a wealth of knowledge and a unique perspective to the Apple Gazette team.

7 Comments

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  1. Why the diss of the AppleTV? It’s a great device and is quite popular among people who own them. Apple knows the AppleTV is their next big hit after the iPad, but they also know all the internet TV pieces are still falling into place. So hands off the AppleTV!

  2. It pretty much seems as they could do that to a MacBook Pro without much trouble and everyone should be satisfied because they’ll even get a keyboard and touchpad thrown in with the multi-touch display. If people just get a plain tablet running full OSX, they’d probably complain that the battery life is too short or something. People are always complaining over every little feature that Apple leaves out. They’re probably looking for a Mac Pro hexacore that fits in their pockets. Ridiculous.

  3. Apple killed it’s best seller Mac IIcx and introduced the Mac IIci, killed the best seller iPod mini and introduced the iPod nano. The MacBook is Apple’s best seller, so of course Steve Jobs will kill it in favor of a tablet. He wants to get past the Mac and Windows era and move forward with the next big thing.

  4. A Tablet that runs Mac OS X is not going to happen. Mac OS X is a mouse and keyboard OS, not a touch OS and Microsoft has proven that there is no market for a mouse and keyboard OS on a tablet. You don’t fix this by adding handwriting, touch and stylus function to a legacy OS. MS is doomed with this approach. You start with a touch OS and move the other way — this will become apparent. Apple has the only touch OS. Everyone is focused on the hardware. They say that anyone can make a tablet. But what they don’t understand is that they are dealing with an OS and software framework targeted specifically to this hardware configuration. Now if MS decided that they were going to create a stripped down OS that only supported a specific subset of the .NET framework only (for touch) then they might get going. The first demo MS could come up with for multitouch under windows has fingerpainting???? MS thinks that good software has more features and options and modes. So an MS slate will try to make everyone happy (be everything to everybody), and in the process become an ugly monster of a thing.

  5. We will *never* see a Mac OS X based tablet. The menu-ed interface is made for a pointing device, not our fat fingers. I do expect the iPad to get much more powerful over time, but those same features will be rolled into all iPhone OS devices as iPhone OS gets closer to Mac OS. But some of the things in the Mac OS (ex. the Finder, and menus at top of screen) will never be on the touch-based computers in the form we’ve come to associate with Mac OS X.

  6. IF — IF AAPl comes out with a 15″ iPad like design running OSX (10.7-10.8?), then because it will be expensive, it is less likely to replace the Macbook and more likely to replace the Macbook Air. IMHO.

    Another point that might be mentioned here is that AAPL may be moving away from its current file system. With the demise of ZFS, the iPad file system may spread to a future version of OSX. A possibility.