Tablet Rumors Getting Pretty Specific Posted 09/30/2009 at 6:44:38pm | by J Keirn-Swanson

Fatigued of tablet rumors yet? Some of us are. Then something comes along that really jazzes us up.

At first these whispers started out rather vague, with conflicting sizes and hardware specs, but as the year closes out specifics are starting to coalesce. Is it a secret too big to keep or is it the bandwagon of rumor-mongering? Only time will tell. While we wait, let’s follow along.

To start with, according to a source with a track record for reliability, iLounge is reporting that the 7″ screen is out and the 10.7″ version is in. This confirms what others have been reporting for the last month or so and corresponds to Apple’s past history of making multiple iterations of a product during development, deselecting versions with time and testing.

The idea that the tablet might be a large scale iPod touch is also bolstered by this source who claims that the machines will run a modified iPhone OS, will appear in 3G and non-3G models, and will resemble the iPhone in design details even down to the curved back.

Where the rumors from iLounge get interesting is when the source claims the tablet is NOT designed to compete with netbooks, but is instead a “a slate-like replacement for books and magazines.” Add this to sources at Gizmodo and an idea is beginning to coalesce as to what this machine is envisioned to be.

According to Brian Lam, two people “related to the NY Times” have spoken to him about contacts between Apple and the news org for delivery of their print and media content through iTunes. Stir in his contact, a “VP in textbook publishing” who claims that McGraw-Hill and Oberlin Press are working with Apple to move textbooks over to iTunes. Toss in a story about several magazine publishers visiting Cupertino to discuss the future of magazines, replete with some interactive mockups of titles. Add Andy Ihnatko’s report of rumors that “trucks loaded with books would arrive at a loading dock on the Apple campus, and offload big, big, big, big, huge load of books, and then the trucks would leave empty.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. Not only have the rumors begun to solidify into definitive hardware ideas, but also a marketing plan appears to be shaping up that make the tablet not only viable but a game changer. Apple wants to have titles ready to roll out the moment the tablet hits the street, but there has to be something new to bring to the table rather than just larger screen viewing of media content. Too large to serve as just a phone and mp3 player, the tablet essentially melds the best aspects of the Kindle, its size and book catalog, with the best aspects of the iPhone, basically everything.

One can easily see Apple shaking up the entire print industry, much in the way its upended the music industry. Textbooks with additional multimedia content, newspapers and magazine subscriptions through iTunes, and, best of all, full-color comics not delivered panel by panel or scrunched down into a format requiring a day’s worth of pinch resizing.

Last thing: rumors seem to be settling down on 2010 as the release date with an announcement in the second half of January. Most sources suggest January 19th as an announcement date with a summer release. We can hardly wait.