Saturday’s Apple: What’s missing in Apple’s product line?

This past week the rumors surfaced again, you know the ones about a tablet from Apple. The rumors are usually about a tablet essentially being a Mac, but probably without a keyboard, just a large touch screen. Since the iPhone came out last year, the rumors seem to come more often than before. I guess people see an iPhone with larger screen, 10 inches perhaps, no keyboard, design and look like an iPhone, multi-touch interface, and a full version of Mac OS X. Throw in solid-state storage, external DVD a la MacBook Air, 802.11n, Bluetooth, and some form of desktop stand or docking station, a killer price, and you have something that would wipe the market with anything else out there, I think.

But will Apple actually launch something like that? Personally I doubt it. They have the iPhone and iPod Touch, which both work in a limited way as small tablets. They have the MacBook Air, which while not being a tablet, fills a similar position in the product line. We’ve heard before that Apple doesn’t believe in the tablet concept, that it’s only for narrow, vertical markets, and that it’s not something Apple is interested in. Perhaps that’s changed or will change in the future, and I for one would really like to see an Apple tablet.

When the MacBook Air was introduced I was a bit disappointed that it was 13 inches. I waned a smaller notebook, perhaps even 10 inches, something more along the lines of the recent Asus eeePC, for example. But that’s another product I’m pretty sure Apple is not going to go for. They already have three lines in the notebook segment, and they’re not going to introduce a fourth, I think. But perhaps we have some exciting things coming in an updated MacBook Air, which might come out sooner than we think.

Another Apple product that I’ve wanted to see for many years is a Mac mini Pro, for a lack of a better name. It’s basically half Mac Pro and half Mac mini. So a small tower with less expansion and power than a Mac Pro. I think that would be a great seller in businesses, where a Mac Pro in many situations is overkill and too expensive, with an iMac they can’t use existing investments in monitors, and Mac mini is too limited in many respects.

In another month or so we should be close to when Apple starts introducing new products again after being a bit quiet over the summer, as they usually are. Regardless of what products they do introduce though, one thing you can be sure of when it comes to Apple, you should never say never.

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