The possibly upcoming Apple tablet computer will definitely not be priced below $500, Apple’s Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook told TechCrunch during its quarterly earnings conference call.

Cook mentioned that he thinks most people buying portable devices want to have a full-featured notebook, not a slow low-specced netbook. This is quite disputable though as netbooks are making a big dent in the entire computing market now.

Cook said Apple had no interest in entering the low-end consumer computing market as the margins in this segment would be too low for Apple. He called computer products with a price below $499 ‘junky’. He did not reject the possibility though that Apple is working on a new portable computer device.  But if it is, it will be priced above $500.

It is obvious that Apple is really not coming out with a netbook. They have repeated this numerous times. They do not have any belief in the market segment.

If there is a tablet in the pipeline however, it will be be a fully-featured highly-specced large touchscreen tablet with a price tag of around $800 at least, if you think in Apple’s regular prices.

[Via TechCrunch]

Apple just filed a patent for “identifying fingerprint signature” gestures. The patent describes how a future device will be able to detect which finger is touching the screen. This can be handy in for example screen gestures, where when more fingers are enabled, countless more gestures become available.

Many people believe this patent will be used in the iPhone, but they are wrong. When do you use more than two fingers on an iPhone? The device size is too small for that. You got it right…We are talking about a patent made for the Apple tablet here.

In addition the patent includes haptic feedback technology. When you touch the screen, you can feel where the on screen buttons are without actually seeing them. This will be useful for both the iPhone and the MacBook tablet.

The fingerprint ID can theoretically act as a security device so that only you can activate your phone.

Via MacRumors.com

Gene Munster, investment analyst for Piper Jaffray, believes Apple will release a low-cost tablet PC in 2010. He writes this in a letter sent out to its clients. He based his information on a confirmation from people in the loop with Apple’s product plans.

“We expect Apple to fill the gap between the iPod touch and the MacBook with a new tablet device (not a netbook) priced at about $500-$700. Apple will likely leverage its multi-touch patents to differentiate its product from the typical netbook,”

New pictures of the Apple tablet PC have appeared online:

Renderings courtesy of Factory Joe

Apple is sure to launch a media tablet soon. New evidence is based on Apple’s SD card adoption with new MacBook Pro models. Seems like a long throw? Apple adopts SD because it wants to build a MID or media tablet. The evidence is actually quite convincing says SanDisk blogger Savolainen.

PCMCIA cards

Laptop computers since history have been supporting PCMCIA slots. These slots made it possible to extend your sometimes limited laptop computer with extra functionality, like soundcards, GPS radios, hard drives or add-on solid-state memory. The PCMCIA slot has advanced in the past years into the faster 2.5GBit variant called ExpressCard. The card uses a 26-pin 34mm wide connector. There are two ExpressCard sizes: 75mm by 34mm and 75mm by 54mm.

From ExpressCard….to SD.

Technology devices like smart phones, cameras, media players and even laptops (in the form of netbooks) have increasingly become smaller and smaller. The majority of devices are simply smaller than the ExpressCard itself. Thus, they are not able to support card. Thus, for extending your device with extra memory many of these devices now use the smaller SD card. Its size is 32mm x 24mm. It has a micro variant which is only 11mm x 15mm. A standard SD card can hold up to 4 Gb, however SDXC (extended capacity) cards have been released which move the maximum up to 2 Tb (that’s 2000 Gb). The format has become highly popular and is widely suppported.

So Apple adopted SD in their MacBook Pro’s

Finally, Apple has started to add SD card support into their MacBook Pro line up. The MacBook Pro 13″ and 15″ laptops have an SD card slot.  The MacBook Pro 17″ still has an ExpressCard slot. What is the reason for Apple changing their mind all of a sudden and abandoning ExpressCard’s? Because Apple thinks the SD card adoption in mobile internet devices (MIDs) and netbooks is so ubiquitous and its advances in memory are going so fast, that this is going to make it the only standard for removable storage in these devices. Did you hear that? The only one in. No hard drive, but just a removable solid state drive (SSD) in the form of a high-capacity SD card.

So why is this important?

The reason they are implementing SD is because of its high adoption in tablets and MIDs! But Apple does not have any tablets or MIDs right now! It seems highly likely according to Savolainen, that within the next 12 months, Apple will be announcing an Apple media tablet or MID and a netbook. A tablet is supposed to be as thin as possible, thus they will not have CD, DVD or Blu-Ray drives at all. These devices will all solely rely on SD cards for storage.

SanDisk is well-positioned to benefit from greater adoption of the standard. If other laptop manufacturers, envious of the internal dimensions taken up by an ExpressCard slots, move over to the SD Card standard so that they can make their laptopsthinner and lighter, then SanDisk, Toshiba and Panasonic should all benefit.