Wow. Guess what appeared on my doorstep this morning? The new Apple tablet, two days before its public unveiling. I’m not supposed to talk about it until Wednesday — but who cares? I’m not afraid of Apple’s legal department. I won’t reveal all, but here are a few highlights:
• You may be surprised at the name of the tablet: iRule. I was told that it refers to Apple’s expectation of the device’s market dominance. Turns out, it’s also the nickname that Apple employees affectionately use to refer to their boss, Steve Jobs.
• As widely predicted, the iRule will include an e-reader. That’s old news. What you do not yet know its that it will also sport a built-in coffeemaker. I can now confirm that Apple has worked out a deal with Keurig, whereby the iRule will accept Keurig’s coffee pods.
• How will you enter text on the iRule? This is really cool. The iRule projects an image of a full-sized keyboard onto the surface in front of you. And when I say full-sized, I mean it. It will have all 88 keys, even the black ones.
• The iRule will not ship until June. Is Apple concerned that Amazon’s Kindle may gain critical market share in the meantime? Not at all. Apple will announce that it is purchasing Amazon.com and, in its first move, will be discontinuing the Kindle.
• The operating system of the iRule? It’s neither Mac OS X nor iPhone OS. Instead, Apple has created a new third OS: Supreme Ruler OS. It combines the complexity of Mac OS X with the lack of flexibility of iPhone OS X. One example:
Similar to the Mac, there are seven different ways to transfer files between the iRule and other computing devices. Similar to the iPhone, however, they have all been disabled.
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