DigitalSandbox

For as long as tablets have been around there have been cries for Apple to enter that market. The response has always been that the market is too small for Apple to pursue it seriously. With the impending arrival of MWSF 07 the rumors have been heating up again regarding the fabled Tablet Mac.

I don’t think that we will see one from Apple. I think that Apple is right about the market being too small. Even after 5 years tablets only have a minuscule slice of the laptop market. But that just makes this announcement from Axiotron and Other World Computing even more interesting.

Apparently they think that there is enough of a market for them to mod an Apple laptop (presumably the MacBook, based off their little graphic) into a tablet Mac. It’s kind of a win-win. Apple can say that a Mac-based tablet is available for those customers that want one, but without investing any R&D budget to the project. OWC and Axiotron get to service a piece of the market exclusively rather than compete with all the other Apple vendors selling Apple laptops.

This also portends an interesting new side market. If these sell well enough, could there be other mods in the wings? It also raises some very interesting questions. Do they have Apple’s blessing on this? I doubt it will be Apple-branded, and according to the EULA for OS X you can only install the software on an Apple-branded computer. If they don’t, will Apple shut them down?

I am going to assume that a vendor like Other World Computing ? a quality vendor of great Mac products ? wouldn’t jeopardize their business by doing something foolish so I think that Apple may have granted them an exception, but it will be interesting to see what happens.

Any way you look at, January 9th is going to be a very interesting day.