The return

Yeah, yeah, I know. I said I would do the NaNoBloMo thing of blogging every day in November, blogged for six days and then stopped abruptly for almost two months. Clearly the only acceptable excuse would be if I had been kidnapped by aliens, taken to a distant planet, escaped and then spent the intervening time trying to hitchhike home again.

In a startling coincidence, that is exactly what happened. So let's say no more about it.

iWant

I must admit, I was sceptical about Apple ever bringing out a mobile phone. I reasoned that, having conquered the world with the iPod due to judicious timing for their launch (ie., when the MP3 player market was becoming just large enough to be interesting, and was crying out for a cool player for the masses rather than the geeks) they wouldn't be interested in doing anything less if they were to launch a phone.

Since there's already so many big-name handset providers who've been pushing the envelope with mobile phone features for the last few years, I thought Apple would conclude that they're incapable of dominating the market and not bother trying. They would have had to come up with one hell of a product to have a chance of becoming the #1 phone that everyone wants to use.

And boy, did they ever. (I've been writing this piece waiting for Apple's front page to mention the iPhone so I can link to it. Finally!)

I hate mobile phones. And Apple has managed to come up with a product that even I am drooling over. Unfortunately my hatred of phones extends to resenting having to pay as much as £40-£50 for a handset (Pay As You Go), so I don't think I'll be splashing out the $499 equivalent for the cheaper model (it'll probably be at least £399, grumble grumble...).

For broadly the same reasons as mentioned above, I didn't think this would be the year of the much-anticipated Mac Tablet computer either. The market's nowhere near ready for mass take-up (especially at the price they'd have to charge; a MacBook with tablet capabilities?) and I felt that Apple would wait until the market was on the verge of tipping, and then (as with the iPod) conquer the market completely. Actually, that was the only reason I could think of for them not having released one already, what with their large and loyal fancustomer base of graphic designers and so on.

When I was in the process of choosing my tablet pc, I did briefly consider waiting until now to see whether Apple did launch a tablet but thought it was unlikely enough that it wouldn't be worth it.

Imagine my disappointment when rumours of the ModBook started flying a few days ago! (I still can't find an official webpage for it... I think it's still too early in the day in California.) To be fair, closer inspection shows that while it's a MacBook with tablet capabilities that runs OS X, it's not actually an Apple product, but an Axiotron/OWC product.

I shall try to console myself with the thought that technically, my prediction was correct.