New tablet may replace keyboard with touch-screen

Apple is shrinking its Mac computer and bringing out a tablet that is small enough to be carried in a handbag but big enough for comfortable web surfing, newspaper reading and watching movies. The computer will revolutionize laptops as we know them because it is one flat touch-screen device without a keyboard.

Speculations have reached a feverish pitch that by 2010, the revolutionary touch-screen gadget will be in a store near you. Blogs are alive with rumours that the tablet’s launch will be announced in September by Steve Jobs, Apple founder and CEO, and launched in time for the Christmas market, reports the Telegraph.

The product is believed to have been in development for the past six years, with Jobs personally involved over the last two. If the speculation is true, it could be the next technological breakthrough for Apple, which has sold more than 200 million iPods since its launch in 2001. The tablet will be billed as the solution for people who work a lot on the move, but don’t want to be burdened with a laptop.

Pundits are predicting that our lives will never be the same. “People expect it to be the ultimate Apple surprise. This thing will knock people’s socks off,”Leander Kahney, a blogger and author of The Cult of Mac, told the Observer.

“Apple will totally rejig the computing experience. You won’t manipulate a keyboard and mouse any more but rather use an intuitive touch-screen. It will very tactile. It will be a whole new paradigm.”

Gene Munster, a technology research analyst, estimated that the tablet, with an onscreen keyboard like the iPhone, would cost around $600, putting it between the high-end iPod Touch at $399 and the Mac-Book, which starts at $999.

Agencies