The Apple Tablet Brings New Life to Old Media

Steve Jobs has done it before. Reinvented or revamped some old media. The iPod did it with the music industry and now he is looking to save the old media like news papers, television and textbooks. According to the Wall Street Journal Apple will reshape the old media business with the Apple Tablet (or iSlate, iTablet, iThingy… or iSomethingelse). The article from WSJ also confirms what so many of us has been talking/writing about for the last 6 months. I mean old media WSJ wouldn’t write about it, if it wasn’t true.

So what will the Apple Tablet do to help resurrect a business that has been sleeping for the last decade? According to WSJ and TUAW these rather dodgy details:

* Always partial to the education market, one thing this device might be used for is e-textbooks, presumably including the sort of multimedia content that goes beyond the printed page.
* Textbook publishers aren’t the only publishers Apple has been talking to. They’re chatting up Conde Nast, Harper Collins, The New York Times, and even CBS, Walt Disney Co, and Electronic Arts (for games).
* A “Best of TV” service is possible, with a subscription to a set of on demand programs chosen by the consumer.
* Those same people are also reporting there is a revamp of iTunes coming, which would separate the purchase of iTunes content from the iTunes application.
* The device will have a 10 or 11 inch screen, a virtual keyboard, and “sharing” is mentioned — two ideas being thrown around are the ability to leave sticky notes on the device or even have the camera recognize faces of those using it.
* Price is expected to be around $1000, and they’ll be selling it to people who already have iPhones and laptops as well.

We won’t know for sure until January 27th where Apple has invited the (new) media to see their ” latest creation”. Unless it’s the release of iPhone OS 4.0, I’m pretty confident we’ll see the new Apple Tablet there and the twitter fail whale.