14 DAY TRIAL // Reportedly scheduled for January 27, a major Apple event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco will witness the introduction of Apple’s long-rumored tablet computer, tipsters say. More recently, according to these people, select programmers have already been equipped with the appropriate development tools and instructions to create application demos for what is believed to be Apple’s next-gen portable.
AppleInsider digs up an older Silicon Alley Insider report saying Apple developers were told to prepare “full screen” apps for a January demo. According to the latter, developers were reportedly asked to prepare full-screen demos of their own iPhone applications. These select developers were specifically told to make their apps run at a resolution beyond the fixed 320x480 pixel size of the iPhone and iPod touch screen. Applications that can support the new, larger screen size would run “just fine” on the new hardware, Apple is said to have told developers.
The same AppleInsider also mentions recent reports coming from France where Apple-focused site Mac4Ever also suggests the tablet will borrow iPhone OS particularities, including the ability to run existing apps, “[...] that a new iPhone 4.0 beta SDK includes a ‘simulator’ that aims to make it easy for developers to adapt to different screen resolutions.” Evidently, a handful of developers are already reportedly familiar with the beta SDK.
It is being suggested that, just like with the iPhone, Apple will unveil the tablet this month, but won’t put it up for sale until March. Opinions are still divided as to how big of a screen the tablet will have, what its main purpose will be and so on. However, a device borrowing from both the iPhone and Appe’s laptops would make perfect sense.