Who’s on Crack: Tablet Edition

This weeks Who’s on Crack has been specially formulated and optimized for tablet computers. Here at WOC (what we call ourselves for short), we believe this tablet thing is really going to catch on someday and we want to be ready for it. Our designers are also hard at work for on a free standing touchscreen PC and a flexible/roll-up style screen that will one day seem as common as weeds in my lawn. Enjoy this special version aimed at our readers using these uber-secret products.

• World preps for iTablet
• Unsubstantiated rumor mill says Apple already working on iTablet 2
• CrunchPad – will it or won’t it?
• “Shockingly inexpensive” Apple iTablet

iTablet: the world is beating a path to your door

Who needs an actual platform to design for? Not big name magazines such as Conde Naste’s Wired or Sports Illustrated, they’re already showing off tablet versions and are light years ahead of the competition. Whipping up a tablet version of your content will surely take longer than the 3 month lead time the FCC document release usually grants, right?

If we step back for a minute, these guys might as well be designing new headlights for nuclear powered cars that Ford is sure to invent in the next century. Do these big magazines really sit in a room and confess: we need hype: “let’s build something that is hot.” Then the geeky guy at the back of the room reading dirtyapplesecrets.com says, this iTablet thing is going to be huge. Boom, the idea is born.

Or are these magazines so excited for a tablet they are deliberately trying to shame Steve Jobs into making one? As if to say, “Steve, look how awesome the world would be if you just followed the photoshopped renderings of a product you really should make. It would be your legacy, your ascension to mythical status (as if he needs the nudge). Can Apple be shamed into producing the thing?

Apple heard to be working on iTablet 2.

We know it takes a while for Apple to get something right. Look at the iPod, how many generations did we have to endure before they struck gold with the Nano and Touch? Apple is learning from its ways and supposedly already has a team working on a secluded island on iTablet 2. Actually, that is incorrect, the rumor says Apple has 5 teams, each working in blind seclusion on different parts of iTablet 2, blithely unaware other teams even exist. This is how smart Apple is.

Apple is always one step ahead (at least) of us. If they are late in getting the original iTablet out the door, as we are all building things that are optimized for the iTablet, then they need to have #2 figured out before 1 is out the door. Smart. Think different.

Crunchpad -now with less crunch?

Apple has competition in the vaporware category: Crunchpad. Or at least it did have potential competition in the unreleased product category. Mike Arrington make public the implosion, the crumbling of an idea gone bad: the Crunchpad was dead.

Arrington cited the loss of a pet project due to greed. Greed, for lack of a better term is good (thanks to Gordon Gecko), usually. But here greed seems to not only have put a nail through the Crunchpad tablet but through a budding lifelong friendship. It gets better, the maligned Chandra, er Chandrasekar “Chandra” Rathakrishnan, founder and CEO of Fusion Garage, will be showing off a totally new tablet he designed, alone, in a dark basement without any help from any tech blog: the ChandraPad. The last part I made up, I assume he will show off the CrunchPad following a bushell of legal claims that will push the release date well past the product’s useful life.

I quote the Fake Steve Jobs, “bitch, please. Get some guys, get in your *** cars, and drive over there and beat some *** with baseball bats. Do you not understand this? … Good God, man, This is hardware.”

Analyst says Apple tablet is “shockingly inexpensive”

Let’s say you are on Diggnation and you want to wow the audience, what do you do? If you’re analyst Alex Albrecht you say, “I was shocked at how cheap the price point is going to be,” referring to the Apple tablet. Not only is this dude claiming he is “in the know” that the thing exists, but he knows its retail story.

Is this confirmation that all our hours spent honing our magazines and even this post for tablets was not a complete waste of everyones time in a dark economy where we really all should be doing something more productive? Surely the bloggers will run with the confirmation, right?

No moron, the bloggers key in on the low price point. How low? Will Apple give the thing away? We are so hyped up that $1,000 sounds like a steal! We are just thrilled the product we know Apple is keeping from us is reasonably affordable. We won’t be eating Ramen for nearly as long as we thought! Hooray. Can we really believe Apple will leave money sitting on the table?

Yes we can. Please pass the rock.