Apple has reportedly booked out the stage at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for "several days" in late January. It's widely anticipated that Apple will use the familiar venue for a "major product announcement" on Tuesday, January 26, 2010.
This news from Financial Times, comes on the heels of the Silicon Alley Insider reporting on Wednesday that select developers have been tagged to prepare apps for "full screen resolution."
"Apple has been telling some app makers to prepare apps for a demo next month, according to this source. "They've told select developers that as long as they build their apps to support full screen resolution -- rather than a fixed 320x480 -- their apps should run just fine," our source says." Source: Silicon Alley Insider
The event center has been a favored venue used by Apple in the past to announce major updates to its iPod product line. With Apple's choice to bow out of participating in the MacWorld Conference next year, which typically takes place in early January, it would make sense that the company may finally announce their rumored tablet to the media at their own private party.
The iPhone was originally announced on stage during the opening Macworld keynote by Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007. The device did not go on sale until June 29, 2007.
Macworld 2010 is scheduled to take place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from February 9th through 13th. Which means Apple intends to upstage the Macworld side show with shock and awe should the iTablet be unveiled as the company's new major product at their planned media gathering. Rumors point to late March as the time frame for the first Apple tablets to go on sale to the throngs of Mac faithful.
"Apple is preparing to show off a new, larger mobile device with a higher resolution display in January -- probably a version of the Apple tablet we've been hearing about for months -- according to a plugged-in source in the mobile industry." Silicon Alley Insider wrote.
According to a senior employee inside Apple, “I can’t really say anything, but, let’s just say Steve is extremely happy with the new tablet.” Nick Bilton wrote for the NYT. “You will be very surprised how you interact with the new tablet.” a recently departed Apple employee told Bilton.
That's fine by me. I like surprises. Especially those that have an Apple logo attached.
[Image by Scott Chang]
The first sentence in the second paragraph should say "heels", not "heals". Ugh, I would think Apple folks would have caught that.
Posted by: Patricia Gray | January 01, 2010 at 10:10 AM