We've long heard rumors that Apple was working on "Safari Pad" long before the iPhone, but Steve Jobs confirmed it at D8, saying he thought of a glass display with multitouch and no keyboard. Apple came up with it, got inertial scrolling going and Jobs thought they could make a phone (which was more important). They made the iPhone, and then went back to the tablet for the iPad.

Jobs also discusses how to support and monetize media as it transitions into the digital age.

(Oh, and he doesn't want us to descend into a nation of bloggers -- America needs editorial!)

Video after the break!

Many of the latest rumors about the Apple iTablet/iSlate involve it being a large iPhone, or as Daring Fireball points out, the iPhone being a smaller version of an older Apple tablet project. Way back in June of 2007, the New York Times mentioned just that, and the tablet project was Safari Pad:

Mr. Jobs seized on the multitouch technology after Apple product designers proposed it as a “safari pad,” a portable Web surfing appliance. Instead, he saw the technology as something that could be used for a similar purpose in a cellphone, a former Apple employee said.

We've linked to those stories and that name several times over the years, and while we doubt an actual shipping Apple tablet will still be called Safari Pad, given the state of the rumors, Gruber's point (linked above) is salient:

The Tablet is what Apple set out to build all along, and the iPhone was an offshoot that shipped first because the technology wasn’t there yet to produce The Tablet. In short, that Apple has had something bigger in mind — both physically and conceptually — from the outset.

Gruber's also heard there won't be a camera or webcam in the tablet, but we're still keeping our fingers crossed.

Either way, it's looking more and more like the "next big thing" for Apple is tightly connected to the iPhone.

Earlier this month, TiPb threw it's hat in the ring of next generation handset speculation by predicting Apple would announce an iPhone HD in 2009. It just made sense to us, and apparently it's beginning to make sense to others as well.

What happened? New York Times writer John Markoff dropped a rumor bomb:

The [unnamed search engine] company spotted Web visits from an unannounced Apple product with a display somewhere between an iPhone and a MacBook. Is it the iPhone 3.0 or the NetMac 1.0?

Jesus Diaz over at Gizmodo seems to be thinking what we're thinking as well:

here in Gizmodo we are thinking about an iPhone HD with an updated 800 x 480 pixel display, probably coming in 2009.

So, is this just another wunderkind spoofing his or her web browser for lulz and chaos? Or is Steve Jobs already carrying around the prototype iPhone HD in his pocket, practicing the Keynote Boom! for WWDC 2009?

Opera, the admirable yet often un-admired cross-platform web browser alternative to Internet Explorer on the PC, Safari on the Mac, and Firefox pretty much everywhere, was considered by Apple to be the original baked-in surfing standard for the iPhone?

Huhbuwha?

That's pretty much what we thought too, though Valleywag stands behind the story:

Before the first iPhone was released, Apple wanted Opera to build the browser for the iPhone, says a source. Negotiations dragged on for six months, the sticking point being exclusivity — Apple wanted it, but Opera was unwilling to commit, seeing a larger market for licensing its proprietary software to multiple handset manufacturers.

Valleywag says, if true, Opera made a huge miscalculation, give the iPhone's unprecedented mobile browsing market share. We say... shenanigans! Unless we're talking history so ancient Bill Gates was floating overhead at Macworld announcing IE as the default Apple browser, this just doesn't seem logical, reasonable, or rational.

As any longtime reader of this site knows, the iPhone started life as a tablet concept device called... (wait for it...) Safari Pad. Pretty big clue right there in the name as to what browser Apple was leaning towards, wouldn't you say? (We would).

Likewise, Apple was willing to throw away devote resources to a Windows version of Safari, never mind Steve Jobs' near totalitarian approach to keeping things in the Apple ecosystem (after having been burned one to many times by licensed technology).

Stranger bedfellows have tech made (see IE on Mac, above) but we're filing this one under EPIC NO! for now...

Oh, Apple, you tease! It's not enough we've all heard the iPhone began life as the Safari Pad tablet? That Intel has leaked Atom-powered portable hints? That the rumors start up again every time the blogsphere even thinks you have a "Special Event" coming our way? Do you really have to go and show us your patents?

Apple Insider says:

Much of the 52-page filing describes methods for accurately detecting and deciphering a plurality of simultaneous contacts on a touch screen, which sets the foundation for future tablet-based products that users can manipulate using not only more than one finger, but more than one hand.

Design guru Jonathan Ive, among others, is credited with the innovation, which includes examples of window control, virtual keyboards, and virtual scroll-wheels.

No word, of course, on when or if we'll ever actually get to hold such awesome mobile power with our own multi-touching hands...

Can't keep a good iTablet rumor down, can you?

While Windows-based tablets have never successfully penetrated the mainstream market, a vocal contingent have long been clamoring for an Apple Tablet (iTablet, MacBook Touch, Safari Pad, etc.). Modbook rolls their own and Alex Lindsay of PixelCorps/MacBreak Weekly fame contemplated making one himself. Heck, even TechCrunch wants a FrankenLinFox pad!

Will we ever see it? We know Apple has it in the R&D shop. Heck, the iPhone runs software originally conceived of for "Safari Pad". Steve Jobs has said he's just as proud of of some things Apple hasn't released. If it wasn't right for Apple before, is it now? Only Jobs knows for sure, but MacDailyNews (via Gizmodo) is beating the rumor drum again:

Think MacBook screen, possibly a bit smaller, in glass with iPhone-like, but fuller-featured Multi-Touch. Gesture library. Full Mac OS X. This is why they bought P.A. Semi. Possibly with Immersion's haptic tech. Slot-loading SuperDrive. Accelerometer. GPS. Pretty expensive to produce initially, but sold at "low" price that will reduce margins. Apple wants to move these babies. And move they will. This is some sick shit. App Store-compatible, able to run Mac apps, too. By October at the latest.In all honesty, we may have passed this story up, but we've heard vague reports from reliable sources that Quanta is busy building a touch product for Apple. This latest information seems seems to compliment what we've heard.

Sounds like much more of a MacBook Air cannibalizer than over-sized iPod Touch to me, but with Mobile OS X and App Store well on their way to becoming the next great computing platform, who knows how fast and hard Apple wants to seize that high ground?

Confession: Yes, when one of these crazy AT&T or Intel rumors come up, I draft a rumor-smasher just as soon as I finish the post. Chalk it up to experience.

Case in point: yesterday we (and everyone else in the blogsphere) reported that Intel Germany Geschäftsführer Hannes Schwaderer done let slip word of an Atom-powered iTablet. Or done did he?

"No Intel exec has said anything about any future Apple product, Atom processor or otherwise," an Intel spokesperson told AppleInsider. "I think that’s important to note as everyone speculates on future products from Apple."

And more awkwardly:

“Intel knows nothing over future products of other manufacturers and can therefore over it also nothing say,” press spokesman Mike Cato told ZDNet

Of course, just like AT&T leaking and un-leaking the iPhone Black, this could just be Intel desperately spinning damage control following a "phone call" from Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

So, basically, either the interwebs have gone slappy-happy bonkers with pent-up pre-WWDC mania, or a large-screen, Atom-powered, iChat'ing iPhone Tablet 3G Black is coming our way very, very shortly?

MacRumors, source of the original hubbub, is standing firm on the latter, and offers up further corroboration-by-way-of-translation:

"PCGH-Editor Daniel Waadt was there as well an can attest, that Schwaderer referred to the iPhone as an example for the use of the atom-processor from Intel. The Intel CEO mentioned furthermore, that the display on iPhone 2 would be bigger than on iPhone 1 (although it is already quite big). iPhone 2 is also thinner than iPhone 1."

My bet? iPhone 3G sans-Intel takes stage at WWDC, ships sometime soonish thereafter, and while an iTablet certainly exists, and certainly furthers Apple's mobile WiFi platform and App Store program, we won't hear about it until sometime between Thanksgiving 2008 and Macworld 2009. Only way it makes sense anytime soon is if Steve Jobs smells blood in the water and is willing to sacrifice short-term roadmaps for the ultra-mobile kill.

What do you think?

ReadVia

True story: before the iPhone, Apple's multi-touch screen mobile efforts were focused on a tablet-like device known internally as Safari Pad. But when El Jobso unleashed his awesome powers of prediction, he saw cell phones coming on so strongly, he shifted Apple's gears -- and mobile OS X Touch development efforts -- to what became the iPhone.

Since then -- heck, since way before then, probably back since Jobs first axed the original Apple ultra-mobile, the Newton -- rumors have persisted that Apple was still working on the iTablet/Safari Pad/Mac Touch. And since the iPhone back in January 2007, every time a Jobsnote is scheduled, the interwebs explode with rumor that this time, at last, the dream machine will finally be released.

Well, this time we may have more than just rumor and hope to go on, as Intel Germany Geschäftsführer Hannes Schwaderer let slip that:

There is an iPhone with Intel’s new Atom chip. The device is slightly larger than the current version, Schwaderer said. That is not, however, because of the Intel chip, but because of the larger display used in the new iPhone.

Okay, so possible Non-Disclosure violations aside, does "slightly larger" mean tablet sized to anyone the Apple rumorati? And how does this factor in to previous rumors of the next-gen iPhone being Infineon powered, never mind Apple's recent purchase of PA Semi and its mobile PowerPC architecture?

More and more questions, with less and less time remaining before WWDC...

What do you think? Could this be this year's One More Thing...?

Read

iLounge is reporting the possible leak, via iTunes, of what can only be termed an iPhone/iPod Touch "Fatty". Turns out that the newfangled SDK led a curious developer to Education First Educational Tours "private page" (the tool that would, for example, allow an enterprise to make and release apps accessible only within their own company and not for sale to the general public). Revealed on this "private page" was the tantalizing/horrifying image of the "fatty" (or perhaps the long fabled iTablet Safari Pad?).

Is this just something Education First Educational Tours mocked up? A photo miss-shop? Phil Schiller brainstorming Apple rumors? Or a real leaked product shot (a la 3G Nano?) Only Steve Jobs, Rumor-Smasher, know for sure.

More on this as it develops...

The New York Times is reporting that the iPhone started its life out as a "Safari Pad". An Internet tablet if you will. Once Steve Jobs saw it, he used his panache and morphed it into an iPhone. The author also goes on to say that when he spoke to Steve Jobs at the recent MacWorld in January, he asked if there would be a larger form-factor iPod touch device. Steve Jobs replied,

"I can't talk about unannounced products."

I would personally love a tablet sized device that had Wi-Fi and a data connection a-la Amazon's Kindle. What is in the future for Apple?