NYT Says Apple Tablet is Coming

Nick Bilton:

But the icing on the cake comes from a current senior employee inside Apple. When one of my colleagues here asked if the rumors of the Apple tablet were true, and when we could expect such a device, the response from his source was, “I can’t really say anything, but, let’s just say Steve is extremely happy with the new tablet.”

Yet another recently departed Apple employee tipped me: “You will be very surprised how you interact with the new tablet.”

A former Apple employee, whose name appears on numerous Apple patents, worked on an Apple tablet five years ago and recently told me when the first version of the tablet was shelved by Steve Jobs, a lot of the technology made it into other devices. He explained that components of these early stage concepts are already out in the marketplace. If you have an iPhone, for example, you’re carrying around a mini version of an early Apple tablet. He also says that one of the barriers to producing the early tablets was the lack of software. The success of the App Store and the eagerness of the publishers show that this won’t be a problem for any new devices.