Pining for Apple’s Tablet and Apple TV upgrades

When will Apple unleash the Tablet Mac attack?

For what seems like ages now, Apple fans all over the world have waited with baited breath for the Holy Grail of iGadgets … the Apple Tablet Mac.

Rumors abound that the Apple Tablet will just be a 7-inch or 9-inch version of the popular iPhone, running the iPhone OS, not a version of Leopard or the new Snow Leopard.

The Financial Times says the unit is being rushed to production for Christmas ’09.

And PC World says the recently returned Steve Jobs is now overseeing the whole Tablet development himself.

But today, some light on the OS…

After taking a good look at the features of Apple’s new Snow Leopard OS, Leander Kahney at Cult of Mac finds a massive on-screen keyboard tucked away in the OS Control Panel. (see image)

More from Kahney:

Of course, it can’t be used as a real virtual keyboard until Apple introduces a touchscreen device. At the moment, it just records the keystrokes on your physical keyboard and shows the characters that will be typed when the Option key is held down, and so on.

Yeah, I know, this isn’t proof that Snow Leopard is designed for a touchscreen device — IE. the tablet everyone knows Apple is working on — but I got pretty excited when I saw it. It looks like a key touchscreen UI element to me.

More after the jump…

For Apple, "It's only Rock and Roll..."

PC World says that the rumors says that the 09.09.2009 Apple press conference, titled “It’s only Rock ‘n Roll”, will not have any Tablet announcement … yeah, I know, booo!!! … but will be loaded with iPod and iTunes improvements, including sharing of playlists on popular social networks like Facebook.  Oh yeah, and The Beatles catalog release … maybe!

And AppleInsider reports that improvements to the long-maligned and under-appreciated Apple TV could also come out of the conference on 09.09, giving it a subscription service and possible DVR capabilities (awwwwwww yeah!! TiVo, we’re lookin’ at YOU!).

But the Tablet could be a key part of this new TV initiative. Imagine being able to access your stored programming from the Apple TV, live IPTV or cable-provided shows anytime on your Tablet/MacBook/iPhone through your at-home wi-fi wireless network, similar to SageTV‘s home-network DVR (which works VERY well).

So, it’s wait and see … stay tuned, true believers …