Our minds on media.

Ok, the Apple keynote is coming up and I’ve been checking out the usual rumor mills among other highly regarded Apple sites and I’ve come away with the feeling that everyone is missing something. Normally, I wouldn’t use my blog for speculation, but I can’t shake it—it seems so obvious to me! There are rumors aplenty that Apple is going to release an ultraportable notebook (or subnotebook) and some even think that it’s a bad idea. But a subnotebook would be so… well, Sony, not Apple. It wouldn’t ceate a new product category the way that Apple likes to do (see Newton, iMac, iPod, iPhone). Moreover, Steve Jobs has said that he was more than just intrigued with the iPhone’s touchscreen capabilities—that he could see the technology influencing the entire line of Apple products. And I think it’s precisely the touchscreen technology’s influence that all the subnotebook rumors are missing—namely because they all have keyboards! ((Well, not everyone, sort of.)) Imagine instead, a big Nintendo DS—a subnotebook with two screens. These screens operate in tandem so that documents and windows can be spread across them, or one or the other can become an input device (a keyboard being just one of those). That’s my prediction, at any rate. And at least part of the reason that I feel like it’s not too wild is because Apple’s been after this device for a while. It might’ve been a Sculley-era Apple vision, but Jobs is the only who could make it a reality. Regardless, the keynote will still be valuable.