Crave hangs with people in high places -- that"s how we get exclusives and free food. A few weeks ago we were having a civilised dinner with our friends at Asus and angling for cool stories when we were told in a very hushed manner: "Asus is helping Apple build a Tablet PC."
We"re tempted to ignore all Apple rumours because there"s just so many of them, but this rings true because Asus is Apple"s contract manufacturer. It"s one of the companies responsible for building the iBooks, PowerBooks and MacBooks of this world, so when their guys tell us they"re building an Apple Tablet, we believe them.
We checked back with our source at Asus on a different day and they confirmed that the Apple Tablet will not be based on existing Asus designs such as the R1. It will come from a completely new blueprint, possibly based on the patent Apple filed back in May 2005. We"re guessing it"ll be based on Intel Core architecture, a tweaked version of Leopard, and have all the multi-touch, CoverFlow goodness we"ve seen in the iPhone and iPod touch.