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Comment by frisco | Hacker News Reader

This article treats the Apple Tablet as obvious fact. Has this actually been established? I know the rumors have hit a fever pitch, but has there been anything 100% credible yet?

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Yes, in so far as major, main-stream news organizations (NYTimes, Wall St. Journal, etc.) have treated it as fact for months now. Additionally, if Apple were not about to announce a tablet they would have squashed this ages ago, as they have squashed previous out-of-control rumors that had no basis, like rumors about the imminent release of an ebook reader or netbook. Apple knows it can't allow this level of hype to build up if nothing is to come from it, and it knows that if February comes without a tablet announcement its stock with take a huge hit. Therefore, their silence is as good a confirmation as needed that the tablet does indeed exist and will indeed be announced soon.

So what you are saying is that I could post a blog saying anything I want and get a lot of traffic, apple wont complain, and places like HN will post it?

You're at least 10 years late to the party of making an Apple rumors site, but yes that's definitely something you could do.

No, because one blog post from (sorry to say) an un-credible source is not comparable to the current noise around the Apple tablet. Again, major newspapers have reported on the tablet as fact. Major sources in the apple-news world (DaringFireball, AppleInsider, MacRumors, etc.) have done the same. Since this is widely being treated as fact, if it were not true Apple would be forced to do something about it, especially as they will be having a special media event in January after which their stock will fall precipitously if they do not announce a tablet.

I'm pretty unconvinced that it's a worthwhile product. I don't see a worthwhile gap in the market in between smartphones and laptops.

Smartphones are great because they fit in your pocket, but annoying because they lack some of the features of laptops. Laptops are great because they have full keyboards, optical drives etc but are annoying because they won't fit in your pocket. I don't really have any desire, though, for a device which has no keyboard and still won't fit in my pocket.

It will certainly fill the gap on my dining-room table that used to be filled with piles of newspapers and magazines.

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