By Grace Chng
Senior Correspondent
chngkeg@sph.com.sg

 

IT'S confirmed. Next Wednesday (Jan 27) Apple will unveil its latest gizmo.

The e-mail invitation was simple: "Come see our latest creation" at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco.

It was the first thing I saw in my in-box this morning. My heart skipped a beat.

Is Apple finally unveiling the iTablet or iSlate? The tech world has been buzzing for months about a thin computing slab with a 10-inch touchscreen that lets people surf the Web to read the newspapers and e-books as well as watch movies.

A media frenzy will certainly happen at the Yerba Buena Centre, a stone's throw from the Moscone Convention Centre where this year's annual Macworld expo and Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference will be held in February and June.

I expect a great jostle since the Yerba Buena Centre can take fewer people than Moscone. So in anticipation of the crowd, Apple said clearly in its e-mail media invitation: Go early to register.

So what of the iTablet? What will it be? Will it alter the computing industry?

From all the online rumours and speculation, the iTablet will be more than an e-reader and a netbook. It is possibly a hybrid of the two devices that lets you curl up in bed to read your favourite Alex Cross novel or news magazine.

Or you can sit on a sofa to surf the Web. It is likely to have 3G and Wi-Fi capability to allow wireless transfers of and mobile access to online content.

For this new gadget in Apple's product family, I've two wishes.

First, that it will be available in Singapore when it hits the store shelves in US. Second that it will cost about US$800 (S$1,112). I hope it will cost closer to US$800 (S$1,112) than US$1,000 as most Apple observers seem to think.

This event will also be significant as it will probably see Steve Jobs in his first major public announcement.

The media present will not only be present to see the new gizmo but to see the legendary Mr Jobs who has been named by Fortune magazine as the CEO of the first decade of the 21st century.

To say the least, I'm excited to be present next Wednesday at the Yerba Buena Centre to see the debut of another Apple gadget that will alter the tech landscape.

Stay tuned next Wednesday (2am Singapore time) as I blog about the highly anticipated Apple launch.

Grace Chng has been present at all the new product debuts of Apple's key products in the last few years the iTunes online store to iPod and iPhone.