Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Attention Publishers: Here’s a Fantasy Tablet for Your Fantasy Tablet Magazines

Since we’ve spent the past few months dreaming about what a magazine might look like on a tablet from the future, why not do a little dreaming about the tablet itself?

Sound good? Then take a gander at the XO-3, a tablet that the people from One Laptop Per Child think they’d like to have available in 2012.

Since it’s pretty much purely conceptual at this stage, the details don’t really matter all that much. But for what it’s worth, according to Forbes, OLPC says the thing will be thinner than the iPhone, may use components from the likes of Plastic Logic and Pixel Qi and will sell for $75.

The gadget, like OLPC’s other projects, is aimed at kids in the developing world. But if the tablet ends up looking–and performing–anything like the concept stuff, then it’s not a stretch to imagine that ordinary consumers would want to get their hands on it too, just as they did with OLPC’s first computer.

Or not. Gizmodo politely suggests that the OLPC guys are about as likely to produce the thing as I am. But then again, the OLPC guys don’t necessarily think they’re going to produce it either; they think that if they make the tablet an open-source project, they can spur someone else into actually producing it.

If you like your slideshows to move without your help, you can check out a full gallery here. If you want to pick your own pix, try this one.

Meanwhile, an update on the tablet everyone is most eager to see: The Wall Street Journal, following up on Apple’s (AAPL) plan to get into the TV subscription business, says that “people briefed by” the company expect its legendary tablet to show up  “by the end of March.”

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