It’s too early for trance for this mellow (mmm, bed…sleeeeeep) but the 3D models of iconic Apple products from the Newton to the OG iBook to iPad are genuinely delicioso enough to keep your eyes open for. Then sleep. [ Recombu ]

Will the Apple tablet finally, really be unveiled? We’re at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco (see above) patiently waiting to get inside and get this thing underway! Keep reading after the break for the minute by minute coverage! Continue reading Live from the Apple ‘latest creation’ event Live from the Apple ‘latest creation’ event originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

The reason Windows tablets have sucked is that they’ve crammed desktop interfaces onto tablets. Assumedly, the Apple tablet ’s magic is in the interface . So it’s funny that Apple’s secret tablet from over 14 years ago made the same mistake. The Newton was still in production. But what Apple secretly pitched to select medical centers over a decade ago wasn’t a Newton. It was a 10-inch-or-so tablet, running an interface that was much, much closer to the full desktop Mac OS—Mac OS 8 at the time—modified with pen input.

The Newton , like the forthcoming tablet, was introduced with expectations that it would revolutionize personal computing. Apple’s then-chairman noted, “It has been said that Apple either walks on water or it sinks.” That was after the Newton, well, sank. This vintage NYTimes review , dated September 23, 1993, is remarkable for how forward-thinking it was—except it’s clear now, more than 16 years later, that the Newton isn’t the ancestor of a tablet as we currently conceive of it. The Newton was the pre-iPhone. The operating system is “communication enabled,” which means, in theory, that all data can be faxed, e-mailed, beamed via infrared or sent to a desktop computer or printer.

In this totally unscientific but reasonably fair test, one man writes a long paragraph on several different devices (including pen and paper ) to test speed. The results may surprise and anger you. The contestants: MacBook (unibody), pen and paper, iPhone (portrait), Apple Newton, Palm Treo 650 (hardware QWERTY), and Palm VX (Graffiti handwriting recognition software). There are some details that are a little troubling, of course; with handheld keyboards, speed greatly depends on how often you use then, and the tester has been using an iPhone as his main handheld for 18 months. A dedicated BlackBerry (or Pre) user would almost certainly do better with a hardware QWERTY than the tester did. That being said, it’s pretty much impossible to have a perfectly fair test of this sort, and the tester clearly did what he could to eke out the best time possible for each device, so just take his results with a grain of salt

If the most popular rumor is true, and the Apple Tablet finally has a 10.1-inch display, here’s how it will compare with the iPhone and the Newton MessagePad 2000. Clearly, it won’t fit in your pocket. Not even Phil’s pocket. Click the image above to see the high definition version. Oh Phil. [ Gizmodo's Tablet Coverage ]

When the first whispers of an Apple tablet started going around, we’d found it amusing that Apple hired back an old Newton PDA developer . Now that the mythical device is closer , we’ve been reminiscing more about Apple’s original tablet. In the late 1980s, Apple appeared to be in the middle of a resurgence. John Sculley had forced out the volatile Steve Jobs in 1985, and a cadre of older, more experienced executives focused on building the Apple and Macintosh brands. The company was beginning to grow complacent, working to protect Macintosh revenues at the cost of interoperability and new technology.

The Newton might be in the valley between an iPhone and Apple’s upcoming tablet, but it’s essentially Apple’s first stab at the form factor. And here’s how they promoted it. Setting aside the ’90s taint on the ad, it’s strange to see how much Apple pumped the faxing angle on the Newton in its subsequent TV spots, which we’ll be revisiting soon.

More dusty Newton prototypes have emerged from the archives as everyone’s busy drycleaning their favorite black turtlenecks in preparation of Apple’s tablet announcement. The Bic and Cadillac hit the FCC but never quite made it to shelves, apparently. The various photos were uploaded to Flickr by users Sonnyhung and Jimabeles , who says that he saw the prototypes at a “mobile computing development group” at Coke (no idea if he means Coca-Cola, or another company), saying that: “Apple was more or less searching for a reason to build the tablet and never did find a market. I have no idea how many exist.

Apple just hired Michael Tchao back from a 15 year stint out of Cupertino as VP of Product Marketing, reporting directly to Phil Schiller, SVP of Product Marketing. Mike was previously on the Newton team before he left to work on stuff like Nike’s Techlab, which produced products like the Nike+ iPod system that I actually used three hours ago. Will Michael be back to head up the marketing efforts for the Apple Tablet ? Or maybe some sort of exercise device similar to the Nike+? Is it annoying when I write sentences in the form of a question?