WebProNews

Rumors of a Mac Tablet spurred a question to Google CEO Eric Schmidt about what his company and Apple may be doing to make that product a reality. The answer, of course, did not directly address the question. The two companies are doing "more and more things together." Evidence of that came during Apple CEO Steve Jobs' MacWorld keynote, where his iPhone unveiling included a look at Google Maps on the device. Excitement over those comments, which hit the Internet courtesy of MarketWatch, has spread to several Mac sites:

Without commenting specifically on the rumor, Schmidt said Google and Apple are "doing more and more things together. We have similar goals, similar competitors."

Schmidt likely meant Microsoft, but when it comes to applications Yahoo should merit a mention. They want to be on desktops and mobiles just as much as Google does. A tablet running a Mac operating system and hosting a number of Google applications doesn't look any more likely today than Apple Tablet rumors have over the years. Steven Frank suggested several reasons why an Apple Tablet, though widely desired, probably won't become reality. For one:

Remember the Jobs quote that "we make computers; computers have keyboards"? As angry as that made me and every other Newton owner as the axe fell, history has proven him right. Virtually all popular smartphones now sport keyboards. The "slate" (keyboardless) Tablet PC form factor is virtually non-existent any more. People want keyboards. Could Apple still make a convertible Mac Tablet? Sure... but what would be... the point?

The speculators populating the comments on a related post on Digg have generated one interesting and plausible idea: sending the .Mac service to Google's server farms. Ridding .Mac of its $99 annual fee would make Apple's diehard user community pretty happy. ---