Apple to Reveal Tablet Today

Speculation about Apple’s newest game-changer, the Tablet, has run wild in recent weeks. Today, at 10 a.m. PST, the computer giant will finally give the public a taste of the new device at a press conference in San Francisco.

The Tablet is expected to have a 10-inch display and keyboard-free design, be WiFi- and wireless-capable and run all the applications already developed for the iPod Touch and the iPhone.

Gizmodo will be live blogging the press event.

What the tablet may do, according to an article in the New York Times this morning, is provide users with an iTunes-like interface for downloading content from their favorite media outlets for a fee. For ailing media companies, who have long lamented the decision to start offering content for free online when the internet was in its nascent stages, the Tablet offers an opportunity to undo the mistakes of the past. As the Times points out, cell phone users have been willing to pay for music (ringtones) and communication (text messages) on their phones that they expect to get for free on the computer.

Mark Johnson, a photojournalism instructor at the University of Georgia, explained on his blog today why Tablet subscription-based news may appeal to consumers who are used to getting their information for free. “You fire it up and here comes today’s New York Times, Wall Street Journal and anything else you’d like. Easily read, portable. Would you pay for that? I would… because I can get the interactive graphics, multimedia content, high resolution photos … everything I can get at my desk, I can get at the coffee shop or kitchen table.”

Trip Hawkins, a founder of Electronic Arts and now chief executive of cell phone-gaming company Digital Chocolate, echoed Johnson’s sentiment in an interview with the Times. “When you have a device that is this convenient and fun for consumers to use," he said, "you can get a lot more people interested in paying for and engaging with the content. Big media companies should be all over this like a cheap suit.”

With the New York Times Company, Time, Condé Nast and Hearst publishing companies already working on versions of their publications for the Tablet, Apple’s new product seems poised to upend the publishing industry the way iTunes and the iPhone changed music and mobile computing.

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.