OLO mystery gadget bridges gap between iPhone and netbook?
Ξ October 13th, 2008 | → | ∇ Gadgets |
OLO has caught our attention this morning with its mysterious unveiling of a new laptop. Yes, new laptops are ten a penny, but from the teaser image (pictured right) this one has us intrigued for a couple of good reasons.
First off, the unnamed OLO computer has an iPhone dock in place of a mouse track pad. And second, it appears to be running Mac OS X. Oh, and it looks pretty sassy for MacBook / Eee PC knock off too.
Until OLO - whoever that may be - decides to make more details official we can only speculate as to what it will do, but there’s some very exciting potential in there - here’s what we’re thinking:
OLO’s device itself may not come with any internal components to speak of. It would be harnessing the power of the iPhone handset itself, and acting as a docking station with the addition large screen and keyboard. These would make proper mobile computing from the iPhone considerably easier, although it would be limited to the iPhone applications alone.
The advantages of would be that it would cost much less than a normal laptop to produce and so would be even cheaper and lighter than a normal netbook.
It wouldn’t be the first device of this kind either. As portable devices become more powerful, the notion of having a single device that can scale up its potential by slotting into a larger chassis is the way computing could well be evolving.
The other theory is that this might simply be a netbook designed specifically for the iPhone. The iPhone acts as trackpad and presumably gets charged from the device itself, not to mention syncing contacts, iTunes libraries, etc. A neat gimmick, but somewhat less forward thinking.
At first glance, this latter theory seems more likely given that there’s a Mac OS showed on the screen. If the iPhone was running the whole show, there’s no way it would have the power to operate a full OS. But Apple guards its operating system pretty jealously and doesn’t like other companies trying to play along, so we have to assume this is just another Attack of the Crappy Photoshopping we’re experiencing here.
OLO is expected to make the full announcement soon. We’ll keep you posted.
OLO (via CrunchGear)
