It's Official: Modbook (converted Apple Macbook) is Now Shipping

Axiotron put out a press release this afternoon, stating their much anticipated Modbook is "shipping to consumers today".  I just got off the phone with a PR rep who confirmed that today's announcement answers a nearly year long question about ship date, and anyone who's placed an order and has been wondering when it would officially 'ship', well, your ship has come in.  Exactly when it'll arrive, I can't say.  But for all those who have followed the products saga, it's official: the Modbook is shipping, so you can place orders now via the Axiotron website.

   

You'll end up at an authorized resller, Other World Computing, to actually order the Modbook, which is essentially an Apple  Macbook converted into a tablet PC.   The Modbook won Best of Show at the MacWorld Expo 2007, and was second only to the iPhone in terms of consumer interest.

***  From Andreas Haas, President of Axiotron. “The Modbook’s recent designation as an Apple-authorized product has allowed us to better meet the needs of our extremely patient customers and we are proud to be able to ship a product that resets the bar for Mac users everywhere.”

According to the press release:  Axiotron’s Modbook melds Apple MacBook’s speed, power, superior strength and elegance with Wacom’s leading digitizer technology to provide an unparalleled 512 levels of pressure sensitivity for a fast, accurate and intuitive user experience. Offering twice the pen sensitivity and control of any tablet PC on the market, the Modbook gives artists and design oriented professionals the increased freedom, flexibility and precision control to create and edit digital art using a variety of specially designed pen tips that are included with each Modbook.

A perfect blend of style and functionality, each Modbook comes pre-installed with Mac OS X Leopard™, the award winning OS X’s built-in Inkwell^® handwriting recognition, a 2.0 GHz or 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a built-in iSight^® camera and an integrated 24x DVD Combo drive or 8x DVD SuperDrive. Also, every Modbook features a built-in Global Positioning System (GPS).

Ars Technica, just days ago on December 27th, speculated on the ship date of the Modbook, and the possible launch of an official tablet PC from Mac next year. 

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**** January 2nd update:  Looks like everybody's back from holiday vacation.  The bigger sites have finally noted this story, like Macworld and Electronista.  Macworld takes the honors on Techmeme, the hot tech news aggregator, as the flagship for this story today.  Sigh.  Any breaks for the little guys who work on New Year's Eve to catch an under-the-radar story? Maybe next time. 

Comments

[kdaniel]

did they get rid of the keyboard too? I can't find any mention of a keyboard on their site... a TABLET would be great.. but there are times where the keyboard would be preferable to the pen for input.

[passionateconsumer]

kdaniel:

No keyboard. Using the pen provided, all text written is converted to text. From the website:

Built for mobile users, artists, students and professionals, the ModBook enables its user to draw and write directly on the screen, while the handwriting recognition built into Mac OS® X Tiger not only turns hand scribbles into text in every application, but also provides extended control of the system through gesture recognition.

[Me]

Now that it's nearly February 1st it's interesting to note that Axiotron and Other World Computing have been very quiet about how fast orders are truly shipping. Search yourself and try to find people who own or have used one... there are very few to be found. Less than a handful to be exact. If you've ordered one you can't get any info from the company about expected ship dates, only estimates that they are failing to meet (according to the same people who have been waiting a year and still don't have one). To say the least, Axiotron is off to a rough start here, and it appears the last year has proven a rocky road. At this rate, it will only get rockier.