Hunting for the Safari Pad

There’s been a lot of speculation over the concept of an Apple-built, Newton-like handheld device designed to better handle mobile web browsing than the iPhone, without all the extremities of a notebook even the size of the MacBook Air. Many theorize that one application of such a gizmo would be a beautiful, Apple-esque implementation of an ebook reader.

When the Amazon Kindle was announced, tech pundits saw it as an indication that perhaps Apple was headed in the same direction. John Markoff at the New York Times draws an interesting parallel that folks deep in the Mac community would recognize:

At Macworld Mr. Jobs told me he was skeptical about the Amazon Kindle book reader because most Americans don’t read. That touched off a firestorm of criticism and speculation. My favorite bit of analysis was that this must mean he is readying his own book reader. A familiar Jobsian strategy is to denigrate an entire category — he did this with cellphones, for example — before reinventing it with Apple panache.

Markoff pulls together a few more subtle hints at the possibility of a “Safari Pad” mobile doohickey from Apple, including Jobs “snapping” at him when asked about it, Apple’s brilliant miniscule engineering, and Intel’s new Atom processor line.

I have an allergy to books — must be the paper or something — so an ebook-reader from Apple might be just what I need to finally learn how to read, and show up my neighbor’s Kindergartner who thinks he’s so cool because he read all of Green Eggs and Ham. Snooty five-year-olds and their damned educations.