MacMost Now 31: The Modbook Tablet Mac

Eve Park takes a look at the Modbook from Axiotron, a tablet Mac made from a MacBook with a pressure-sensitive tablet screen.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi! This is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.
One of the rumors from before Macworld Expo last week, was to see if Java [?] may announce some sort of tablet Mac: a portable Mac that you could write on. Well, he didn't, but there is such a thing as a tablet Mac. It's called a Modbook, and it's from Axiotron. 
Eve Park from MacMost had a chance to talk with somebody from Axiotron about it. Let's take a look.
Eve Park:  Hello! This is Eve with MacMost.com, and I'm here with Nathan Oshidari...
Nathan Oshidari:  Hi.
Eve:  ...and he's going to show me the Modbook. Oh, my God. I'm so excited. [laughs] So, basically what you've done here is you've taken a Macbook and you've turned it into a tablet. Why don't you show me how that works?
Nathan:  Right. Axiotron is a custom-solution manufacturer and designer. We take things like a MacBook and turn it into more interesting devices like Modbook for more niche audiences like an artist such as yourself who would want a portable device to be able to draw and sketch and express themselves on. 
So, as you can see here, it's a pressure-sensitive device. So the harder you press, the more ink or paint you're laying down. Our whole goal here was to basically mimic the pencil and paper or paint and canvas experience that you're used to as a traditional artist and still keep the platform portable.
Eve:  Does it have the same level of sensitivities as a Wacom tablet or other tablets on the market?
Nathan:  Yeah. In fact, we are using Wacom technology inside of this in order to drive the pen here. What we've done is work with Wacom to actually double the pressure sensitivity compared to any other portable tablet computer on the market today. This is the only one that's got 512 levels of pressure.
Eve:  So, under the tablet here, that's a real MacBook.
Nathan:  Absolutely.
Eve:  Straight from Apple?
Nathan:  Right. So all the machines we have here are 2.2 GHz processors with up to 4 gigs of ram in them. These are all fully loaded with 4 gigs right now. They all come with either combo drives or super drives. You can see on the side here hopefully, all of the ports that are on your Macbook are still there. We've got the mini dvi video output, FireWire, 2 USB ports, and both analog and digital optical outputs.
Gary:  Prices for the Modbook start at $2290. You can pay a little more for a little more ram, a little more hard drive. You can find out more at Axiotron.com.
'Til next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

MacMost Now 31: The Modbook Tablet Mac

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