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The deafening buzz over the prospects of an Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) netbook often drowns out the fact that a Mac tablet computer does exist -- although it isn't exactly made by the Infinite Loop crowd.
Axiotron, of El Segundo, Calif., has had a tablet notebook based on the Mac platform in the market for two years.
As Apple watchers know, the company guards its hardware position with the ferocity of a leopardess protecting a litter, but Axiotron -- a combination of the Greek word for think, "axio," and "tron" for electronic -- has managed to avoid Apple's wrath by adopting a creative business model.
Tablet in a Kit
Its computers are notebooks manufactured and sold by Apple that have been converted into Axiotron tablets, called "Modbooks," with a kit sold by the company. The kits are sold to resellers who use them to convert Apple notebooks they've bought or are sent to them by consumers for conversion.
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The resellers must be not only certified by Apple, but also certified by Axiotron -- a system designed to ensure quality. In addition, Axiotron provides a warranty comparable to Apple's so consumers don't lose the protection they'd normally get when buying an Apple notebook.
"We're looked at as an aftermarketer," Axiotron CEO and cofounder Andreas Haas told MacNewsWorld. "Once a product is built and sold by Apple, you can do pretty much anything to it on behalf of the customer."
Hardware Diplomacy
In addition, the company has been assiduous in maintaining good relations with Apple. "We've tried to be a very, very, very, very good citizen in the Apple market," Haas emphasized, "and we've tried to follow the written rules as well as the unwritten ones."
Axiotron, he maintained, hasn't raised Apple's hackles because the Modbook maker isn't competing with the Mac maker.
"We're not a competing product because every sold Modbook is a sold MacBook, and a tablet Mac sold is a tablet PC not sold," he reasoned.
"If you remember the time when there was clone business around -- the idea behind that was to enable one or two companies to penetrate niche markets that were too small for Apple itself to address," he recalled."That is exactly what we are doing with our product."
The clone business, of course, hasn't gone away completely. Psystar is still making Mac clones, though Apple's lawyers are busy trying to sink it. Axiotron endures no such legal misery.
Win-Win for Apple
Apple also benefits from Axiotron's warranty program, Haas contended.
"By our taking on the warranty for both the top and bottom of the unit, it's a total win-win for Apple," he argued. "They sell their MacBook and never have to think of it again."
Is all the gassing about a tablet-Mac-cum-netbook creating anxiety at Axiotron? No, said Haas.
No Competition
One popular prediction holds that Apple's supposed "tablet" would be aimed at consumers and be an enlarged version of the iPod touch. That kind of device wouldn't be a competitor for the Modbook, according to Axiotron's CEO.
"The operating system you see on an iPod or iPhone is designed for netbook-like applications, not full-blown applications," he maintained. "Our customers are running Photoshop and other applications on our Modbooks."
"If you take an iPod or an iPhone and scale its screen up to seven or 10 inches, then you have something that people could rightly refer to as a tablet solution," he continued. "But it's not really anything that I have to worry about because my customers need more power, and they need a pen."
"Drawing with a finger is fun when you're four years old, but if you're working on an animation movie, you're going to want a pen," he added.
Apple Tablet Doubtful
Nevertheless, Haas, who was part of the team at Apple that developed the Newton, a pen-based, handheld personal digital assistant, would welcome a finger-controlled tablet.
"I know it's coming," he said. "I've seen it coming for a long time, and I can't wait for it because I want my Newton back."
There are those, however, who believe the Apple tablet is strictly the stuff of dreams.
A larger iPod or iPhone doesn't seem likely, according to Michael Gartenberg,
vice president of strategy 
and analysis at Interpret.
"It's hard to see how that would fit in with Apple's lineup right now," he told MacNewsWorld.
"Devices that live between the phone and the full-sized laptop have really not done historically well in the market, and unless Apple has a very different spin on those things, it would be interesting to see how they would differentiate themselves from the devices that have come before and failed," he observed.
"Perhaps that's why they haven't got into that space just yet," he added.
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