Apple Tablet rumors: A comprehensive timeline

Apple's top-secret but soon-to-be-revealed "iSlate" has been the subject of feverish speculation since...2002

You may have heard the deafening buzz of rumors that a certain Cupertino-based computer maker is planning to unveil a world-conquering new gadget on January 27th. But few people are aware that speculation about the Apple tablet — much of it, of course, wildly inaccurate — began eight years ago and has been building ever since:

Sept. 2002: When a reporter from the International Herald Tribune asks Apple CEO Steve Jobs if Apple plans to make a tablet computer, Jobs blurts out: "Do you want to handwrite all your e-mail? We have all the technology...we just don't know whether it will be successful."

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