Following yesterday’s article, my friend Darren suggested that it would be great if our Mini Tablet could run the Mac OS X operating system. I could not agree more, and this got me thinking. The only way one can legally build a computer around Apple’s proprietary operating system is by building the computer around an Apple Computer, like Axiotron did with the ModBook. So what if we built the Redux Model 1 around an iPhone or iPod Touch?

I got this epiphany earlier today while stopping at the Apple Store Palo Alto on my way to lunch, and holding an iPod Touch for the first time. This thing is crazy small! And best of all, it has all the bells and whistles we need. It runs the best operating system in the world, it has a powerful enough CPU to run a web browser, it has solid WiFi capabilities, and most importantly, it exists and is available today for a very reasonable price ($299). The only thing lacking is Bluetooth, but that’s a fairly easy one to add.

So what if we built our Mini Tablet as a shell wrapped around either an iPhone or an iPod Touch? All we would need is a large multi-touch screen, a battery, and a well-designed enclosure. If there was a way to connect the iPhone or iPod Touch to such a contraption, building our dream device that way would be a heck of a lot easier than building everything from scratch, and it would have the added benefit of running Mac OS X, with all the cool things the iPhone and iPod Touch have to offer, like a cellular phone, the best music player ever, the ability to play videos, etc.

So, would that be possible? Well, to make it work, we would need two things: one, show something on the screen; two, send user inputs back to the iPhone or iPod Touch. The former is possible, at least with the iPod Touch, which supports 480i (720 x 480) and 576i (720 x 576) video out according to this page from the Apple Store. Such a trick is not possible with the iPhone as of today, but it appears to be a limitation of the firmware, which could be solved down the road. The later might be more tricky, mainly because the software running on the iPhone or iPod Touch might not support it natively, but I could not think of any hardware limitation that would make it impossible.

Now let’s assume that we could technically make it work, for both hardware and software. The real challenge would then become one of industrial design. We would need to build an enclosure that could receive either an iPhone or an iPod Touch, and make it easy to get them in and out without scratches, while not getting in the way of radio signals (plastic is better than metal there).

Because the iPhone and iPod Touch share the same connector, but do not have the same outside dimensions (especially with respect to thickness), we might want to use come kind of a canister that would be specific to the model of handheld used. Such a canister could be made of plastic, covered in the inside with some micro-fiber cloth.

The Mini Tablet would have a slot where this canister would be inserted and securely locked in position. Once in there, the user could then easily insert and eject the iPhone or iPod Touch, much like one would with a PC Card (PCMCIA), with either a push/pull auto-locking mechanism like the one used for flash media, or a retractable ejection button like the one found on PowerBook laptop computers.

The iPhone and iPod Touch are essentially as tall as the Sony Reader is wide, therefore our choice of form factor still applies. For weight and balance purposes, the handheld device should be placed at the center of the Mini Tablet, using available real estate on both sides for batteries. This would make for a centered center of gravity, with most of the weight located at the center of the device itself, making it easier for the device to be rotated from landscape to portrait mode (less centrifugal force when rotating).

So here we are, a step closer to the goal. This is getting really fun…