A new patent filing by Apple holds hints of a "tablet" computer that the company is widely expected to release early next year at the urging of record companies and book publishers. The filing - released on the US Patent Office website on Thursday - describes an "ink manager" which receives "ink information entered at a pen-based input/display device" and turns them into "strokes" which are passed to a handwriting recognition system. That suggests a pen-based device - rather like Apple's unsuccessful version of the 1990s, the Newton - but which is sensitive to handwriting-style entry. That, in turn, may point to a computer with a normal-sized screen but which dispenses with the standard keyboard, and instead takes its input by direct contact with the screen. There has been increasing expectation that Apple will release a "tablet" style device for use in the home which will let people control other devices such as music, or see album covers in greater detail on a larger screen. Record labels are understood to have lobbied Apple to build such a device as a method to boost music sales, to both sides' benefit because it would boost sales of the devices and of digital downloads.
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