Across the Pond Archives

A look at where the upcoming Apple Tablet could fit within the current device market and how it will continue to shift the focus away from the desktop towards one based on mobile connectivity.

–

It’s coming down to the wire and final predictions for the Apple Tablet continue to roll in. The anticipation has been building and the Rumor Mill is operating at full tilt. MacRumors sums it up well:

Over the years, there have always been those rumored Apple products and announcements that seem to take on a life of their own. Products that have been rumored for so long that you never actually think they will ever arrive, and when they finally do, it seems surreal. We can remember three other moments like this:
- PowerMac G5 (2003)
- Macintosh Moving to Intel Processors (2005)
- The iPhone (2007)

The Tablet easily falls into that category. Apple fans have been demanding a tablet-sized device from Apple as far back as the Newton days (15 years ago). Later interest in such a device morphed into a Mac version which we were convinced was poised to be released in 2003 but killed at the last minute. But over the past year, the Apple tablet has once again become the focus of the rumor community — and this time it seems certain.

One of the key aspects of the conversation lately has been a simple question. “Why?”
Put simply, “Why would I buy a Tablet when I already have a laptop and smartphone?” (iPhone or otherwise). To address this, it’s worth considering the not too distant past and the evolution from Desktop to ‘Portable’ computing.

Laptops, Desktops, and Redefining the Space In Between

When laptops first entered the scene in the mid-80′s they were the very early stages of a gradual trend toward mobile computing. As with most technologies, on day one they lacked a little something. In this case, that something was performance; or at least performance per unit cost. The machines were cost prohibitive for most, causing them to be considered as,

“A small niche market” thought suitable mostly for “specialized field applications” such as “the military, the Internal Revenue Service, accountants and sales representatives”. – Wikipedia

Even within the last decade you had to make a conscious decision to sacrifice performance for portability when purchasing a laptop, and all for a fairly steep price. Gradually that tradeoff has been mitigated for many as technology advanced. Today more laptops are sold than desktops as users choose the former over the latter for their primary machines.

The ability to surf the Internet wirelessly at public places, the need to be able to take your office out with you when you travel, and an increasing range of notebook computers have all led to lower desktop sales.’
Laptops posted a milestone in the third quarter of 2008, passing desktop PC sales for the first time, according to research group iSuppli. – DailyMail

So what’s the next step? Some would say Tablets of course! Well, not exactly. After all, those have been tried before and still haven’t really gotten off the ground right?

Hewlett-Packard and other computer makers have sold such [Tablets] with Microsoft software since 2002, with little success. Even after years on the market, less than 1 percent of notebook computer sales are tablets. – MercuryNews

Well then, how about we just keep making the laptop smaller and smaller? Netbooks must be the answer! Apple would say No and I have to agree. True, that Netbooks have given growth to the PC industry in recent quarters but about their only redeeming quality is that they’re cheap. The experience sucks, the performance is weak, and the limited real estate cripples them to performing only the most basic of tasks.

Think Different

So what will Apple do differently? Well to put it bluntly… they’re going to have some balls and go about things differently. They won’t simply release the same old notion of a computer in a smaller form factor and with a touch screen. They will have polished the hell out of an OS, specifically built for a medium sized multi-touch device, and one based on the underpinnings of OS X Touch.

I believe the predictions of an “iPhone on steroids” will pan out. Perhaps this will include a new ‘Home’ screen somewhere between the Desktop in OS X or Windows and the iPhone’s basic Springboard implementation. We may find a windowed environment for switching between multiple running apps or widgets side-by-side a la the Dashboard.

Interaction will be through an advanced implementation of multi-touch of course, and most of the world will be shocked if there is a physical keyboard or more than a handful of external buttons. I’d bet on Voice Control making an appearance for navigating the OS and possibly for text entry as well. Handwriting recognition is still a possibility but I can’t see it for the moment. Haptic feedback from the virtual keyboard? That would be slick. Time will tell.

The key point here is that there is plenty of room for breaking the classic human computer interaction paradigm of using a keyboard and mouse, and this is what will make the Tablet a success where other Windows based models or Netbooks have failed. Previous Tablets were limited to using the standard Windows environment with a stylus, and Netbooks didn’t offer anything new save making the computer as small as possible. The problem is that as you change to these form factors, the classic view of the operating system and input device falls apart, and only now with Apple’s success in bringing Multi-touch to market will we begin to see a solution that works well in practice.

Function and Purpose

But what will the Tablet do and why should we care? What has changed since Jobs quip about the purpose of such devices?

The tablets kept getting shelved at Apple because Mr. Jobs, whose incisive critiques are often memorable, asked, in essence, what they were good for besides surfing the Web in the bathroom. – NYTimes

Just as the iPhone was positioned as a 3-in-one device, “Mobile Phone, iPod, and Internet Communicator” so will the Tablet. What will the three key areas be? Here’s my prediction:

• Apps
• Internet
• Digital Print

Apps

Apps will no doubt be a huge part of the Tablet ecosystem. Most expect current Touch OS Apps to run on the Tablet either at their current resolution or with an updated version for the Tablet’s larger display. Just as with the OS, App developers will need to tailor their Apps to the medium, meaning that a user interface which is somewhat constrained on the iPhone will have a bit more freedom to operate on the Tablet. This could reduce the amount of UIViews needed to display the different states of the App, offer more immersive environments for gaming, and give new flexibility for Apps to display more data on screen at any single point in time.

Internet

As with the iPhone, a huge benefit to consumers will be the always on connectivity of the device. Real-time media consumption via blogs and online news, a persistent need to check and update social networks, and the general desire to be connected to content that matters to you will be a key feature of the device. WiFi will certainly be included but most also expect some form of mobile data connectivity. My bet is on a 3G contract being an optional add-on for the Tablet that may also offer a reduced subsidized price, but there are many models it could take on.

Digital Media

Finally, as has been discussed at great length, Apple appears to be attempting to reinvent the publishing industry and none too soon it seems. Think about it. Print newspapers are hemorrhaging subscribers and online subscriptions aren’t keeping pace. While the web should be able to offer a similar layout experience to print, it’s obviously less portable, less accessible in real-time if you’re out and about, and less of an emotional connection than holding a physical paper or magazine.

There’s something inherently less emotional about the web on a PC. You can’t pick it up and hold it. You can’t touch it. And that’s all about to change.

Apple will attempt to do for print what it’s done for music, and while some say this further threatens the industry by turning its business model upside down, there are strong arguments that it’s actually creating a new viable economy that will thrive in the long term. Picture an electronic version of Wired magazine that you can page through, appreciate the design, view interactive content, and dive in deeper to reference past articles, all at your fingertips. This isn’t dramatically different from what web technologies should be able to deliver but again I’d argue there’s a disconnect when sitting at a screen behind your desk compared to holding a device you can take with you. People want to consume this content on the move. I just hope Apple gets it right.

Tying it all together

One of the aspects that continues to fascinate me is the gradual shift from a box on your desk to an integrated all in one portable system. More important than the hardware really is the redefining of the OS and GUI to a system that works more as an appliance than a typical desktop PC. John Siracusa covered it a few weeks ago when discussing his last decade of OS X reviews.

“The desktop is the one “place” on the computer that every user knows how to get to. People don’t even think of it as existing in the file hierarchy (though, of course, it does); to them it’s a location in the physical sense, and items placed within it behave almost as if they were real objects.”

PC’s today are all based on a file system hirearchy that the user needs to understand to some extent. My files go in my ~/Documents on my Mac and the ‘My Documents’ folder in Windows. Programs are installed in ~/Applications or C:WindowsProgram Files. I’ve argued before that one of the big shifts when switching from a PC to a Mac was the need to “Let Go” specifically with iTunes and iPhoto. These applications completely remove the file system from the users view. Data lives in the Application and the App takes care of presenting the content in a way that makes sense; organized by artist and playlist for example in the case of music or by date and album for your photos. This is taken to the extreme in the iPhone where the file-system isn’t exposed to the user at all. Apps live on the phone, appear in the SpringBoard, and take care of storing their data automatically.

I expect the Tablet to fall somewhere in the middle with much of the filesystem abstracted away as part of the OS GUI. There still seems to be room for a filesystem of sorts however. Rather than sandbox content within a given application, could portions be exposed so that files could be shared and interchanged between apps. Already there are some APIs for handling this on the iPhone… music is one example where your library is accessible by games and other applications and can be played in the background. Could this be done for other files as well? Time will tell.