The Tablet

Preface: I wrote this on January 5th, but never got around to posting it. I thought I'd put it up today, just before the announcement.

I can't help but write something about all the rumors floating around about Apple's impending iSlate, iPad, iTablet, or whatever they'll call it. No one knows for sure, but there is so much speculation out there it's almost like the speculation itself will create the product.

Apple has proven that they can define a market that makes sense (I'd say redefine, but they rarely look at something like that). The iPhone has taken 'smart' phones and brought them down to the level where normal people can use them without a PhD. Honestly, if you take a look out there... only the Droid is starting to compete -- but it's still a little geeky for mere mortals. It defines a whole paradigm for mobile hand-held computing. The iPod was also a market defining product. It took a few years to implement, but they slowly and steadily took a fringe market and made it mainstream. It does take focus to build this stuff out, and when they focus -- watch out.

Apple isn't immune to missteps, though. I think AppleTV is one of them. It just seems to be missing something. I think it's missing that true Apple focus to make it happen. Apple doesn't dominate that market, and it is a crowded market. Of course, when Apple came out with this product -- it did more than the others. It's just that it seems to have withered on the vine since then. People want it to do more, and Apple stubbornly sticks to the same story of "it wasn't meant to do that". I'm hoping for a surprise here, but I'm just not too sure.

The time is right for something new in the space between the iPhone and MacBook. Netbooks are creeping into this territory, but Apple doesn't want to make a crippled MacBook. It's time for a new interaction model to cover what people do in this space. I'm probably not the target market for this, but let me try and speculate what I'd do with it.

Watch videos. I will occasionally go out to the car at lunch or on a plane to watch a show or video podcast on my iPod touch. Sometimes I'll take it up to bed, but usually when I'm home I'll use my MacBook to watch videos online. Neither of these experiences work well for me - I'd prefer a screen size between the two, and an interface that doesn't get it the way -- something closer to the iPhone OS works well for this.

Read books. I've been reading a PDF book lately on my MacBook, and it's just not ideal. The interface just gets in the way. I've also tried several e-reader apps on the iPod touch, and it is okay for a few lines of text, but my hand gets tired and I have to keep my eyes too close to the device. I've used the smaller Kindle, and it's great for the books that they distribute, but you need the bigger one to really enjoy a PDF on it, otherwise the text is just too small. If the iSlate incorporates some book-like e-reader functionality, it would have to be comfortable to hold and have an interface that doesn't get in the way. I'm not fond of any of the 'standards' out there, so I'd like this to be an open-ended sort of application.

Compose messages. Email, Blog posts, and Twitter updates come to mind first here. I don't enjoy writing emails on the iPhone. It's better than others, but for anything more than a screenful, I'd just rather have some space to edit with. The laptop is great for this, but I will often get distracted with other things while I'm supposed to be writing -- I've had to resort to tricking myself with apps like WriteRoom and OmmWriter to keep myself focused on the task at hand. I honestly can't imaging touch-typing on an over-sized iPhone, so I don't quite know how they'd solve this one for me without a keyboard or a pen. If they do pick a pen (an odd choice, considering how most pen computers have gone out of favor), I'm not sure I'd enjoy it as much since my handwriting has become so poor from lack of practice. Either way, the task itself is something that I'd like to do on a tweener device like this.

Browse the web. The big time suck that it is, and probably my worst addition. I want the full web, though. As much as Flash annoys me for being a proprietary plug-in that mostly just sucks through my CPU, I'd still prefer it to be on a device of this class -- if only just to let me access the multitude of free web videos out there that rely on this. HTML 5 just doesn't look like it solved that video problem yet. Some online apps still require Flash for some of their more graphical widgets as well, like Mint's charts.

Casual games. Maybe just a little bit. I don't game much anymore, but I like a few games on the iPod touch. I'm trying to get through Monkey Island again, because I loved that game growing up, and I open up Pocket God every now and then. The rest seem to be seasonal for me, depending on what mood I'm in.

That's it. Anything more than that, and I'd say go get a MacBook. It's not much, but it's a big portion of my day that could be moved from either the iPhone or the MacBook. Other stuff would be great, but I probably wouldn't use any of that in my purchasing decision.

Notice how only two of those really would require network access? And only one of those needs constant connectivity. I think this device could get away with being WiFi only. There's enough free WiFi out there to make that convenient. With the size of a tablet, you're not going to be walking around holding it and networking -- it's more of a sit down and use it device.

Now, let's consider price. I think it's got to fit between the high-end iPod touch and the MacBook. You could have a high-end model that encroaches on MacBook territory, but there needs to be at least one model that's usable in between the other products.

The real fun with Apple is how are they going to get there. There has to be some software magic to pull all of this together into a new platform that doesn't make you feel like you're missing something from the MacBook, or that too much has been crusted over the iPhone. I agree with the others out there that there is going to be something different about this platform that makes it feel different enough to be it's own device.

As a developer, I want Apple to use the same development platform to make this happen, and I want some sort of App Store.