Whether the Apple Tablet is launched tomorrow or not, it has achieved one extraordinary thing: it has shown that a lot of people have a really big problem with the current state of the art. That's pretty impressive for what is, at time of writing, still vapourware.
Either there's a lot of wishful thinking going on, or computing genuinely has stagnated and is ripe for a kick up the arse.
Here's a few examples. Add any more you've seen, in the comments.
Sad state of affair: Rubbish e-book readers
They are slow, ugly and inflexible. Worse, Amazon gets most of the loot from e-book sales. And they are useless for multimedia, magazines and newsprint. The iSlate will hopefully save all those industries thanks to the money siphoning power of iTunes, although nobody really knows how. And let's not mention the likely DRM.
Sad state of affair: the death of newspapers
Listen to the hype and many of the most fervent voices come from newspaper columnists worried about their futures.
Then google 'Apple tablet saviour' and you'll get over 40,000 results. Many of the top ones are concerned with the well-publicised problems surrounding the newspaper business and how the Tablet's physical interface will help readers re-engage with digital print. But can the iTablet really solve all these problems, let alone persuade people to cough up? I'm sceptical myself but it would be nice to think so.
Sad state of affair: the broken desktop metaphor
Even after Windows 7, the PC desktop/GUI metaphor is fundamentally exhausted and the iSlate must fix it, says Gizmodo, by extending the iPhone's multitouch, programmable interface further. Slate.com agrees, citing the usual gripe about how PCs are still too hard for mum. Therefore the iSlate can save computing by making it simple again. Just don't tell the jailbreakers.
Sad state of affair: Dull, un-innovative PCs
…Connected to the above, this view sees the iSlate as the Omega to the Mac's Alpha, the discovery of the Holy Grail of computing, the fabled 'information appliance', completing the job the Macintosh began. How? By finally delivering on Jeff Raskin's/Larry Ellison's visions: something so flexible yet simple, a baby could use it. But surely Natal/Surface have similar potential and nobody hyperventilated about those.
Sad state of affair: the entire internet
"The silos are getting crunched together", says Newsweek. "Somewhere out there, the Orson Welles of the digital age is in grade school, or maybe high school. Soon he or she will be inventing a new language for telling stories." The iTablet will apparently be the medium that ushers in "phase two of the Internet", gushes the author.
Sad state of affair: too many separate pieces of tech
Even with phones and laptops, gadgets proliferate, with separate e-readers, movie players, netbooks, TVs - whatever. Bring them together into one device and let's be done with it, say the pundits - hard to disagree with.
Sad state of affair: our kids' rubbish education
Amazon have had real problems making Kindle work for textbooks, given how students like to annotate and highlight key passages. The wonders of the iSlate's multi touch interface can address this too, if they can get the keyboard right. And if students don't crack the DRM and share everything first.
So there you have it: a tower of hope tottering on top of one little device. Good luck with this one, Apple.
Your comments (6) Click to add a new comment
psyfur
January 27th 2010
6. Apple, drm and over priced. 3 of my most favourite specs I look for when buying a new product...
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tonymontana
January 27th 2010
5. I think a well made tablet has the potential to do it all.
The first point is e-readers. E-readers are still black and white so their terrible for magazines.
I think with a tablet you could pretty much put full magazines on a e-reader sized device. It opens up the doors for videos in e-magazines and a lot of pictures. Imagine clicking on a picture in a magazine and getting an entire slideshow. It's a pretty big improvement on the assymetric BS with e-readers and static magazines.
The papers could also get in on the act and come into the colour age properly. The big bulletpoint for both of them though is the savings. The amount of data they would be sending is miniscule and they wouldn't have the costs associated with ink and paper that they do now. Copying and pasting a PDF and then sending it to people just destroys their costs and gives them profit for selling a few megabytes of data.
Another thing the tablet can do is use the iPhone OS. The tablet needs to be super dumbed down. It needs to be a giant iPhone or iPod Touch. Those devices are so simple they shouldn't be called computers but they are incredibly successful.
The problem is most people wouldn't traditionally adopt something like a computer but most people own mobile phones. If you can make a device that is as simple as a mobile phone to use your market opens up expotentially.
This device needs to be a giant iPod or iPhone which would pretty much guaruntee its success. If it turns out to be a complicated netbook without a keyboard it is going to be a huge failure.
Obviously if its one of those "cool" devices like the iPhone has become it will only help Apple. To get an iPhone you have to sign a contrast that costs a fortune yet a lot of even students have it.
A lot of its success will be in marketing.
All in all a convergence device that does it better than anything on the market and more and has the buzz factor behind it while being associted with the iPhone and iPod and using Apples iTunes sevice for content..
Well it looks like the Apple haters beat me to this article but I feel these morons will be eating their words.
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tech89
January 26th 2010
4. I think the Tablet device will be:
1) overpriced.
2) Won't do anything more than what a touch screen capable Laptop/Tablet can do already (for less the cost).
3) What will anyone do with it? I assume most people will have some sort of computer or laptop already.
For all the hype this device is getting it better print money.
A newspaper cost 65-90p, and iTablet/Slate costs £500+. You may as well buy a newspaper every day instead of reading one on the device.
You can't watch films comfortably on it, as you would have to prop it up somehow, if it doesn't have a flip stand.
Does the world really do a lot of office work on the go? Probably not. And if we do we have laptops for that.
Internet and gaming is what is left, so it's basically a games console. All this hype for another games console, shame.
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caimbeul
January 26th 2010
3. If it costs more than £299.99 it will not be for the masses. What about the carbon footprint of churning out likely millions of these devices? Nobody cares anymore as long as they have the latest sexy gadget.
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timsvengali
January 26th 2010
2. Great blog. Dead right: the hype says as much about the writers and the state of innovation as it does about the product - which, at least in the short term, is going to be a luxury item which comparatively few people will use. I did a little bit of research about the increasing tendency to label consumer electronics launches as 'revolutionary' when
a. they are nothing of the sort, and
b. the products that are causing this revolution often don't exist yet
and blogged it here: http://wp.me/pmzBS-gw
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technobrakes
January 26th 2010
1. But will it suport flash? You will see it on fail.com if dosnt
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