The Apple Tablet: Predictions (Wish List)
So, here we are, on the eve of Apple's Big Announcement (see Gizmodo's copy of the invite). It's all I've heard for months on the various tech podcasts I listen to, and the speculation has reached a fever pitch in the last 2 weeks since CES. Everyone's making predictions about what this revolutionary product will be (it's Apple, so it's got to be revolutionary, right?), and so I figure I'd take a crack at it, too, if for nothing else to have a good laugh at how wrong I was this time tomorrow.
So, what is the rumored Apple tablet going to be?
I don't think I've seen anyone create a solution to syncing that was as elegant and functional as the Palm. Apple came close, with it's iSync (remember that?), but it never worked as well. They've always had great support for syncing your media with your iPod/iPhone, but syncing data was a little more difficult. They made some good advances with cloud-based synchronization with MobileMe née .Mac, but it's limited to Apple's suite of products included with Mac OS X (Safari, Address Book, iCal, Mail).
What if Apple decided that in the same way that your iPod is a mobile extension of your Mac-based music library, the new tablet is a mobile extension of the rest of your Mac. What if, in addition to syncing your contacts, appointments, notes, and Safari bookmarks, the new tablet actually synced your most recent iWork documents?
Imagine this scenario: you're at home, working on a Keynote presentation. You save the file, grab your tablet, and head out the door. On the train, you open up your tablet, and there is the exact same file, automatically synced to your tablet via the cloud, ready for you to apply the finishing touches using the new tablet version of Keynote. You get to work, log on to your work Mac, and voila, the same presentation, with the edits you made on the train, is waiting in your Documents folder (or, more realistically, on your iDisk).
Now let's take it a step further: suppose Apple added some sort of plug-in architecture to iTunes that would allow developers of Mac and tablet/iPhone apps to build (with apologies to Palm) conduits for syncing the data between the two versions, either via an iTunes sync or via the cloud (assuming the aforementioned always-on Internet for the tablet). Already we've seen iPhone app developers cobbling together their own sync features, via iPhone-based servers and shared cloud-based storage (see PasswordWallet for the former and OmniFocus for the latter). The problem with these solutions is that you have to sync each app by hand, individually. How much better would it be to just click on the Sync button in iTunes and have it all happen at once?
If Apple could make this sort of synchronization as seamless and elegant as they've made music purchasing and listening, I could totally see myself replacing my current MacBook Pro with an iMac for at home and the new tablet for on the road. Add some new Back to My Mac features (not sure what, but I'm there's room for improvement there) and enable the tablet to remotely control my mac at home, and I'd be totally sold. No more compromising between power and portability: just have the desktop for the power, and use the light-weight tablet for portability. In a pinch, you could always connect to your desktop Mac remotely.
So that's it. Not so much a prediction list as a wish list, as it turns out. Apple, are you listening?
So, what is the rumored Apple tablet going to be?
- First, the obvious: It'll be a media player, just like the iPod and the iPhone. It'll sync with the soon-to-be-released iTunes 10, and give you the ability to view your HD video at a native 720P resolution. As such, it'll have lots of storage (solid state, of course): 64GB minimum. It'll also support viewing all the bonus content you get with iTunes LP and iTunes Extras.
- Speaking of screen resolution, it'll have a 10-inch LCD display. Anything too much bigger than 10 inches and you've got yourself a MacBook. Anything too much smaller and it's just an oversized iPhone. Packing 1280 x 720 pixels into 10 inches is certainly doable: the Dell Mini 10 has such a screen. What about OLED? Unlikely, according to Ars Technica, and their logic seems sound.
- Next obvious prediction: It'll be a book reader. iTunes 10 and the now completely mis-named "iTunes" Store will add yet another category of media: ebooks. Apple may even introduce a corollary to iTunes LP and iTunes Extras for books: bonus content (videos, audio clips, etc) for ebooks.
- It'll run 3rd party apps. C'mon, they wouldn't release something like this without leveraging the thousands of developers who develop for the iPhone and the Mac. I imagine the apps will be more iPhone-like (i.e. geared towards a touch interface) than Mac-like, and there may even be a way to re-write your iPhone app to support the new tablet. And as with the iPhone and iPod Touch, they'll only be available through Apple's iTunes Store.
- A bit of anti-specuation: Maybe iPhone apps will be able to run as-is in a 320 x 480 window on the new device. Maybe you'll be able to have 4 of them running at the same time, side-by-side. But somehow I doubt it. This just seems too inelegant a solution for Apple.
- It'll be a gaming platform. This is another obvious one, and it goes right alongside 3rd party apps. They've been pushing the iPod Touch as a gaming platform, so why not the tablet? The only issue is controllers. Perhaps they'll actually put more than one button on this thing. (I don't know what it is with Apple and their hatred of buttons, but it's got to stop!) Or maybe there'll be a slide-out panel of buttons, or a gaming attachment. All I know is, if they're going to be serious about pushing games on this thing, it'll need something more than a touch screen. Of course, I was wrong about them releasing a beefed-up Apple TV that was also a console game system, so who knows?
- It'll have always-on Internet access. I'm not sure if we're quite ready for 4G yet, or which carrier will be used for 3G, but Internet connectivity seems like a necessity for a device like this. Being able to browse the Web and purchase content without connecting it to a computer or WiFi network is something all us iPhone users have gotten used to. I don't see that changing for the tablet.
- Of course, it'll also have WiFi for connecting to your local network and syncing with your iTunes library wirelessly. Apple made great strides in iTunes 9 with the new Home Sharing feature, and I think the new tablet will build on that, allowing you to automatically wirelessly sync content purchased from the iTunes Store in both directions. In this way, the tablet will act more like iTunes running on a computer than an iPod.
- It'll sync with your Mac. Here's where I'm going out on a limb, and maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but hear me out. (It's a big enough point that I think I'll break out of the bullets and finish off with paragraphs.)
I don't think I've seen anyone create a solution to syncing that was as elegant and functional as the Palm. Apple came close, with it's iSync (remember that?), but it never worked as well. They've always had great support for syncing your media with your iPod/iPhone, but syncing data was a little more difficult. They made some good advances with cloud-based synchronization with MobileMe née .Mac, but it's limited to Apple's suite of products included with Mac OS X (Safari, Address Book, iCal, Mail).
What if Apple decided that in the same way that your iPod is a mobile extension of your Mac-based music library, the new tablet is a mobile extension of the rest of your Mac. What if, in addition to syncing your contacts, appointments, notes, and Safari bookmarks, the new tablet actually synced your most recent iWork documents?
Imagine this scenario: you're at home, working on a Keynote presentation. You save the file, grab your tablet, and head out the door. On the train, you open up your tablet, and there is the exact same file, automatically synced to your tablet via the cloud, ready for you to apply the finishing touches using the new tablet version of Keynote. You get to work, log on to your work Mac, and voila, the same presentation, with the edits you made on the train, is waiting in your Documents folder (or, more realistically, on your iDisk).
Now let's take it a step further: suppose Apple added some sort of plug-in architecture to iTunes that would allow developers of Mac and tablet/iPhone apps to build (with apologies to Palm) conduits for syncing the data between the two versions, either via an iTunes sync or via the cloud (assuming the aforementioned always-on Internet for the tablet). Already we've seen iPhone app developers cobbling together their own sync features, via iPhone-based servers and shared cloud-based storage (see PasswordWallet for the former and OmniFocus for the latter). The problem with these solutions is that you have to sync each app by hand, individually. How much better would it be to just click on the Sync button in iTunes and have it all happen at once?
If Apple could make this sort of synchronization as seamless and elegant as they've made music purchasing and listening, I could totally see myself replacing my current MacBook Pro with an iMac for at home and the new tablet for on the road. Add some new Back to My Mac features (not sure what, but I'm there's room for improvement there) and enable the tablet to remotely control my mac at home, and I'd be totally sold. No more compromising between power and portability: just have the desktop for the power, and use the light-weight tablet for portability. In a pinch, you could always connect to your desktop Mac remotely.
So that's it. Not so much a prediction list as a wish list, as it turns out. Apple, are you listening?