It’s the night before the Big Announcement, or for many no doubt the Big Disappointment when it turns out not to meet everyone’s fanciful expectations. I fully expect that the hype has gotten so big that whatever is announced will cause a drop in Apple’s stock price. It is the way of things.
I’m pretty sure the device won’t:
- Be made of gold
- Have an OLED screen
- Run Windows 7 (though I wouldn’t bet against it entirely)
- Run on AT&T exclusively. Apple has made it clear they aren’t completely pleased with them as a partner.
- Be called iSlate. I’m expecting iPad, myself, but it could just be called iPod Tablet or something like that.
Other than those things, all bets are off.
I’m hoping the device has:
- Front-facing camera, and a mobile implementation of iChat.
- Some form of iPhone OS — tablet PCs have been around for years, but a touch device has to work differently from a mouse device. Gestures and touch, not mouseover and click and drag. I’d hope there are a few new UI constructs that use the real estate better, but the current iPhone OS really has a lot of elements that will absolutely *sing* on the new device.
- No carrier tie-in. I’ll gladly forgo a carrier subsidy for a device that can be used with any carrier or even just wi-fi for now. The ideal would be for the device to accept some sort of wireless card in an SD card form factor, using the case as an antenna. Then, let the carriers compete to offer deals on the cards and plans.
- Really good reading software.
- Don’t make me sign up for a new developer program, sandwich this device into the current iPhone program.
- Inexpensive.
- Color calibration — don’t make a device that screams to be used by artists and photographers, then fail to put color management in it. I still don’t know if there is any color management on the iPhone.
- An implementation of Apple TV on it.
- Support for Bluetooth peripherals, like a portable keyboard.
No matter what the device is, however, if it indeed is meant to be a game-changer for magazines, newspapers, and textbooks, this release has got to be accompanied by a major retooling of iTunes. iTunes has had so many types of content and commerce grafted onto it, it needs to be overhauled with a classification scheme that lets the individual consumer browse content efficiently, do well-targeted searches, bookmark or compare products, and support additional business models like subscriptions, gifting, etc. Don’t staple e-books and magazines onto the current thing, it’s gotten downright Byzantine.
Let’s see what it does, and hope that people judge it by what it does rather than what it doesn’t. This type of device is still the product of a lot of engineering compromises. People don’t seem to understand the hurdles that were overcome to bring the iPhone to market — the iPhone is a far more powerful computing device under the hood than its accessible exterior would suggest. I expect the new device to be no less. I do have to say that I still haven’t used cut-and-paste on my iPhone, even after Apple did put a very nice implementation in place. They generally have some sound thinking behind their feature priorities, based on what will serve the majority of users best. This sometimes leaves out your pet feature, but more often then not these features are worked around in an elegant way.
Fresh new rumor about the upcoming Apple tablet, this one from one of Apple’s telecom partners in France.
Basically, they are saying that the tablet will have a camera on the screen side, so that it can be used for videoconferencing, and that Apple will include a videoconferencing app for live streaming.
This is definitely credible — Apple has supported videoconferencing out of the box for years in Mac OS. Their video chat feature in iChat maintains a relatively high frame rate over AIM, much better frame rates and video quality than the video chat on Yahoo IM, for example. This feature runs very nicely on even the older Power PC laptops, it ran great on my old 1.33 GHz Powerbook G4 over a WiFi connection. The only question is how well it would run on the slower mobile networks, though the current version of iChat does have the ability of adjusting the video for lower bandwidth. A more refined version of this would detect the bandwidth available and throttle back image quality and frame rate as needed.
This does suggest that the tablet will definitely have WiFi connectivity and that it should have a beefier graphics system than the iPhone 3GS, though it wouldn’t need something as powerful as the graphics on current Macbooks.
Testing the wordpress 2 iPhone app with the blog. This is pretty handy, though frankly typing on a mobile keyboard is not my favorite thing.
Richard Johnston and Simon Rohrmuller’s Watchmen parody comic is now available in full color on the iPhone App Store.
This standalone version of the comic uses our reader software, which we’re calling the Weasel Reader at present. The reader is relatively intuitive, you tap on the right third of the screen to move forward, left to move backward, and in the center to expose other controls. The nice thing about doing the comic as a standalone app is that it’s fairly easy to find on the App Store. The downside is that anyone buying a lot of comics would end up filling up their icon real estate pretty quickly.
Watchmensch is also currently available in black and white on the Panel Fly comics app. I’ve colored the interior pages on the color version (which will also be available on ComiXology shortly).
Download Watchmensch on the iTunes App Store.
Verizon’s upcoming Motorola Droid phone has gotten a lot of buzz, and the usual chorus of “this is going to be an iPhone killer” has started. The phone has a very compelling feature set, but people should keep a few things in mind:
- Verizon has been trying to release ‘iPhone killer’ phones since the iPhone was first announced. They’ve released a number of LG touchscreen phones, each with a different incomprehensible interface, and tied to Verizon’s on-deck store.
- One of the more compelling things about the iPhone is its build quality — the touchscreen feels really responsive, and the phone feels solid in your hand. So many of the phones that are trying to compete with it still feel plastic-y and cheap.
- It’s the user interface and ease of use that makes the iPhone a first-class device, and such a game-changer. Also, as frustrating as it is, Apple’s trajectory to today’s App Store has done a lot to ensure the consistancy of that user experience. A wide-open store of apps and the ability to customize away some very thoughtful UI decisions would have diluted the strength of the product.
- Every mobile device is a set of compromises. So, what’s the Droid compromising on? That big screen suggests battery life will be the biggest compromise.
I can’t wait to actually get my hands on a Droid phone and see what Motorola has done. They’ve made a large investment in Android, hiring dozens of programmers, so here’s hoping that their gamble is going to pay off in a flurry of good phones.
