What is the Secret Sauce?

The secret sauce might be to change the paradigm of mobile computing. In example, I offer the following rhetorical questions. Does one require a five (or even three) pound notebook in order to read and send emails? Does one require a keyboard to read a pdf? Does one require an optical drive to enjoy audio and visual content?

I suspect that the guys at Apple have answered "no" to all of these, and even more, questions.

"But the iPhone does all this!" you say. More or less true... still, only the most fanboi would argue that the size of iPhone does not limit its utility. Imagine what the makers of iPhone could do with two to four times more internal volume. I envision a product that sits between iPhone and Macbook. It might render neither irrelevant. It might factor into account that many prospective buyers would, like myself, already own an iPhone and Macbook.

It might not be a one-trick-pony, ala the Kindle or Nook or Sony eBook readers. It might leverage separate processors for the decoding of media vs. "standard"computing (email, word processing and the like). It might be able to display (but not author) keynote and powerpoint presentations. It might charge via an iPod universal connector. It might not be designed for the consumer, rather for industrial type applications such as health care (no need for a paper chart, let me just multitouch through the patient's iChart).

No doubt much if not all of the above is just my wine-induced flight of fancy. However, like few of us envisioned correctly the final form of iPhone and the iPhone OS, I suspect that no one, save for Mr. Jobs himself, knows exactly what this thing is going to do and how it would fit into all our lives. If nothing else, I can appreciate this (still rumored) device for the delicious anticipation that comes with waiting and waiting with bated breath.

The secret sauce is Apple itself. Apple engineers and designers make products that are seamlessly intergrated and just work. Simple, but genius.

Mac OS X touch (multitouch).


The revolutionary thing about this device will not only be the revolutionary software, but that the hardware is designed in such a clever way as to make the device itself practical. The design of this pop-out rest is 100% crucial. If done right the device will make sense and could replace notebooks for some people. If done wrong then it will ruin any potential mass adoption possibilities this amazing software ever may have had otherwise.

For a guy asking this question you couldn't have chose a worse username

I think you're answering the wrong question, he wants specifics.

This is my take.
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showpost.php?p=1543591&postcount=200

C.

I want everybody to know that I had my best contribution going, that I've ever made on this forum, when Safari crashed on me. Needless to say you guys will have to be corrected another day.

As to the special sauce, that will be laid bare when we see Apples vision. If Apple gets the formula wrong the device will end up a flop just like Mac Book AIR. That is an impressive technical achievement but lackluster sales. Worst there are a lot of competeing needs and demands out there, if Apple only has one size tablet there will be a lot of unhappy campers.


Dave

A low price will be the secret sauce if Apple hopes to sell more than a handful of the alleged tablet.

Apple has rolled out the first truly successful, touch screen GUI. It would hopefully be modified slightly for the alleged tablet. But in my mind, a low price is paramount.

Tablets won't replace our current form factors, but rather compliment and supplement the current devices. For this reason, they've got to be cheap. Otherwise, the only people buying them will be the niche groups that have little if any need for text entry or manipulation. Most people benefit immensely from full, real keyboards for text work.

The reason why crappy text input is tolerated on mobile phones is because waaaaaaay better computing mobility is worth the trade-off. Tablets don't fit in your pocket so that trade-off doesn't apply.

Case in point, the Air. It's a great product to use but is priced to high for what would frequently be used as a limited-feature, supplemental computer.

If it does run Mac OS X, I think that's what will sell it. Touch interaction with OS X isn't new as TrollTouch offer add-ons to let you see what it's like but the full iphone interaction on the desktop will be new - think of Quicktime X with pinch-zoom to go full-screen and tap to play. It can still run iphone apps using the software emulator but multi-task them and run beside standard desktop apps that aren't optimized for touch.

There was a weak rumor posted about leaked specs saying a 7" screen with Core 2 Duo CPU and the machine running something called Clouded Leopard. Someone mentioned Clouded Leopard a while ago but maybe it was from the same source. It makes sense in some ways for there to be an incarnation of OS X for this platform because if it's not ARM, they can get away with the full OS but if it's something like Pinetrail (1.66GHz passively cooled and noiseless), it should really be optimized in a similar way to the iphone so that it runs a bit better. I don't want to go back to what it was like running OS X on an old powerbook.

A Clouded Leopard is actually an animal too like the Snow Leopard so fits the naming convention and is referred to as a medium-sized cat - "it seemed to be a cross between a big cat and a small cat". Apple's data centre plans are long term so any reference to 'the cloud' may not have any immediate significance. The question is if they optimize the OS for the device by making a hybrid between the iphone OS and Snow Leopard yet it still runs desktop apps, what could they optimize that couldn't be optimized in Snow Leopard?

I imagine there will be another UI - column view is quite small for touch and the Finder windows get too cluttered. I reckon it will be a UI designed to cater for the middle ground. Every time you use Safari on the iphone and wish you could do multiple tabs more easily or save/load files and open documents or run your favorite desktop apps - maybe draw in Photoshop but nothing heavy.

What I'd like to see is the following:

10" or 12" multi-touch slate with reinforced glass - for strength and cost I'd sway towards 10"
running 1.66GHz Atom Pinetrail with GMA 3150 graphics (no 9400M as this should probably be a fanless design)
2GB RAM - enough for multi-tasking iphone apps and for running desktop apps
running Clouded Leopard - a hybrid of the iphone OS and desktop OS running both x86 and ARM apps side by side
120GB HDD - for price and storage, possibly 1.8", might get away with a 64GB SSD
no optical drive for weight and thinness

On the subject of thinness, I wouldn't expect anything more than USB, Mini-DP and audio jacks - other ports are just too big. Just like the MBA. 802.11n should suffice for most things.

This kind of device I wouldn't use as a main machine but I would get one over a Macbook Air if it was $499 or $599 and I imagine a lot of people could use it as a main machine.

Intel will be happy as they get their Apple device using Atom, iphone fans get to run more powerful apps with all the same interaction and multitask, ebook reader fans get a good quality color screen and excellent content distribution model with more than just books but still as portable, Macbook Air fans get a cheaper portable machine that runs desktop Mac apps, netbook fans see an expensive equivalent but not too expensive that the features won't sell it, desktop users have something more convenient than a laptop to keep synced to complement their desktop.

I say cow-poop.

I hereby promise to you and Ireland. If this device runs un-modified Mac OS X desktop applications I will walk naked outside my house and post the photographs here for all to see.

This device is not a Mac. Will not be called Mac. And will not run any native Mac applications.

Will you match my wager if you are wrong?

C.

Well, you'd probably get a permanent ban for that. And perhaps induce a slight amount of vomiting.

I would pixellate the image. To prevent said vomiting.

C.

I agree with you totally.

The iTablet/iSlate will build itself upon the closed UI and the AppStore. No native Mac programs (except those from Apple) on non-jailbroken iTablets.

It will also have something new, it will respond to hand gestures, finger points and swipes without touching the screen.

A pointer will track across the screen using the forward mounted camera.

No disk drives, no Firewire, it will have a SD slot and a USB port or two.


The reason why Apple is going towards a closed UI and closed App store is to protect it's market share.

It's become so easy to run Windows, Linux and OS X at the same time using VM software. It's blurred the lines and even diehard Mac users like myself are using other operating systems regularly.

So Apple is going to gradually shift into a really closed universe with a easier UI.

As more and more people buy the new iTablet to solve their needs, the less and less a real computer just falls to the slimmer professional market.

Eventually Pro Mac users will be shifting to Windows. Thus the name "Bootcamp".

Thus the reason why the line of MacBooks nearly disappeared except for one white model.

Apple intends to introduce the new and young to a totally new type of computer.

The competition is going to get fscked because they won't have the OS or the AppStore to compete, despite having the hardware.

I think Apple could go either way on it - I'd just prefer it if it ran x86 apps. The reason being that while iphone apps are ok for a phone, so few of them are real productivity apps. They are throw-away apps. During the day, you maybe get a spare 5-10 minutes waiting around somewhere, you whip out the phone and do a quick game or use a gimmicky app. With a slate, you sit down with the device for productivity and entertainment.

iLife and iWork are Apple's big consumer productivity packages. Now they could compile them for ARM and tweak them for touch input but does that mean people have to buy a whole other suite? I don't see how they can offer a slate and cut out so much of what makes the Mac platform great. At the same time, I don't think Snow Leopard as we know it would work adequately on a small touch screen. A hybrid solves both problems.


Interesting theory but I don't think Apple want to encourage people to switch to Windows for serious work. I get the impression they do want to drive a firmer wedge between pro and consumer uses and their strongest focus is undeniably the consumer market. I see 3 levels though - mass-market consumer devices being iphone/ipod/islate; entry level computing - Mac Mini and Macbook; High end use - MBP and Mac Pro. The middle step needs to stay so people on a budget can do the things the high end machines do but slower.

The tablet is not going to be a productivity device. Period.
Apple already make a thing called a Mac for customers who want productivity.

The tablet is going to the opposite of that. It will be a computer which dumps all pretensions of content-creation. Instead, it is for the consumers who just want to consume content. Read, watch, browse. A little light facebooking.

There's no point creating a new device for professionals who want to create content. Do spreadsheets, run word processors. There is already a market-full of devices for such users.

So, is there a market for such an unproductively device?

You betcha.

Which sells more - blank notebooks or books?
Which sells more - TVs or Video Cameras?
Which sells more - Music or Musical Instruments?

In all cases, media consumption dwarfs creation.

Done correctly, I think a personal media device, has the potential to sell in numbers way beyond notebooks or netbooks. Why? Because there are more people interested in *reading* a book, than they are in *writing* a book.

And although you can watch a movie on a laptop, or read a book on a netbook. The flexibility of notebooks gives makes such tasks needlessly complex and inconvenient.

I hope I am right - and do not have to go naked. It's snowing here.

C.

I think it's going to be the combo of hardware, software, and content that makes the iSlate so appealing.

The first iPods were great, but it wasn't until the iTunes Store was available that iPod really exploded.

Likewise with the first-gen iPhone. It was great, and drool-worthy, but sales didn't explode until the App store hit, and the phone was available at a lower price.

There are already plenty of devices available and coming soon that offer touch screens in a tablet form. I think it's going to be exclusive access to newspapers, magazines, and other types of content via some sort of iTunes/App/Slate store that makes it so compelling. It may not necessarily be that people love the form factor (Though it will be in the equation), but rather they really want their music, TV, movies, books, papers, magazines, all on one device. If the iSlate is the only device that is tied to a content service like this, then it's what people will buy.

So, while I'm pretty much expecting a "big iphone" as far as hardware styling, with some potential surprises when it comes to interface and software. But I think Apple probably has some more interesting things up its sleeve in regards to the future of apps and consumption of mobile content and how it's distributed.

Only about 3 more weeks til we know for sure!

I don't think the sauce is hardware. It is a variety of ingredients like all sauces that will make it special, even saucy you might say. The ingredients provide the flavors that make the dish delicious. These ingredients have to be perfect and work in concert to create a whole greater than the sum. To quote Rube from Dead Like me:
The combination of the OS, App Store and most importantly new agreements with various content providers like newspapers and magazines will create a digital dish that everyone wants to eat. I feel the iSlate Tower of Taste will stand tall and steady.

Every restaurant has meat and potatoes. It's generally the sauce, the preparation and the presentation that separate a local dive from a Michelin star.

Is Facebook productivity?

Do we need the same amount of dedicated hardware to write a tweet as we need to write a novel?
This is a stylophone not a steinway.

I know for a fact that I type faster on my iPhone than I ever could if I had to physically depress a microscopic key. If I could could use both hands (instead of both thumbs) I reckon the text entry on a tablet could be beyond acceptable.

I simply would not want to write a screenplay on it.

I am going to suggest that we are not going to see an eventual unification of tablet and notebook. Not in control methods or interface. Apple have figured out that devices for media consumption should head in one direction and productivity devices should head in another.

C.

And that's it, folks. It's not an iPhone, it's not a Mac desktop. It's like a 'sunflower', true to itself. Imagine, accordingly. You'll be using your fingers, maybe..., in a more articulate way than on an iPhone...but not by much. A GUI that will use fingers...it'll be simple-ish (ie we may have to learn a few new gesture tricks...) and it will do more than an iPhone but primarily bigger...it won't be a 'Mac' but via the apps on a bigger screen, the resulting apps will approach the simplistic 'power' of desktop apps but without the ensuing baggage.

Sure, I giant iPod touch sounds simplistic. And for me, that's what it will feel like. Or all I can kinda imagine for now. But I don't think for a second that's 'all' it's going to be. There'll be more gestures, maybe a 3d interface...like a 3d Apple TV interface rotating media 3d icon goodliness. It'll have the app store out the gate. It'll control your Apple TV, your Mac remotely...if Apple don't do this, a 3rd party will.

Yer on ya sofa doing media. A book, a video, a internet, a facebook, a game...blah, blah. Computing without the effort. It's an offensive on what we primarily do with computers in the mainstream in the home. Bend over and receive content...chill out...relax...don't think too much...drool out mouth...etc.

Lemon Bon Bon.

IMagine the simplicity of the 'Front Row' interface...jazzed up a little. Lots of carousel pseudo 3d with simple menus.

All this guessing is driving me crazy.

Lemon Bon BOn.

Yeah that's all true but there are still a number of reasons to have legacy app support even for consuming. You may want to be able to use it as your main device for sorting your itunes collection while on the sofa and have it be the main machine that your mobile syncs to. You may have media formats that only have x86 plugins like DivX/XVid/MKV even Flash. Some people have media browsers that don't have iphone app equivalents, there's no keynote app for presentations, no iphoto for basic red-eye corrections and album sorting - imagine just sitting back on the sofa flipping through holiday photos and sorting it all out. Pro photographers would probably love to have one for storing photos on location and using Aperture or Lightroom and it could even have geo-tagging.

When I see the TrollTouch demos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRrWEZXaqH4

I think to myself that's what I want except have a tweaked UI that is better for touch. Multi-tasking, terminal access, productivity apps all there for casual use when needed even though the primary function will be as a consumption device. Basically the same thing a netbook is. That's why people get them - they are cheap but still let them do everything they need. As soon as someone asks how do I crop clips from my digital camera and upload to youtube and the answer comes back you can't do that, they wonder why they didn't just get a netbook, which can do it and is probably a lot cheaper.

When I think of all the things I use the iphone for and imagine that OS on a bigger device, the bigger screen isn't enough to sell it. They'd be as well just making a screen dock for the ipod/iphone and upscaling the content. If it runs the same apps, it doesn't need to be faster. I don't even care about multi-tasking on the iphone because the apps aren't full-featured enough that I'd bother about losing what I do with them. The only reason to make it faster is to run more demanding apps but I don't see the iSlate market being as big as the iphone market so will developers really start making more fully featured apps just for the slate? More work for a lower audience.

Like I say, I can see it going either way. All I can say for definite is that if it doesn't run OS X apps, I'm not part of the target audience for the device because that's all I really want to do. I don't want to have to sit at a desk to use forums and listen to music, I want to lounge back somewhere comfortable. However, I don't want to have to put the device down to do basic productivity on the desktop or sync/organize new content when the slate would be powerful enough to do it by itself.


At least your unmentionables will go sub-pixel so no photoshopping needed . Handy if you only had an unproductive slate and couldn't do basic image editing .

I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I definitely never said: "this tablet will run unmodified Mac OS X desktop applications". You see, you're definition of the Mac is far too narrow. This tablet won't look like Mac OS X, the regular one, but I think they'll try to make a tablet that does all the stuff a Mac does, and I think Apple will put Mac in the name. At least I hope they are ambitious enough to make a tablet as amazing as the one I imagine. If they don't I'll be disappointed in Steve and surprised, frankly.

God I am sick and tired of reading this repetitive crap from you!

Basically what you are saying is that, if an Apple tablet ( cheaper than a Macbook with a simpler, yet functional UI) is successful.. then a certain type of Mac user will have no more need for the full blown Mac OS X?

Is that it.. do I understand you correctly? Then surprisingly... I agree with you! However you are missing the bloody obvious.

Like the iPod and iPhone before it, it's likely that most "iSlate" owners will actually be Windows users. If these people discover that they can do pretty much everything they need on their new device then it's MIcrosoft, Dell, HP etc that will be losing out.

Bloody obvious thing #2. If Apple's tablet is a hit what do you think their competitors are going to do? Continue to produce computing devices of every conceivable shape and size (see CES!) and squeeze Windows 7 onto them? No! Like the smart phone market, Apple's competitors are going to follow their lead. We already have Android on a couple of tablet computers. What's the Chrome OS going to be used on? What other big players might take a punt with an optimised, customised version of Linux. Hell, even Microsoft might get their act together and build a good mobile OS.

Bloody obvious thing #2. Who the hell are these people that are going to buy this new class of products and forsake all the benefits of a hardware keyboard , bigger screen and a "real" operating system? Well quite simply it will be people who realise that they just don't need the 'extra' features of a notebook and rarely buy or use expensive, powerful applications.

Whoever these people are, most of them are currently Windows users. And furthermore it's highly likely that they spend less than $1000 a pop on their machine of choice. That's a market that Apple has chosen not to play in.

All the stuff that a Mac does!

Presumably that means running professional productivity applications like Photoshop and Indesign, and Final Cut?

On a 10inch screen

Operated by fingers.

If Apple did this, not only would they be making such applications harder to use, but they would (presumably) be cannibalising sales of full powered notebooks. Some companies may think like this, but Apple has said that they think their notebooks are about as good as they can be. Removing keyboards and halving the screen area is simply not progress towards a better experience.

In my view the tablet will be something else entirely. A machine purpose-built to do the stuff regular people now do with computers; Browsing, reading, watching content, a bit of twitter-book social networking. Not productivity at all.

This is, I think, a full-on attempt to create a genuinely personal computer and not an portable office machine.

Is anyone confident-enough to match my wager?

C.

I'm not afraid of matching your wager, but I agree with you. Perhaps we can go in this wager together, and offer two naked men to one odds.

I think that the product that you describe would be a failure at the price points that are rumored. There are other devices that do these things both on the go and at home so what is the compelling reason to have one if I have the other devices? What would make it worth while to make the initial investment and potentially add in a monthly data plan on top of my iPhone? And why am I going to want to cary around another device throughout the day when I have my laptop and phone?

Part of the success of the smart phone is that you don't have to cary around a PDA and a cell phone. I think that part of the success of a tablet is going to be that you don't have to cary around a laptop and a cell phone to get most things done while you are away from the office. This points toward the need for light productivity similar to what people use note pads for in both their personal and professional lives.

Come again? So will be make phone calls on our new iSlates?

If you have a wireless plan and a blue tooth headset why not? Not saying that it is in the plans, I have no idea what they are working on. I just think that a device that is just a large screen iPhone without the phone function will limit it's appeal at the price point that is speculated for the device. And in these uncertain economic times if you need a wireless data plan for the tablet/slate to take full advantage of it on top of your phone's voice/data plan then it will limit it's appeal even more since that would add in an additional $40+/month to your bills.

I guess they could offer some form of "tethering" to your phone for data, but I don't think that the wireless carriers would like that since this would probably add more of a strain to the wireless networks than the iPhone has to AT&T's.

Also if you have to cary around your phone and laptop as well as the tablet/slate then it is going to be inconvenient for most people in practice. If you can eliminate the need to carry around a phone or a laptop then it makes more sense, and even more if you eliminate the need to cary both around on a regular basis.

If you don't know, then there is probably little that I can do to educate you.

That said, there has been a lot of talk here and elsewhere about Apple will and will not do. Apple in an innovative company. Some of its products are spectacular successes; others are so-so; and still others have been spectacular flops. However, I cannot recall Apple ever introducing a joke product. Using its new tablet as a giant cell phone is a joke. That is not Apple.

I don't really believe the rumors.


I am not 100% certain what those devices are. Archos PMPs? Netbooks? Kindles?

I am guessing that Apple is sensing that this is a mass-market consumer device.

My suspicion is that once this feature-set is bundled into a single product, the question will suddenly be "Why would we want any of these other devices?"

C.

I do think that the people expecting this thing to run Mac OS/X and all those legacy apps are irrational. Apple would have to be completely off it's rocker to follow a pathe that so many others have failed at. Plus they have a perfectly good Framework on iPhone to build something better on.

Related is this idea that Apple will target productivity apps for the device. I'm certain that won't be the initial target for the device. Instead apple will target the people whom will use the device to consum services and products. People may try to sell apps for productivity but I'm going to suggest that it will be a hard sell. Tablets just aren't practicle for compositions of any length.

In a nut shell the ergonomics suck. Even with 3D Touch and other tricks you won't be using a tablet for long stretches.

Oh that brings up one other thing. I'm beginning to think that part of this wonderful new interface will be 3D Touch. That is the screen will also track your fingers in "Z". This will work as in a mirror with the 3D projection on the screen.

In the end there will be productivity apps that are successful on the tablet. They will not be direct ports however. They will need to leverage the new user interface and rethink what the app should be. Some apps like spread sheets will integrate well and quickly, others like word processors will suck for a very long time. These will be app store products but Apple will focus marketing on the consumming user.


Dave

You make me sound like an idiot. If you are carrying around the device and it has a wireless voice plan and a remote headset then it is no different than using an iPhone with that same blue tooth headset. That does not mean that it would have to be just giant cell phone, the iPhone is not just a cell phone is it?

You are what you are. Apple has dropped its own Bluetooth headset. Bluetooth headsets are now available only from third-parties. For the first time in Apple's history, one of its computing platforms would require an extra third-party device to perform a primary function.

Are you sure that you have fully thought-out your position here?

No one is going to buy a 10" tablet for PS though, that's the point you're missing. It won't be mega powerful. Besides, what you're also forgetting is that PS would also need to be rewritten to run on the tablet, and added to the Tablet's App Store, which won't be out for a while. The point I'm making is Apple will pitch this as a Mac, and eventually there will be applications on it that do almost anything your PC tries to do, unlike the iPhone, which is too small for some of that stuff. The reason why they'll continue to sell more powerful machines is that reason.

The point I'm making is they won't be cannibalizing the iPod touch / iPhone market, they'll be cannibalizing the MacBook market. However, since this tablet won't be cheap they'll probably make a larger profit margin so they won't care.

I doubt the full on version of Photoshop will ever be on a tablet. Maybe a light version though for tweaking photos. I think the tablet will be more like Chumby.

They've added gesture support to a lot of their OS X software. It would be a waste for them to be limited to trackpad use. This includes Motion and Aperture. Note that most OS X apps use standard interface calls - all they have to do is interpret them differently so interface elements that seem hard to touch don't have to be that size nor do they have to behave the same way. This is what they do with Safari on the iphone with HTML select boxes - they turn them into a rolodex.

If indeed they have pixel-level touch support like in the patent, it's not that important to even modify the UI significantly.


What you're describing though isn't something else entirely - it's basically a big ipod/iphone. I do all those things using my iphone right now. It's not great for those things but it's not bad enough that I'd want to spend $499 or more buying something else. The point about the data contract is important - I already have a data contract and I don't want to buy another for a limited device or at all really.

You mentioned that you don't go along with the rumors so I would assume you expect it will be cheaper and in effect a big ipod touch in hardware spec but something extra that makes it more than an ipod touch. The 64GB ipod touch is $399 so add on a 10" capacitive screen and it's $499 or $599 with some new hardware in it.

I could see that device existing, I just don't see why people would buy one. Now given the netbook market, if it was an Atom device with OS X (x86) in some form, USB, displayport and did everything a netbook could do but did it with a great touch UI, it offers some serious competition to Dell's Mini 10 which only costs $349 with the following spec:

1.33GHz Atom (1.6GHz for $50 more)
1GB RAM
10.1" screen
160GB HDD
802.11g wifi
Intel graphics
integrated webcam
mobile broadband option
GPS option

If Apple come out with a big ipod for books that Jobs says people don't read any more, that only runs apps that are all optimized for a screen at most 1/4 the size, that requires a second data contract to be as functional and yet still charges nearly double the price of a faster and more capable netbook, I think it will sell very badly.

For the same reasons the ATV sells badly. It's exactly the kind of device you describe. Apple could sell it with the full OS X and allow it run as a server or play all sorts of media (people have hacked it to do both) but they don't. It's a cut down device that's way more expensive than more functional competitors and despite the nice UI, nobody wants it including me. If Apple don't want the slate to be another ATV, they have to make a touch Mac slate not a big ipod OR it has to be much cheaper like $299 and take on the ebook readers.


Perhaps but say you have a laptop and an iphone and the slate doesn't do anything more than the iphone. Why would you buy the slate? If you go out to work and don't want to carry around your laptop but the slate gives you no more functionality in any significant way than your iphone, there's no point in having one.


The rumors did mention that people would be surprised about the interaction with the device. I think that would be a great addition because you could do the same type of drawing you can do with a Wacom - assuming you can run some drawing app. Autodesk have made an iphone app called SketchBook that gives you an idea how it could work.

With 3D touch, you don't need to bother about interface sizes either as your finger could move a cursor around.

The question is simply whether people will spend $599 on the world's first personal computer?
By personal computer, I mean one that does not have its origins in office equipment. But rather one that is entirely optimised around the set of tasks which have become "what regular people do on computers". Not optimised for the highly specialized tasks of content-creators and professionals.

This is a device optimised for social networking, entertainment and media consumption. Professionals have very different needs. And Apple already have a full line-up of products dedicated to meeting those needs already.

It is not a co-incidence that social-networking, entertainment and media consumption are already possible on your iPhone. But the iPhone is a sub-optimal experience simply because the pocket-sized form factor demands a screen the size of a business card.

Neither the iPod or the iPhone did things which were new. They simply presented functionality in a way in which everyone understood.


My guess the tablet will only run a subset of 4.0 apps. Whether developers will create new full-screen apps, is up to them. I bet many iPhone developers may tweak their apps to ensure they are in there from the beginning. But entirely new types of application will suit the new form-factor.


As far as I can tell the ATV has only one app - and having tested it, I can assure you that it works badly in the coffee shop environment.


I guess we will have to wait and see who is right.

C.