The OS for the Tablet will be the same as the iPhone - this is obvious surely. The App store will be the App store, why would you have a different store for the Tablet? There will simply be a 'suitable for iSlate™' section.
If anything the App store will grow to encompass Mac apps as well.
Responding to something is not the same as bringing it up.
I noticed you are cheery-picking specific things to make your point, don't go all politician on us.
No I'm not going to bite! The point I was trying to make was that I see this as a major opportunity for iWork to break out of its fairly niche status currently. With a ten-inch screen people will be looking to be able to write more than emails and forum posts. Not novel writing, but letters, work documents etc. Therefore they will need an app to do that, so it would make sense for Apple to have a tablet-ready version of iWork to meet that need. If they wanted to be aggressive about it, they could even bundle it.
Then, if the device sells well, all those users will get used to using iWork for their WP needs, and it could break out into the mainstream, particularly if they produced a version that worked on other operating systems!
Yeah, you better bet on it that Apple aims at something different than using a tablet only in the bathroom...
I mean, would you really dare to use it in your bathroom knowing that Apple has tons of irreversible moisture, impact and Jesus-and-Jobs-know-what indicators built in to their products, thus almost immediately voiding any warranty ?
The OS for the Tablet will be the same as the iPhone - this is obvious surely. The App store will be the App store, why would you have a different store for the Tablet? There will simply be a 'suitable for iSlate™' section.
If anything the App store will grow to encompass Mac apps as well.
No, no, no. Maybe that might be the case for apps on the iTunes store, but on the device itself the App Store will be the Tablet App Store. Though it will be just called App Store. Then in the iTunes manager it will separate the apps.
3G is a consumer unfriendly technology, always billed and not available in many locations.
If the tablet doesn't have wifi, it's a non-starter for my family. There's no 3G here. There's no AT&T here, either... so hopefully they won't do another colossally stupid single-vendor deal.
I'm not buying this part. Meaning: "The report cited analysts who believe a tablet would have access to that library of applications." Just because the iPhone App Store might have been an inspiration, doesn't mean they have to use "it".
I like the App Store idea, but it will be a new store specifically designed for the tablet with its 10" screen. The Tablet App Store, if you will.
To me that's the problem with opting for a 10" screen, i.e. it creates a device that loses most of the strengths of the Touch. Battery life takes a hit, portability takes a hit, compatibility with existing Touch software takes a hit, affordability takes a hit.
An evolutionary step forward for the Touch, to my mind, is the more rational approach. By this I mean, introduce a new Touch with a larger screen that distances itself somewhat from the iPhone. However, don't go all the way up to a 10" screen. Even a screen in the 5-7 inch range would be a major improvement over the current Touch while not significantly impacting on battery life, portability and the ability to work with existing App Store software. Movies configured for the current Touch would likely scale up to a 5-7 screen with minimal quality degradation. In other words, they'd still look very good.
The Touch is a marvelous device but one crying out for more screen real estate. Why not go there instead of taking on the world of hurt that opting for a 10-inch screen would introduce?
And another thing. If the Nano has grown with each new generation, would it be farfetched to imagine it growing just a little more to fill in where the Touch is now?
This sort of evolutionary change to Apple's iPod family has been happening for quite a while now so I can't imagine why it would suddenly stop. Certainly to not take the Touch to the next level in order to make room for a tablet that people might not in fact rush out to buy is a dumb way to go. Yet it seems as if this is the scenario that the rumours have thus far favoured. I believe, also, that the underwhelming update recently to the Touch, especially compared to the major overhaul of the Nano, suggests Apple may be planning to do something with the Touch before next fall. If this happens and people decide to call the new Touch a tablet, well all right then.
Look at it this way. Given a choice between let's say a 6" Touch that costs maybe $400 and can work reasonably well with existing App Store software and a 10" tablet costing maybe $700 and in need of a whole other set of apps that will need time to be developed, which would you choose? It's not, in my view, a matter of putting a substantially larger screen on the thing because more is invariably better. It's a matter of determining the biggest screen Apple can use without losing many of the advantages of the current iTouch form factor. This is a case of less is more.
Naturally, I have no inside info and maybe Apple does bring out the 10-inch device as rumoured but here's something to consider. The report that Apple had acquired a ton of 10"screens came out quite some time ago. Months have passed and no device has materialized. What is the likelihood of Apple acquiring that hardware and then sitting on it for quite a long time? Odds are, the original report was bogus and all the talk of a 10-inch tablet has been misguided. Knowing Apple, maybe this misinformation was deliberately put out to confuse the competition. I'd say, if that's the case, it worked. The way things are right now, if Apple did release a new Touch maybe in March, if not sooner, with a bigger screen, it would qualify as a surprise. Be prepared to be surprised.
The OS for the Tablet will be the same as the iPhone - this is obvious surely.
I don't think it's obvious at all. To me, it seems obvious that it won't be identical to iPhone OS or Mac OS, the question ought to be which one it most resembles, and whether it's a superset of at least one (which would allow compiling/running apps from that platform).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Archimedix
I mean, would you really dare to use it in your bathroom knowing that Apple has tons of irreversible moisture [...] indicators built in to their products
They probably aren't irreversible, it's just that you'd probably have to melt your iPhone to reverse them. I doubt very much that they are actually accurate indicators, either. I think their ability to detect what they claim to without false positives is most likely greatly overstated.
To me that's the problem with opting for a 10" screen, i.e. it creates a device that loses most of the strengths of the Touch. Battery life takes a hit, portability takes a hit, compatibility with existing Touch software takes a hit, affordability takes a hit.
Look at it this way. Given a choice between let's say a 6" Touch that costs maybe $400 and can work reasonably well with existing App Store software and a 10" tablet costing maybe $700 and in need of a whole other set of apps that will need time to be developed, which would you choose?
Well, battery life doesn't necessarily take a hit, it might even improve, unless you measure it in hours/gram or something like that.
But, even a 6" Touch sacrifices most of the portability of the current iPhone/Touch. It no longer fits in your pocket (unless you are wearing a lab coat) and I imagine a lot of women would probably find it too large for their purses. (Contrary to popular belief, the laws of physics and the geometry of space-time are the same inside a woman's purse as in the rest of the universe. This is the only significant finding to yet come from the Large Hadron Collider.)
Which one I would choose and how much I would be willing to pay depends largely on what I could do with it and how it works better for me than an iPhone or MacBook in various scenarios. It does not depend on hypothetical price differences or that it can run iPhone software.
why does everyone assume all iPhone apps have to take up the whole relestare of a bigger device? It'd be much nicer to have as an option, for some apps it'd work great, but most would fare better in a window the size of an iPhone screen. Even if the tablet only ran a version of iPhone os, it should still be allowed background tasks. The bigger specs and larger battery gotta be good for something.
I agree not bloody glass screen please, it is tablet so make it light and durable!
I think people fail to realise that the glass screen is exactly what makes the Apple mobiles so much more durable and useable than the rest of the pack.
Imagine your iPhone with a plastic screen instead of the glass. It would be (slightly) lighter but petty much deficient in every other aspect. If it's plastic it will just be panned as another crappy kindle (and it probably should be too).
The OS for the Tablet will be the same as the iPhone - this is obvious surely.
I don't think it's obvious at all. To me, it seems obvious that it won't be identical to iPhone OS or Mac OS, the question ought to be which one it most resembles, and whether it's a superset of at least one (which would allow compiling/running apps from that platform).
People keep saying this but they never offer up an alternative or an answer to what it will run if it isn't running the iPhone variant of OS-X.
It certainly won't be running desktop OS-X, and OS's aren't often created overnight for individual products. It's taken Apple quite a few years now to develop this new smaller, more mobile variant of OS-X and it's main differences from the desktop version are in the UI and to do with the realities of finger-based computing and the size of the devices.
There is no way in hell that it will be anything but the iPhone variant of OS-X on this thing and yes, it is *obvious* too.
I agree that iPhone apps simply scaled up to a larger size would not make for a high quality user experience.
Other apps would, though. For example, trying to read an article on the iPhone from a news source is too much a hassle. Something like that would be better on a slightly larger screen. I don't think they would target duplicating the iPhone experience on steroids. I think there's a comm market based on text that's underserved at the moment.
With its development reset by co-founder Steve Jobs numerous times, Apple's forthcoming tablet is a device that has been through many internal revisions that look to offer more than "surfing the Web in the bathroom."..
This depiction of Steve cancelling the thing because it hasn't sufficient purpose fits perfectly with what I've always thought about the tablet.
If you can't do work on it, it will fail miserably.
The world is full of view screens and most of them are luxury purchases and afterthoughts. No one *needs* another screen to view yet another web page or yet another TV show in the bathroom. There have to be productivity apps on the tablet or what's the point of the thing at all.
The iPhone store may have 85,000 apps, but if you ignore the entertainment items (games mostly) and then eliminate all the absolute crap, there *might* be about fifty apps in the entire app store that actually allow one to do something useful. The thing that makes any new platform take off is killer apps, and while no one expects to do a great deal of useful work on the iPhone, a tablet is a different proposition again.
If all you can do is watch the video larger, it will fail. If all you can do is play a game on a bigger screen it will fail. If all you can do is browse the web slightly easier it will fail.
If on the other hand it has mobile iWork on it or you can draw on it, it will literally sell itself and Apple will have a hard time making them fast enough. It will also screw Microsoft over big time and you can't get a bigger payoff than that!
Seriously though, if you can't do actual work on it, then it will be an also-ran or niche product at best. Giant opportunity for Apple here, but also a giant opportunity to fail if they don't get it right. Steve seems to be thinking about the product in exactly the right way. Utility first, otherwise it's just a flashy tech demo for no purpose a la Microsoft.
People keep saying this but they never offer up an alternative or an answer to what it will run if it isn't running the iPhone variant of OS-X.
It certainly won't be running desktop OS-X, and OS's aren't often created overnight for individual products. It's taken Apple quite a few years now to develop this new smaller, more mobile variant of OS-X and it's main differences from the desktop version are in the UI and to do with the realities of finger-based computing and the size of the devices.
There is no way in hell that it will be anything but the iPhone variant of OS-X on this thing and yes, it is *obvious* too.
If not everyone agrees with you that it will be running IPhone OS (in the form it exists in the wild today), I think that makes it obvious that it's not so obvious that it will. Or is everyone who disagrees with you just crazy?
Any number of possibilities have been offered up for what it could run. Pretty much everything from full blown Mac OS X to current iPhone OS and all sorts of variants in between have been discussed.
You're right that the main difference between iPhone OS and Mac OS X is the UI paradigm. But, touch isn't inherently tied to that paradigm, nor necessarily impossible with other paradigms. I don't believe that the iPhone UI, unchanged, will work on larger screens without seeming limiting (It would be like running a 30" monitor at 640x480 resolution.) and would very much reduce the value of a tablet. Even running iPhone apps in little windows would be incredibly clunky.
It seems to me that the most likely possibility is in fact a 3rd OS that is intermediate between Mac OS X and iPhone OS, with perhaps UI innovations of its own. But, it's impossible to know which one it's more closely related to at this time, because none of us knows what Apple has in mind for what this would do and how it would do it.
It's frequently declared that a menu based interface (i.e., OS X) can't work in a touch environment, but this criticism assumes that menus must behave in exactly the same way as they do on OS X. There's no reason that has to be the case. Cocoa apps don't have code to display menus. You just add them to your .nib and the OS handles the creation and display of them for you. There's no reason that features similar to some Universal Access features couldn't be created that would expand your menus into easily touchable controls.
That being said, straight Mac OS X apps, just like straight iPhone apps, would probably not be ideal on a tablet. Since either approach would be clunky in some way, and Apple is not known for releasing clunky UIs into the wild, the most logical inference one can make is that a tablet would have a UI different from both the iPhone and a Mac.
I'm not buying this part. Meaning: "The report cited analysts who believe a tablet would have access to that library of applications." Just because the iPhone App Store might have been an inspiration, doesn't mean they have to use "it".
I like the App Store idea, but it will be a new store specifically designed for the tablet with its 10" screen. The Tablet App Store, if you will.
I doubt this - why would they knowingly deprive the new device of 75,000 applications users might conceivably want to run on it? I would think it more likely that they would extend the app store to include a device compatibility setting, a device category, or some other method of differentiating apps based on their target device - perhaps even a different 'section'. It doesn't make good business sense to release a product that cannot use any of the eco-system or applications developed for the iPhone / touch when the underlying libraries are so similar across the products. The only way I could see this happening is if the device runs straight OSX, and I really do not believe that is going to be the case. Even if it were, Apple would be foolish not to enable iPhone / touch apps to run on the device.
Well, battery life doesn't necessarily take a hit, it might even improve, unless you measure it in hours/gram or something like that.
But, even a 6" Touch sacrifices most of the portability of the current iPhone/Touch. It no longer fits in your pocket (unless you are wearing a lab coat) and I imagine a lot of women would probably find it too large for their purses. (Contrary to popular belief, the laws of physics and the geometry of space-time are the same inside a woman's purse as in the rest of the universe. This is the only significant finding to yet come from the Large Hadron Collider.)
Which one I would choose and how much I would be willing to pay depends largely on what I could do with it and how it works better for me than an iPhone or MacBook in various scenarios. It does not depend on hypothetical price differences or that it can run iPhone software.
I'm no engineer but I have to believe that the larger the screen the more power it takes to operate it.
I think the magic number in terms of retaining much of the Touch's portability would be one about 3.5 inches by 5 inches with a 5-inch screen. This is small enough to fit into a man's pocket and if you hang with women sporting purses that can't handle a 3.5X5 device, you're hanging with a version of the fairer sex I'm not familiar with.
The big question is, does upgrading to a 5-inch display do enough to address the shortcomings of the current Touch. Not having spent any time with the thing, I can't say. But if I had to guess, I'd conjecture that a 5-inch Touch would be a fantastic device for watching movies and playing games. Not sure about surfing on the net but it would certainly be an improvement over the current model. Keep the cost to within $100 of the current model and you would sell a ton of them. You could keep the current Touch at a really low price point until the Nano morphed into a comparable device, which I suspect it will.
No, no, no. Maybe that might be the case for apps on the iTunes store, but on the device itself the App Store will be the Tablet App Store. Though it will be just called App Store. Then in the iTunes manager it will separate the apps.
I completely disagree - I don't think your conjecture makes a lick of business sense. Apple would be foolish to introduce a tablet device that won't run any iPhone / touch applications, or that provides an app store that won't allow them to be purchased / downloaded. Doing so would essentially be starting over in the mobile space - it is too complex, too fraught with the potential for loss, and will doubtless anger many consumers. If they release this device at all, it is more likely that it will either run SX and hence have access to OSX apps (a poor choice I hope they do not make), or it will have a version of iPhone OS and will have access to all of those apps. Perhaps it could even do both, I don't know... but one thing I think is very unlikely is for Apple to start with a fresh device that doesn't run any of the existing software. It would be a very poor business decision, and that is not very characteristic of Apple's board or executive management.
I'm no engineer but I have to believe that the larger the screen the more power it takes to operate it.
I think the magic number in terms of retaining much of the Touch's portability would be one about 4 inches by 5 inches with a 5-inch screen. This is small enough to fit into a man's pocket and if you hang with women sporting purses that can't handle a 4X5 device, you're hanging with a version of the fairer sex I'm not familiar with.
Well, I'm no (hardware) engineer either but I have to believe that the larger the battery the more power it can provide. Chances are a 10" screen device would have a much larger battery. However, I think it's entirely premature to infer anything about relative battery life.
A 4x5 device would not fit comfortably in my front jeans pocket along with my wallet. (Neither is going in the back pocket for various reasons, and the other pocket holds things, like keys, that would scratch an iPhone or leather wallet (technically, a card case, but...))
As for the fairer sex, many of the women I know have what they refer to as a "weekend bag" -- a tiny bag just big enough to hold "weekend keys" a wallet, iPhone, and perhaps a couple items of emergency makeup. (Not the same as what I believe is called a "clutch", this is for daytime use with a shoulder strap.) A 4x5 "tablet" would be a tight fit, if at all.
It just seems like an awkward size without enough benefit from the increase.
I completely disagree - I don't think your conjecture makes a lick of business sense. Apple would be foolish to introduce a tablet device that won't run any iPhone / touch applications.
I think you're wrong. Time will tell. In my view this tablet will start from scratch.
Comments
If anything the App store will grow to encompass Mac apps as well.
Responding to something is not the same as bringing it up.
I noticed you are cheery-picking specific things to make your point, don't go all politician on us.
No I'm not going to bite!
Then, if the device sells well, all those users will get used to using iWork for their WP needs, and it could break out into the mainstream, particularly if they produced a version that worked on other operating systems!
I mean, would you really dare to use it in your bathroom knowing that Apple has tons of irreversible moisture, impact and Jesus-and-Jobs-know-what indicators built in to their products, thus almost immediately voiding any warranty ?
The OS for the Tablet will be the same as the iPhone - this is obvious surely. The App store will be the App store, why would you have a different store for the Tablet? There will simply be a 'suitable for iSlate™' section.
If anything the App store will grow to encompass Mac apps as well.
No, no, no. Maybe that might be the case for apps on the iTunes store, but on the device itself the App Store will be the Tablet App Store. Though it will be just called App Store. Then in the iTunes manager it will separate the apps.
If the tablet doesn't have wifi, it's a non-starter for my family. There's no 3G here. There's no AT&T here, either... so hopefully they won't do another colossally stupid single-vendor deal.
I'm not buying this part. Meaning: "The report cited analysts who believe a tablet would have access to that library of applications." Just because the iPhone App Store might have been an inspiration, doesn't mean they have to use "it".
I like the App Store idea, but it will be a new store specifically designed for the tablet with its 10" screen. The Tablet App Store, if you will.
To me that's the problem with opting for a 10" screen, i.e. it creates a device that loses most of the strengths of the Touch. Battery life takes a hit, portability takes a hit, compatibility with existing Touch software takes a hit, affordability takes a hit.
An evolutionary step forward for the Touch, to my mind, is the more rational approach. By this I mean, introduce a new Touch with a larger screen that distances itself somewhat from the iPhone. However, don't go all the way up to a 10" screen. Even a screen in the 5-7 inch range would be a major improvement over the current Touch while not significantly impacting on battery life, portability and the ability to work with existing App Store software. Movies configured for the current Touch would likely scale up to a 5-7 screen with minimal quality degradation. In other words, they'd still look very good.
The Touch is a marvelous device but one crying out for more screen real estate. Why not go there instead of taking on the world of hurt that opting for a 10-inch screen would introduce?
And another thing. If the Nano has grown with each new generation, would it be farfetched to imagine it growing just a little more to fill in where the Touch is now?
This sort of evolutionary change to Apple's iPod family has been happening for quite a while now so I can't imagine why it would suddenly stop. Certainly to not take the Touch to the next level in order to make room for a tablet that people might not in fact rush out to buy is a dumb way to go. Yet it seems as if this is the scenario that the rumours have thus far favoured. I believe, also, that the underwhelming update recently to the Touch, especially compared to the major overhaul of the Nano, suggests Apple may be planning to do something with the Touch before next fall. If this happens and people decide to call the new Touch a tablet, well all right then.
Look at it this way. Given a choice between let's say a 6" Touch that costs maybe $400 and can work reasonably well with existing App Store software and a 10" tablet costing maybe $700 and in need of a whole other set of apps that will need time to be developed, which would you choose? It's not, in my view, a matter of putting a substantially larger screen on the thing because more is invariably better. It's a matter of determining the biggest screen Apple can use without losing many of the advantages of the current iTouch form factor. This is a case of less is more.
Naturally, I have no inside info and maybe Apple does bring out the 10-inch device as rumoured but here's something to consider. The report that Apple had acquired a ton of 10"screens came out quite some time ago. Months have passed and no device has materialized. What is the likelihood of Apple acquiring that hardware and then sitting on it for quite a long time? Odds are, the original report was bogus and all the talk of a 10-inch tablet has been misguided. Knowing Apple, maybe this misinformation was deliberately put out to confuse the competition. I'd say, if that's the case, it worked. The way things are right now, if Apple did release a new Touch maybe in March, if not sooner, with a bigger screen, it would qualify as a surprise. Be prepared to be surprised.
The OS for the Tablet will be the same as the iPhone - this is obvious surely.
I don't think it's obvious at all. To me, it seems obvious that it won't be identical to iPhone OS or Mac OS, the question ought to be which one it most resembles, and whether it's a superset of at least one (which would allow compiling/running apps from that platform).
I mean, would you really dare to use it in your bathroom knowing that Apple has tons of irreversible moisture [...] indicators built in to their products
They probably aren't irreversible, it's just that you'd probably have to melt your iPhone to reverse them. I doubt very much that they are actually accurate indicators, either. I think their ability to detect what they claim to without false positives is most likely greatly overstated.
To me that's the problem with opting for a 10" screen, i.e. it creates a device that loses most of the strengths of the Touch. Battery life takes a hit, portability takes a hit, compatibility with existing Touch software takes a hit, affordability takes a hit.
Look at it this way. Given a choice between let's say a 6" Touch that costs maybe $400 and can work reasonably well with existing App Store software and a 10" tablet costing maybe $700 and in need of a whole other set of apps that will need time to be developed, which would you choose?
Well, battery life doesn't necessarily take a hit, it might even improve, unless you measure it in hours/gram or something like that.
But, even a 6" Touch sacrifices most of the portability of the current iPhone/Touch. It no longer fits in your pocket (unless you are wearing a lab coat) and I imagine a lot of women would probably find it too large for their purses. (Contrary to popular belief, the laws of physics and the geometry of space-time are the same inside a woman's purse as in the rest of the universe. This is the only significant finding to yet come from the Large Hadron Collider.)
Which one I would choose and how much I would be willing to pay depends largely on what I could do with it and how it works better for me than an iPhone or MacBook in various scenarios. It does not depend on hypothetical price differences or that it can run iPhone software.
why does everyone assume all iPhone apps have to take up the whole relestare of a bigger device? It'd be much nicer to have as an option, for some apps it'd work great, but most would fare better in a window the size of an iPhone screen. Even if the tablet only ran a version of iPhone os, it should still be allowed background tasks. The bigger specs and larger battery gotta be good for something.
Indeed. Dashboard, anyone?
I agree not bloody glass screen please, it is tablet so make it light and durable!
I think people fail to realise that the glass screen is exactly what makes the Apple mobiles so much more durable and useable than the rest of the pack.
Imagine your iPhone with a plastic screen instead of the glass. It would be (slightly) lighter but petty much deficient in every other aspect. If it's plastic it will just be panned as another crappy kindle (and it probably should be too).
The OS for the Tablet will be the same as the iPhone - this is obvious surely.
I don't think it's obvious at all. To me, it seems obvious that it won't be identical to iPhone OS or Mac OS, the question ought to be which one it most resembles, and whether it's a superset of at least one (which would allow compiling/running apps from that platform).
People keep saying this but they never offer up an alternative or an answer to what it will run if it isn't running the iPhone variant of OS-X.
It certainly won't be running desktop OS-X, and OS's aren't often created overnight for individual products. It's taken Apple quite a few years now to develop this new smaller, more mobile variant of OS-X and it's main differences from the desktop version are in the UI and to do with the realities of finger-based computing and the size of the devices.
There is no way in hell that it will be anything but the iPhone variant of OS-X on this thing and yes, it is *obvious* too.
I agree that iPhone apps simply scaled up to a larger size would not make for a high quality user experience.
Other apps would, though. For example, trying to read an article on the iPhone from a news source is too much a hassle. Something like that would be better on a slightly larger screen. I don't think they would target duplicating the iPhone experience on steroids. I think there's a comm market based on text that's underserved at the moment.
With its development reset by co-founder Steve Jobs numerous times, Apple's forthcoming tablet is a device that has been through many internal revisions that look to offer more than "surfing the Web in the bathroom."..
This depiction of Steve cancelling the thing because it hasn't sufficient purpose fits perfectly with what I've always thought about the tablet.
If you can't do work on it, it will fail miserably.
The world is full of view screens and most of them are luxury purchases and afterthoughts. No one *needs* another screen to view yet another web page or yet another TV show in the bathroom. There have to be productivity apps on the tablet or what's the point of the thing at all.
The iPhone store may have 85,000 apps, but if you ignore the entertainment items (games mostly) and then eliminate all the absolute crap, there *might* be about fifty apps in the entire app store that actually allow one to do something useful. The thing that makes any new platform take off is killer apps, and while no one expects to do a great deal of useful work on the iPhone, a tablet is a different proposition again.
If all you can do is watch the video larger, it will fail. If all you can do is play a game on a bigger screen it will fail. If all you can do is browse the web slightly easier it will fail.
If on the other hand it has mobile iWork on it or you can draw on it, it will literally sell itself and Apple will have a hard time making them fast enough. It will also screw Microsoft over big time and you can't get a bigger payoff than that!
Seriously though, if you can't do actual work on it, then it will be an also-ran or niche product at best. Giant opportunity for Apple here, but also a giant opportunity to fail if they don't get it right. Steve seems to be thinking about the product in exactly the right way. Utility first, otherwise it's just a flashy tech demo for no purpose a la Microsoft.
People keep saying this but they never offer up an alternative or an answer to what it will run if it isn't running the iPhone variant of OS-X.
It certainly won't be running desktop OS-X, and OS's aren't often created overnight for individual products. It's taken Apple quite a few years now to develop this new smaller, more mobile variant of OS-X and it's main differences from the desktop version are in the UI and to do with the realities of finger-based computing and the size of the devices.
There is no way in hell that it will be anything but the iPhone variant of OS-X on this thing and yes, it is *obvious* too.
If not everyone agrees with you that it will be running IPhone OS (in the form it exists in the wild today), I think that makes it obvious that it's not so obvious that it will. Or is everyone who disagrees with you just crazy?
Any number of possibilities have been offered up for what it could run. Pretty much everything from full blown Mac OS X to current iPhone OS and all sorts of variants in between have been discussed.
You're right that the main difference between iPhone OS and Mac OS X is the UI paradigm. But, touch isn't inherently tied to that paradigm, nor necessarily impossible with other paradigms. I don't believe that the iPhone UI, unchanged, will work on larger screens without seeming limiting (It would be like running a 30" monitor at 640x480 resolution.) and would very much reduce the value of a tablet. Even running iPhone apps in little windows would be incredibly clunky.
It seems to me that the most likely possibility is in fact a 3rd OS that is intermediate between Mac OS X and iPhone OS, with perhaps UI innovations of its own. But, it's impossible to know which one it's more closely related to at this time, because none of us knows what Apple has in mind for what this would do and how it would do it.
It's frequently declared that a menu based interface (i.e., OS X) can't work in a touch environment, but this criticism assumes that menus must behave in exactly the same way as they do on OS X. There's no reason that has to be the case. Cocoa apps don't have code to display menus. You just add them to your .nib and the OS handles the creation and display of them for you. There's no reason that features similar to some Universal Access features couldn't be created that would expand your menus into easily touchable controls.
That being said, straight Mac OS X apps, just like straight iPhone apps, would probably not be ideal on a tablet. Since either approach would be clunky in some way, and Apple is not known for releasing clunky UIs into the wild, the most logical inference one can make is that a tablet would have a UI different from both the iPhone and a Mac.
I'm not buying this part. Meaning: "The report cited analysts who believe a tablet would have access to that library of applications." Just because the iPhone App Store might have been an inspiration, doesn't mean they have to use "it".
I like the App Store idea, but it will be a new store specifically designed for the tablet with its 10" screen. The Tablet App Store, if you will.
I doubt this - why would they knowingly deprive the new device of 75,000 applications users might conceivably want to run on it? I would think it more likely that they would extend the app store to include a device compatibility setting, a device category, or some other method of differentiating apps based on their target device - perhaps even a different 'section'. It doesn't make good business sense to release a product that cannot use any of the eco-system or applications developed for the iPhone / touch when the underlying libraries are so similar across the products. The only way I could see this happening is if the device runs straight OSX, and I really do not believe that is going to be the case. Even if it were, Apple would be foolish not to enable iPhone / touch apps to run on the device.
Well, battery life doesn't necessarily take a hit, it might even improve, unless you measure it in hours/gram or something like that.
But, even a 6" Touch sacrifices most of the portability of the current iPhone/Touch. It no longer fits in your pocket (unless you are wearing a lab coat) and I imagine a lot of women would probably find it too large for their purses. (Contrary to popular belief, the laws of physics and the geometry of space-time are the same inside a woman's purse as in the rest of the universe. This is the only significant finding to yet come from the Large Hadron Collider.)
Which one I would choose and how much I would be willing to pay depends largely on what I could do with it and how it works better for me than an iPhone or MacBook in various scenarios. It does not depend on hypothetical price differences or that it can run iPhone software.
I'm no engineer but I have to believe that the larger the screen the more power it takes to operate it.
I think the magic number in terms of retaining much of the Touch's portability would be one about 3.5 inches by 5 inches with a 5-inch screen. This is small enough to fit into a man's pocket and if you hang with women sporting purses that can't handle a 3.5X5 device, you're hanging with a version of the fairer sex I'm not familiar with.
The big question is, does upgrading to a 5-inch display do enough to address the shortcomings of the current Touch. Not having spent any time with the thing, I can't say. But if I had to guess, I'd conjecture that a 5-inch Touch would be a fantastic device for watching movies and playing games. Not sure about surfing on the net but it would certainly be an improvement over the current model. Keep the cost to within $100 of the current model and you would sell a ton of them. You could keep the current Touch at a really low price point until the Nano morphed into a comparable device, which I suspect it will.
No, no, no. Maybe that might be the case for apps on the iTunes store, but on the device itself the App Store will be the Tablet App Store. Though it will be just called App Store. Then in the iTunes manager it will separate the apps.
I completely disagree - I don't think your conjecture makes a lick of business sense. Apple would be foolish to introduce a tablet device that won't run any iPhone / touch applications, or that provides an app store that won't allow them to be purchased / downloaded. Doing so would essentially be starting over in the mobile space - it is too complex, too fraught with the potential for loss, and will doubtless anger many consumers. If they release this device at all, it is more likely that it will either run SX and hence have access to OSX apps (a poor choice I hope they do not make), or it will have a version of iPhone OS and will have access to all of those apps. Perhaps it could even do both, I don't know... but one thing I think is very unlikely is for Apple to start with a fresh device that doesn't run any of the existing software. It would be a very poor business decision, and that is not very characteristic of Apple's board or executive management.
I doubt this - why would they knowingly deprive the new device of 75,000 applications users might conceivably want to run on it?
Because the apps aren't design for the device, and they want a second round of money. It's really simple.
I'm no engineer but I have to believe that the larger the screen the more power it takes to operate it.
I think the magic number in terms of retaining much of the Touch's portability would be one about 4 inches by 5 inches with a 5-inch screen. This is small enough to fit into a man's pocket and if you hang with women sporting purses that can't handle a 4X5 device, you're hanging with a version of the fairer sex I'm not familiar with.
Well, I'm no (hardware) engineer either but I have to believe that the larger the battery the more power it can provide. Chances are a 10" screen device would have a much larger battery. However, I think it's entirely premature to infer anything about relative battery life.
A 4x5 device would not fit comfortably in my front jeans pocket along with my wallet. (Neither is going in the back pocket for various reasons, and the other pocket holds things, like keys, that would scratch an iPhone or leather wallet (technically, a card case, but...))
As for the fairer sex, many of the women I know have what they refer to as a "weekend bag" -- a tiny bag just big enough to hold "weekend keys" a wallet, iPhone, and perhaps a couple items of emergency makeup. (Not the same as what I believe is called a "clutch", this is for daytime use with a shoulder strap.) A 4x5 "tablet" would be a tight fit, if at all.
It just seems like an awkward size without enough benefit from the increase.
I completely disagree - I don't think your conjecture makes a lick of business sense. Apple would be foolish to introduce a tablet device that won't run any iPhone / touch applications.
I think you're wrong. Time will tell. In my view this tablet will start from scratch.