The device was described as a larger iPhone, "small enough to carry in a handbag but too big to fit in a pocket." The tablet will reportedly allow users to surf the Web, watch movies, and read books and newspapers.
Apple is going to create a lot of "Metro Sexuals" with "Man Bags:!
"This market is smaller in some sense than the general public"
I guess I disagree with this. I think the time has come for print media to go digital in a big time way. It's expensive to print and a waste of resources, as well as inconvenient to store or throw away used printed material.
One of the things I really like about Apple is that they don't just come up with new hardware and software. They go to great lengths to develop new markets. Itunes wasn't just new software. Anyone could have come up with that. Apple worked with the music providers to develop a new market. The same could be said about the iPhone. They worked with the providers. Some turned them down - At&t worked with them and have benefited from that.
I think that Apple has spent a lot of time developing sources of print media and other types of providers.
Everyone who reads a newspaper in the morning, or students reading text books, or readers of magazines, books, comic books, menus, etc.. are potential users of this type of product. I don't think this is just going to be just another type of E reader that does only 1 thing. I think this will be huge.
If this thing is really all about being an e-reader, I'm prepared for a big letdown. I just don't see a big iPhone that you can read books on (but can't put in your pocket) being a huge seller (especially if its expensive). E-readers are a niche market. One that everyone seems to be scrambling to cater to lately, even though only a small minority of people are asking for it.
If this thing really does run a new version of the iPhone OS, instead of full OS X, I suppose they will make a new category of apps in the app store for it and allow it to run the iPhone apps in some sort of capacity. For this thing to sell like gangbusters, I think it needs to have more than an e-reader as it's killer app. In other-words, I think it needs to be more than a big iPhone with an e-reader to be compelling to the mainstream market. Maybe way more advanced apps (iLife suite or something)? I also don't see how to convince the mainstream market to pay for yet ANOTHER 3G data plan for a device that would require a bag to bring along with you.
At any rate, it will be interesting to see what they have in store.
I think people take too much out of these articles. When pitching the tablet to newspapers and magazines, it will be pitched as an e-reader. When pitched to the movie industry, it is a movie player. When pitched to the music industry it is an mp3 player capable of doing new things like iTunes LP. When pitched to the gaming industry, it is a great gaming device. The truth of the matter is that it will be a multi-function device, and there probably won't be one killer app. The killer app will be the app that allows you to do what you want with it, and that will change from person to person (for some, there may be no killer app).
Yes, it will basically do everything the iPhone does (okay, MAYBE not the actual voice comm via cell thing...), only on a larger screen...
But the larger screen, although making the product harder to carry in ones pocket, is EXACTLY what will drive this device in the market!
For every iPhone user, I could imagine an equal number (if not three or more times the number...) that would LOVE the portable communications provided by the iPhone but cannot use one due to the tiny screen!
The tablet WILL begin as a larger iPhone, it will evolve (as all Apple products do), and it will be the standard for 21st century mobile communications devices; covering newspapers, books, magazines, comics, journals, music (audio & video) television, podcasts, movies, iChat, email, web browsing, etc. ...
Get with the program folks; sometimes, bigger IS better...!
There's now quite a bit of consumer experience with and exposure to e-readers such as the Kindle, the Sony products, the recently announced Nook and several others. The Kindle also provides some access to newspapers and other publications than books. Yes, these devices have relatively small, although growing, market penetration at this point. But the major problem with all the e-readers isn't that they're unknown, it's that they're simply not very good. Monochrome displays, unattractive designs, clunky hardware, dubious user interfaces, incompatible content/hardware ecosystems, all of those things make today's e-readers intriguing in concept but limit their target market in real life. And at $250 and up, the buyer needs to be pretty motivated to buy one.
The proper comparison isn't to the Newton or other early PDA devices, where the concept was indeed well ahead of the hardware capabilities of the time. No - instead think about personal MP3 players. Apple didn't by any means invent the MP3 player with its iPod. What they did was bring out the first MP3 player that was irresistible.
This came from a confluence of several factors: the newly available 1.8" hard drives for ample capacity (yes, 5GB seems tiny today, but it wasn't in 2001), Apple's legendary design skills that resulted in a highly attractive product, the clean and innovative user interface, and last and by no means least, the convenient iTunes Music Store and its DRM protected content that addressed both user needs and music company fears. Could somebody else have done all that? Maybe, just possibly — but they didn't.
I argue that the projected Apple tablet device is at a comparable point in history. Electronic access to news, books and magazines is on the rise, while the traditional paper versions find themselves in crisis. Specialized electronic devices (i.e. other than computers) to access published material have existed for some time, but they're simply not compelling. Narrow focus electronic book readers are too limited in scope to to justify their cost to all but the most motivated audience.
All this says to me that the door is open for someone like Apple to replicate what they did with the iPod in 2001 (and more recently with the iPhone). In today's terms that will mean much the same as back then: superior hardware, software, interface and appearance, backed by a robust ecosystem to deliver content, and all integrated in clever ways. Apple has, probably better than any other company, the ability to deliver on those things. By comparison Amazon has done a decent job with the back-end, but is weak at everything else.
The projected Apple tablet seems likely to cost at least three times as much as today's e-readers, i.e. perhaps $800 vs. $250. Obviously to justify that it both has to do more and do it better. For those to whom this seems like a stretch, let me remind you that the original 5GB iPod, introduced on 23rd October 2001, was priced at $399. That's about $480 in 2009 dollars. People said Apple was nuts.
It's going to be interesting...
A little bit to add...
Newspapers and magazines have been shown the device to "woo" them over but remember the New York Times guy, called it a "Slate" device....
Remember when school students actually carried their own piece of "slate" chalkboard to do their work on...
So let's not rule out college students....
They are at the young and what's hip age regarding electronic gadgets and get them now, you'll have them for life.
And the Universities... First, didn't some schools make iPods and iTunes a part of enrollment.
“College students could soon be able to ditch their backpacks and put their textbooks into their shirt pockets thanks to a new program that will let them read their books using iPhones or iPod Touch devices.”
Just saying, a sleek little device that has a bigger screen then the iPhone and can be in a way right up there with the PC "netbook" market, could be a boom for Apple in the educational market...
?College students could soon be able to ditch their backpacks and put their textbooks into their shirt pockets thanks to a new program that will let them read their books using iPhones or iPod Touch devices.?
Just saying, a sleek little device that has a bigger screen then the iPhone and can be in a way right up there with the PC "netbook" market, could be a boom for Apple in the educational market...
Of course I could be wrong.
The education market is one of the most obvious markets for a tablet. I don't think you are wrong.
I have to come down on the side of the "fully functional" group.....
An iphone / ipod touch ebook reader with a bigger screen is just not worth it. I can do most of what I need a phone to do on my phone and I can carry that in my pocket. Yes a bigger screen would be nice but that would limit portability. I want a device that is more for vertical markets. Something that I and others can use as a tool. I am thinking a small clipboard type device, sure it can do all those other things but it can also run 'real' applications. Something a doctor could use for charting, a foreman could use for tracking progress, an artist could use for sketching etc. Sure if they want to do two devices so there will be one that is cheap and one that is more functional I could live with that, but that is seldom Apples way. A device that does what a low power laptop with cell modem does but without the keyboard and track pad so it can be used while standing and moving around. That is the biggest problem of the current full function devices, that and the related lack of a touch screen. the device needs to be instant on, let me make a note or check some boxes and then be back in standby as I move on with life.
I admit this sort of thing might be hard to do without a stylus type input model, and Apple has poo-pooed that before too but I don't see it as a problem. Refine your touch tech so for many things a finger will do the job, include a clever way to hide and carry the stylus for when it is needed and get do the best you can with either hand writing recognition or just store it graphically and deal with it later as needed on a more powerful machine.
This market is smaller in some sense than the general public, but it is probably more profitable than a giant, bulky iphone book reader, movie watcher, but the same form factor and basic tech would probably suffice for both.
What makes a "real" application? I'm honestly not sure what you are getting at (although I suspect you want OSX). Why can't it do the fun stuff and more serious stuff at the same time? The applications in the app store are primarily limited by hardware and screen size, not the OS. A tablet would bring an improvement to both the internal hardware specs and to screen size. Some limitations in the OS could also be lifted for a tablet (multitasking for example).
I could be wrong, but I don't think an Apple tablet will be marketed as just an e-reader/media player. There's some market for that, sure, but I think most people want to be able to do more with their computing devices than watch movies and read books, and the iPhone and App Store have set a bar for Apple that a larger device needs to surpass in functionality, especially since it loses the advantage of portability.
I think it's also obvious that iPhone apps, in their current form, won't work well on a relatively large tablet device. Nor, probably would Mac OS X apps (although, I think there are things, transparent to the developer, that could be done to make them work better), and, as someone pointed out previously, it's not going to be a big enough screen that it would be all that useful to have multiple apps open at the same time, except to facilitate better task switching.
All that being said, I think it adds up to the tablet running a separate OS with a separate SDK (there could be significant overlap in SDKs) and that what we know about what it may do is very fragmentary, at best. It will probably support e-reading, various media, news (as now rumored), etc. It may even support telephony via a BT headset and Voice Control. It will certainly provide a better Web experience than the iPhone. Large battery with good battery life (since most of the other components won't be much bigger than in the iPhone, there will be plenty of room for battery).
But, I still don't think that adds up to a very compelling experience, and it has to offer something distinct from MB(P) + iPhone, otherwise, why would you carry this around with compromised functionality and protability when so many people already have notebooks and smartphones? What I think it does add up to is that, if Apple brings this to market, and it looks more and more like they will, there will be something about it that is still utterly unknown that makes it something that people have to have.
I agree with you mostly. But, Apple has a pretty good track record of creating devices that succeeded where other attempts failed (iMac, iPod, iPhone, etc.). The Newton was at least a decade ahead of its time -- handwriting recognition was not nearly where it needed to be; processor was underpowered; not enough RAM/storage... If the rumors are true, and a new tablet is coming sometime early next year, it's likely they've been working on it for at least 5 years (the iPhone was in development for 7-8 years, as I understand). So I expect that a lot of these issues will have been addressed. And if the other rumor is true -- that Uncle Steve has been personally overseeing the tablet project -- then that's also a good sign. Steve's got the force of will to make a device find its place and find its market, with a couple exceptions **cough**Cube**cough**. Steve's clearly got this "build it and they will come" approach to product development, for better or worse.
For years, Apple has been the rudder that's steered the consumer tech ship, and if Steve can get his RDF mojo to work for the tablet the way it has for the iMac, iPod and iPhone, then the rest of the industry will be playing "catch-up" yet again. I am cautiously optimistic about the tablet.
... If the rumors are true, and a new tablet is coming sometime early next year, it's likely they've been working on it for at least 5 years (the iPhone was in development for 7-8 years, as I understand). So I expect that a lot of these issues will have been addressed.
Well, yes, that was my point, they won't release it unless they've got something very compelling to offer, and I don't think any of the rumors or speculation sound all that compelling, so it's not going to be (exactly) what people expect.
Wherever Apple wants to put it. It was simply an example. Yes simply scaling up the iPhones on screen keyboard may not work well, but that doesn't mean Apple couldn't create a new software keyboard (or two).
Wherever Apple wants to put it. It was simply an example. Yes simply scaling up the iPhones on screen keyboard may not work well, but that doesn't mean Apple couldn't create a new software keyboard (or two).
Well, I think you aren't catching my point.
It's not about one or two splitted keyboards, I'm talking about ergonomy, if you're using a device with a 3"-4" screen and 120-180 gr weight (any smartphone) you cand hold it and write more or less conformtably .
But if you have a device with 8"-10" screen and 350-500 gr holding it by the base and type with the thumbs it's not ergonomical.
Working with a tablet, while possible, it's very unconfortable so my comment of a picture of someone typing with it in his legs while commuting
It's not about one or two splitted keyboards, I'm talking about ergonomy, if you're using a device with a 3"-4" screen and 120-180 gr weight (any smartphone) you cand hold it and write more or less conformtably .
But if you have a device with 8"-10" screen and 350-500 gr holding it by the base and type with the thumbs it's not ergonomical.
Working with a tablet, while possible, it's very unconfortable so my comment of a picture of someone typing with it in his legs while commuting
Yes, at the bottom of the screen. Try it with a book, it works quite well.
What I want to know is, who exactly is describing the Apple tablet as a "larger iPhone" -- the rumor mongers, or someone who has actually seen/touched/used one? Does anyone seriously believe that Apple would have taken this long to develop and release this product if it was simply a scaled-up version of the iPhone? They could have done that last year. Get real! Apple is obviously sweating bullets over this product and Steve has probably crushed dozens of prototypes under his heal. If it isn't a lot of things that nobody ever expected, it will be a big disappointment.
I SERIOUSLY hope that all that you said is exactly what's going on.
Well, yes, that was my point, they won't release it unless they've got something very compelling to offer, and I don't think any of the rumors or speculation sound all that compelling, so it's not going to be (exactly) what people expect.
Comments
The device was described as a larger iPhone, "small enough to carry in a handbag but too big to fit in a pocket." The tablet will reportedly allow users to surf the Web, watch movies, and read books and newspapers.
Apple is going to create a lot of "Metro Sexuals" with "Man Bags:!
Let's get shopping guys!
http://www.kineda.com/top-10-ultimat...xual-man-bags/
I guess I disagree with this. I think the time has come for print media to go digital in a big time way. It's expensive to print and a waste of resources, as well as inconvenient to store or throw away used printed material.
One of the things I really like about Apple is that they don't just come up with new hardware and software. They go to great lengths to develop new markets. Itunes wasn't just new software. Anyone could have come up with that. Apple worked with the music providers to develop a new market. The same could be said about the iPhone. They worked with the providers. Some turned them down - At&t worked with them and have benefited from that.
I think that Apple has spent a lot of time developing sources of print media and other types of providers.
Everyone who reads a newspaper in the morning, or students reading text books, or readers of magazines, books, comic books, menus, etc.. are potential users of this type of product. I don't think this is just going to be just another type of E reader that does only 1 thing. I think this will be huge.
If this thing is really all about being an e-reader, I'm prepared for a big letdown. I just don't see a big iPhone that you can read books on (but can't put in your pocket) being a huge seller (especially if its expensive). E-readers are a niche market. One that everyone seems to be scrambling to cater to lately, even though only a small minority of people are asking for it.
If this thing really does run a new version of the iPhone OS, instead of full OS X, I suppose they will make a new category of apps in the app store for it and allow it to run the iPhone apps in some sort of capacity. For this thing to sell like gangbusters, I think it needs to have more than an e-reader as it's killer app. In other-words, I think it needs to be more than a big iPhone with an e-reader to be compelling to the mainstream market. Maybe way more advanced apps (iLife suite or something)? I also don't see how to convince the mainstream market to pay for yet ANOTHER 3G data plan for a device that would require a bag to bring along with you.
At any rate, it will be interesting to see what they have in store.
I think people take too much out of these articles. When pitching the tablet to newspapers and magazines, it will be pitched as an e-reader. When pitched to the movie industry, it is a movie player. When pitched to the music industry it is an mp3 player capable of doing new things like iTunes LP. When pitched to the gaming industry, it is a great gaming device. The truth of the matter is that it will be a multi-function device, and there probably won't be one killer app. The killer app will be the app that allows you to do what you want with it, and that will change from person to person (for some, there may be no killer app).
Yes, it will basically do everything the iPhone does (okay, MAYBE not the actual voice comm via cell thing...), only on a larger screen...
But the larger screen, although making the product harder to carry in ones pocket, is EXACTLY what will drive this device in the market!
For every iPhone user, I could imagine an equal number (if not three or more times the number...) that would LOVE the portable communications provided by the iPhone but cannot use one due to the tiny screen!
The tablet WILL begin as a larger iPhone, it will evolve (as all Apple products do), and it will be the standard for 21st century mobile communications devices; covering newspapers, books, magazines, comics, journals, music (audio & video) television, podcasts, movies, iChat, email, web browsing, etc. ...
Get with the program folks; sometimes, bigger IS better...!
Dissenting view:
There's now quite a bit of consumer experience with and exposure to e-readers such as the Kindle, the Sony products, the recently announced Nook and several others. The Kindle also provides some access to newspapers and other publications than books. Yes, these devices have relatively small, although growing, market penetration at this point. But the major problem with all the e-readers isn't that they're unknown, it's that they're simply not very good. Monochrome displays, unattractive designs, clunky hardware, dubious user interfaces, incompatible content/hardware ecosystems, all of those things make today's e-readers intriguing in concept but limit their target market in real life. And at $250 and up, the buyer needs to be pretty motivated to buy one.
The proper comparison isn't to the Newton or other early PDA devices, where the concept was indeed well ahead of the hardware capabilities of the time. No - instead think about personal MP3 players. Apple didn't by any means invent the MP3 player with its iPod. What they did was bring out the first MP3 player that was irresistible.
This came from a confluence of several factors: the newly available 1.8" hard drives for ample capacity (yes, 5GB seems tiny today, but it wasn't in 2001), Apple's legendary design skills that resulted in a highly attractive product, the clean and innovative user interface, and last and by no means least, the convenient iTunes Music Store and its DRM protected content that addressed both user needs and music company fears. Could somebody else have done all that? Maybe, just possibly — but they didn't.
I argue that the projected Apple tablet device is at a comparable point in history. Electronic access to news, books and magazines is on the rise, while the traditional paper versions find themselves in crisis. Specialized electronic devices (i.e. other than computers) to access published material have existed for some time, but they're simply not compelling. Narrow focus electronic book readers are too limited in scope to to justify their cost to all but the most motivated audience.
All this says to me that the door is open for someone like Apple to replicate what they did with the iPod in 2001 (and more recently with the iPhone). In today's terms that will mean much the same as back then: superior hardware, software, interface and appearance, backed by a robust ecosystem to deliver content, and all integrated in clever ways. Apple has, probably better than any other company, the ability to deliver on those things. By comparison Amazon has done a decent job with the back-end, but is weak at everything else.
The projected Apple tablet seems likely to cost at least three times as much as today's e-readers, i.e. perhaps $800 vs. $250. Obviously to justify that it both has to do more and do it better. For those to whom this seems like a stretch, let me remind you that the original 5GB iPod, introduced on 23rd October 2001, was priced at $399. That's about $480 in 2009 dollars. People said Apple was nuts.
It's going to be interesting...
A little bit to add...
Newspapers and magazines have been shown the device to "woo" them over but remember the New York Times guy, called it a "Slate" device....
Remember when school students actually carried their own piece of "slate" chalkboard to do their work on...
So let's not rule out college students....
They are at the young and what's hip age regarding electronic gadgets and get them now, you'll have them for life.
And the Universities... First, didn't some schools make iPods and iTunes a part of enrollment.
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifesty.../2004/08/64768
Next, with the advent of the iPod touch and iPhone and app store things got a little more interesting going to a new college or university...
For playing back lectures, downloading multimedia, etc...
http://blog.taragana.com/e/2009/05/0...iversity-3529/
or
http://www.librarystuff.net/2009/08/...ne-ipod-touch/
“College students could soon be able to ditch their backpacks and put their textbooks into their shirt pockets thanks to a new program that will let them read their books using iPhones or iPod Touch devices.”
Just saying, a sleek little device that has a bigger screen then the iPhone and can be in a way right up there with the PC "netbook" market, could be a boom for Apple in the educational market...
Of course I could be wrong.
Yes, it will be like an iPhone, just bigger...
I say, not a chance. If Apple wanted to do something this easy and predictable, they could have done it last year.
A little bit to add...
Newspapers and magazines have been shown the device to "woo" them over but remember the New York Times guy, called it a "Slate" device....
Remember when school students actually carried their own piece of "slate" chalkboard to do their work on...
So let's not rule out college students....
They are at the young and what's hip age regarding electronic gadgets and get them now, you'll have them for life.
And the Universities... First, didn't some schools make iPods and iTunes a part of enrollment.
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifesty.../2004/08/64768
Next, with the advent of the iPod touch and iPhone and app store things got a little more interesting going to a new college or university...
For playing back lectures, downloading multimedia, etc...
http://blog.taragana.com/e/2009/05/0...iversity-3529/
or
?College students could soon be able to ditch their backpacks and put their textbooks into their shirt pockets thanks to a new program that will let them read their books using iPhones or iPod Touch devices.?
Just saying, a sleek little device that has a bigger screen then the iPhone and can be in a way right up there with the PC "netbook" market, could be a boom for Apple in the educational market...
Of course I could be wrong.
The education market is one of the most obvious markets for a tablet. I don't think you are wrong.
Get with the program folks; sometimes, bigger IS better...!
No, sometimes bigger is not better. How can you type in a virtual keyboard in a 10" device?
I have to come down on the side of the "fully functional" group.....
An iphone / ipod touch ebook reader with a bigger screen is just not worth it. I can do most of what I need a phone to do on my phone and I can carry that in my pocket. Yes a bigger screen would be nice but that would limit portability. I want a device that is more for vertical markets. Something that I and others can use as a tool. I am thinking a small clipboard type device, sure it can do all those other things but it can also run 'real' applications. Something a doctor could use for charting, a foreman could use for tracking progress, an artist could use for sketching etc. Sure if they want to do two devices so there will be one that is cheap and one that is more functional I could live with that, but that is seldom Apples way. A device that does what a low power laptop with cell modem does but without the keyboard and track pad so it can be used while standing and moving around. That is the biggest problem of the current full function devices, that and the related lack of a touch screen. the device needs to be instant on, let me make a note or check some boxes and then be back in standby as I move on with life.
I admit this sort of thing might be hard to do without a stylus type input model, and Apple has poo-pooed that before too but I don't see it as a problem. Refine your touch tech so for many things a finger will do the job, include a clever way to hide and carry the stylus for when it is needed and get do the best you can with either hand writing recognition or just store it graphically and deal with it later as needed on a more powerful machine.
This market is smaller in some sense than the general public, but it is probably more profitable than a giant, bulky iphone book reader, movie watcher, but the same form factor and basic tech would probably suffice for both.
What makes a "real" application? I'm honestly not sure what you are getting at (although I suspect you want OSX). Why can't it do the fun stuff and more serious stuff at the same time? The applications in the app store are primarily limited by hardware and screen size, not the OS. A tablet would bring an improvement to both the internal hardware specs and to screen size. Some limitations in the OS could also be lifted for a tablet (multitasking for example).
No, sometimes bigger is not better. How can you type in a virtual keyboard in a 10" device?
Split keyboard?
I could be wrong, but I don't think an Apple tablet will be marketed as just an e-reader/media player. There's some market for that, sure, but I think most people want to be able to do more with their computing devices than watch movies and read books, and the iPhone and App Store have set a bar for Apple that a larger device needs to surpass in functionality, especially since it loses the advantage of portability.
I think it's also obvious that iPhone apps, in their current form, won't work well on a relatively large tablet device. Nor, probably would Mac OS X apps (although, I think there are things, transparent to the developer, that could be done to make them work better), and, as someone pointed out previously, it's not going to be a big enough screen that it would be all that useful to have multiple apps open at the same time, except to facilitate better task switching.
All that being said, I think it adds up to the tablet running a separate OS with a separate SDK (there could be significant overlap in SDKs) and that what we know about what it may do is very fragmentary, at best. It will probably support e-reading, various media, news (as now rumored), etc. It may even support telephony via a BT headset and Voice Control. It will certainly provide a better Web experience than the iPhone. Large battery with good battery life (since most of the other components won't be much bigger than in the iPhone, there will be plenty of room for battery).
But, I still don't think that adds up to a very compelling experience, and it has to offer something distinct from MB(P) + iPhone, otherwise, why would you carry this around with compromised functionality and protability when so many people already have notebooks and smartphones? What I think it does add up to is that, if Apple brings this to market, and it looks more and more like they will, there will be something about it that is still utterly unknown that makes it something that people have to have.
I agree with you mostly. But, Apple has a pretty good track record of creating devices that succeeded where other attempts failed (iMac, iPod, iPhone, etc.). The Newton was at least a decade ahead of its time -- handwriting recognition was not nearly where it needed to be; processor was underpowered; not enough RAM/storage... If the rumors are true, and a new tablet is coming sometime early next year, it's likely they've been working on it for at least 5 years (the iPhone was in development for 7-8 years, as I understand). So I expect that a lot of these issues will have been addressed. And if the other rumor is true -- that Uncle Steve has been personally overseeing the tablet project -- then that's also a good sign. Steve's got the force of will to make a device find its place and find its market, with a couple exceptions **cough**Cube**cough**. Steve's clearly got this "build it and they will come" approach to product development, for better or worse.
For years, Apple has been the rudder that's steered the consumer tech ship, and if Steve can get his RDF mojo to work for the tablet the way it has for the iMac, iPod and iPhone, then the rest of the industry will be playing "catch-up" yet again. I am cautiously optimistic about the tablet.
Split keyboard?
Absolutely.
... If the rumors are true, and a new tablet is coming sometime early next year, it's likely they've been working on it for at least 5 years (the iPhone was in development for 7-8 years, as I understand). So I expect that a lot of these issues will have been addressed.
Well, yes, that was my point, they won't release it unless they've got something very compelling to offer, and I don't think any of the rumors or speculation sound all that compelling, so it's not going to be (exactly) what people expect.
Split keyboard?
Where? At the bottom of the screen?
Where? At the bottom of the screen?
Wherever Apple wants to put it. It was simply an example. Yes simply scaling up the iPhones on screen keyboard may not work well, but that doesn't mean Apple couldn't create a new software keyboard (or two).
Wherever Apple wants to put it. It was simply an example. Yes simply scaling up the iPhones on screen keyboard may not work well, but that doesn't mean Apple couldn't create a new software keyboard (or two).
Well, I think you aren't catching my point.
It's not about one or two splitted keyboards, I'm talking about ergonomy, if you're using a device with a 3"-4" screen and 120-180 gr weight (any smartphone) you cand hold it and write more or less conformtably .
But if you have a device with 8"-10" screen and 350-500 gr holding it by the base and type with the thumbs it's not ergonomical.
Working with a tablet, while possible, it's very unconfortable so my comment of a picture of someone typing with it in his legs while commuting
Where? At the bottom of the screen?
Well, I think you aren't catching my point.
It's not about one or two splitted keyboards, I'm talking about ergonomy, if you're using a device with a 3"-4" screen and 120-180 gr weight (any smartphone) you cand hold it and write more or less conformtably .
But if you have a device with 8"-10" screen and 350-500 gr holding it by the base and type with the thumbs it's not ergonomical.
Working with a tablet, while possible, it's very unconfortable so my comment of a picture of someone typing with it in his legs while commuting
Yes, at the bottom of the screen. Try it with a book, it works quite well.
Yes, at the bottom of the screen. Try it with a book, it works quite well.
I have an iRex Iliad, an e-ink reader.
It's size and weight are:
6.1" by 8.5" by .63"
13.7 ounces
Holding it like you say it's very uncomfortable and if the device has 10" and 15-17 ounces it will be worse.
Dissenting view:
It's going to be interesting...
I didn't want to copy your whole post, but I think your analysis is right on.
What I want to know is, who exactly is describing the Apple tablet as a "larger iPhone" -- the rumor mongers, or someone who has actually seen/touched/used one? Does anyone seriously believe that Apple would have taken this long to develop and release this product if it was simply a scaled-up version of the iPhone? They could have done that last year. Get real! Apple is obviously sweating bullets over this product and Steve has probably crushed dozens of prototypes under his heal. If it isn't a lot of things that nobody ever expected, it will be a big disappointment.
I SERIOUSLY hope that all that you said is exactly what's going on.
Absolutely.
Well, yes, that was my point, they won't release it unless they've got something very compelling to offer, and I don't think any of the rumors or speculation sound all that compelling, so it's not going to be (exactly) what people expect.
We're on the same page, then.