No, he was lucky. When you drop an iPhone onto concrete and the glass doesn't break that's very lucky. The glass breaks very easily. There's websites that fix iPhone screens for a living, there's a reason for that you know. They're easy to break, so they fix them.
No, he was lucky. When you drop an iPhone onto concrete and the glass doesn't break that's very lucky. The glass breaks very easily.
You're mistaking anecdotal evidence (the experiences you or some friends had) for statistical evidence. I think if the breakage was exceptionally high the cost of apple care for the product would be higher. (anecdotally, i dropped mine once onto concrete and it scratched the corner but did not break the screen. That isolated incident says no more about the phone's hardiness than your experiences. But having dropped it once, i became more careful and haven't dropped it since. Maybe you're being rougher with your phones than the average user? Are you by any chance ever putting the phone in the back pockets of your pants? My daughter did that with tight jeans and trashed a cheap phone's screen.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ireland
There's websites that fix iPhone screens for a living, there's a reason for that you know. They're easy to break, so they fix them.
That's equally faulty logic: Cars now have fewer mechanical problems than ever (check consumer reports, for ex) but there's still a bustling industry of auto repair shops. Your A just doesn't lead to B.
I don't know whether or not the product's as robust as it should be: i'm not privy to data that would allow an informed conclusion. I am opposed to bad logic and to leaping to conclusions.
This is very interesting if the 10 inch glass screen is confirmed. that means we'll not be seeing tactile feedback since that requires a plastic lattice.
I was wondering, however if this 10 inch device is not a tablet, but a new iBook laptop, and then smaller rumored device is the tablet.
10 inch is just too unwieldy unless the thing weighs ~ 1lb.
I'm apple fan boy, but I am pretty nervous about this....
This is very interesting if the 10 inch glass screen is confirmed. that means we'll not be seeing tactile feedback since that requires a plastic lattice.
I was wondering, however if this 10 inch device is not a tablet, but a new iBook laptop, and then smaller rumored device is the tablet.
10 inch is just too unwieldy unless the thing weighs ~ 1lb.
I'm apple fan boy, but I am pretty nervous about this....
There will be special headphones that send a signal to your brain tricking it into thinking it feels tactile response from the finger.
Hate to disagree with you but my Iphone (not in a case) has survived several drops on concrete and did a frighting bounce skip slide across my breezeway which has a tile floor and didn't crack just picked up a few scratches.
Ι will vouch for that too, my iphone has been dropped tens of times.
10" for anyone who's actually used e-ink devices to read documents and/or surf (such as the irex ones) are the ideal size. There is a chance that this will have a smaller 7" sibling, but I don't see any chance that the 10" isn't produced, it just isn't useful and versalite enough under this size, plus there's a lot of competition (see plastic logic que) at this or even higher size coming along, for apple to be dumb enough to create an inferior size.
Let me also say thanks to mactripper (who I have criticized a lot) for the very interesting links on the glass materials. Of course I do not subscribe to the notion that apple forces inferior glass material on us to retain their very high margins, I am under the impression that they will eventually solve the matte/anti glare conundrum as soon as they are able to get good prices for such a glass material. I can now see where this is heading because I was not aware of glass with such properties. But as always the price for these units has got to be right to be incorporated in a consumer product. Actually I am sure that as soon as such material is a viable option for consumer grade products apple will be the first to implement it.
You're right that I didn't take all the factors into account but you're last commet is rather significant.
Here's a handy chart that's a good representation of what your eyes can resolve at a given distance. It doesn't go down to a 10" screen, but you can get a sense for the trend. Your 32" TV at 7 feet is just on the edge of seeing the full benefit of a 720p signal, but you'd have to sit at 4 feet to be able to see all of the pixels of a 1080p signal.
I agree with a number of posters. I cut cardboard into 7-inch and 10-inch (diagonal) sizes. I much prefer the 7-inch. It'll fit in a coat pocket and maybe even a large men's shirt pocket. Even more important, it's just big enough to get past the tiny-screen, tiny-keyboard feel of my otherwise marvelous iPod touch, and it fits perfectly in my typical-guy hand. Other than by adding a handle, I can't imagine how someone could hold a 10-inch version in one hand. Like the Kindle, it'd be for use sitting down.
In my best-of-all-worlds scenario, Apple will offer two families of products with different screen sizes and features, much like they do with laptops.
1. 7-inch extended iPod touch with WiFi, GPS, a compass, and a iPhone-grade camera at a competitive price. It'd be for productivity, gamers and vacationers. No cellular means a lower cost of ownership.
2. 10-inch, color-screen, media-rich, Kindle-killer for those with money to burn, an addiction to news-on-the-go, and a briefcase always close at hand for storing it. It'd be priced high enough to serve as a status symbol and might even come with a year's free subscription to various magazines and newspapers. As with the iPhone, those who bought it would also need to purchase a cellular data plan. Given AT&T's woes, in the U.S. that data plan might come from Verizon. As media sources in other countries step forward and cellular technology improves, a global LTE model would be offered.
I agree with a number of posters. I cut cardboard into 7-inch and 10-inch (diagonal) sizes. I much prefer the 7-inch. It'll fit in a coat pocket and maybe even a large men's shirt pocket.
Look, if you want a device that fits in your pocket get an iPhone or iPod touch. "What every pocket wants." Didn't you see the commercials?
If you want a touchscreen Mac you'll get your 10" tablet and you'll like it.
I agree with a number of posters. I cut cardboard into 7-inch and 10-inch (diagonal) sizes. I much prefer the 7-inch. It'll fit in a coat pocket and maybe even a large men's shirt pocket. Even more important, it's just big enough to get past the tiny-screen, tiny-keyboard feel of my otherwise marvelous iPod touch, and it fits perfectly in my typical-guy hand. Other than by adding a handle, I can't imagine how someone could hold a 10-inch version in one hand. Like the Kindle, it'd be for use sitting down.
In my best-of-all-worlds scenario, Apple will offer two families of products with different screen sizes and features, much like they do with laptops.
1. 7-inch extended iPod touch with WiFi, GPS, a compass, and a iPhone-grade camera at a competitive price. It'd be for productivity, gamers and vacationers. No cellular means a lower cost of ownership.
2. 10-inch, color-screen, media-rich, Kindle-killer for those with money to burn, an addiction to news-on-the-go, and a briefcase always close at hand for storing it. It'd be priced high enough to serve as a status symbol and might even come with a year's free subscription to various magazines and newspapers. As with the iPhone, those who bought it would also need to purchase a cellular data plan. Given AT&T's woes, in the U.S. that data plan might come from Verizon. As media sources in other countries step forward and cellular technology improves, a global LTE model would be offered.
--Mike Perry, Seattle
In the long run, yes, perhaps there could be a market for both sizes but there is merit in doing this in stages. Bring out the 7-inch device and wait a year or so to add the 10-inch unit. By then content designed for the 7-inch device will also work with the 10-incher, just as current Touch content could work on the 7-inch device. Also cost will come down as components are made in greater volumes. In addition, battery technology will be a year more developed and by 2011 processor technology will be another generation faster. So a 10-inch tablet brought to market in 2011 would be closer in price to what many of us would be willing to pay, there will be a collection of content suited to the device and distributed to many consumers, battery life would be better and so would overall performance. You'd also have a lot of consumers out there happily using 7-inch tablets who might be interested in upgrading to a somewhat larger device. In contrast, introduce the 10-inch tablet now and there is not much of an installed base of content, battery life would be an issue, and so, too, would be the unit's cost.
Myself, I predict, for what it's worth, that Apple will release a 7-inch unit early next year and follow up in 2011 or 2012 with a larger device will retaining the 7-inch unit, not to mention current Touch units, by then effectively having them come down in price enough to supplant the current Nano.
I'm not bitter, you're just over-defensive. If I was to make money every time a person dropped their phone I'd want them to keep dropping them. It's purely common sense. So yes, Apple won't waste a lot of money make this glass "unbreakable", and they'll make extra money when you try to get your dropped one fixed.
Here's some actual common sense: making a device that is intended to be carried around as sturdy as possible is a selling point. Making a device that is intended to be carried around deliberately fragile (which is in fact what you originally claimed) is market suicide.
And if they have to do a lot of repairs for people with Apple Care, Apple actually makes less money. They will make even less money if their tablet gets a reputation as being delicate and easy to break, since fewer people will buy one.
Apple could also make iPods with batteries that lasted 3 months, forcing you to replace them at that interval. That would not, however, be a clever scheme to increase iPod sales, it would be a clever scheme to make sure everybody quit buying them.
Pick up a DVD case, that's 9" across the diagonal, and it feels small in the hand. Add 1" to that and you got a decent sized small multi-touch screen. And a bezel to place your thumbs on and pop-out rest on the back for when typing on a flat surface like a table. Now make this device in a sleek curved shape on the back and add some MacBook-like material for grip and you got one awesome and more importantly "useable" device! Not to mention you now as a software developer at Apple have room for a awesome software keyboard that's about 8.5" wide.
In the long run, yes, perhaps there could be a market for both sizes but there is merit in doing this in stages. Bring out the 7-inch device and wait a year or so to add the 10-inch unit. By then content designed for the 7-inch device will also work with the 10-incher, just as current Touch content could work on the 7-inch device. Also cost will come down as components are made in greater volumes. In addition, battery technology will be a year more developed and by 2011 processor technology will be another generation faster. So a 10-inch tablet brought to market in 2011 would be closer in price to what many of us would be willing to pay, there will be a collection of content suited to the device and distributed to many consumers, battery life would be better and so would overall performance. You'd also have a lot of consumers out there happily using 7-inch tablets who might be interested in upgrading to a somewhat larger device. In contrast, introduce the 10-inch tablet now and there is not much of an installed base of content, battery life would be an issue, and so, too, would be the unit's cost.
Myself, I predict, for what it's worth, that Apple will release a 7-inch unit early next year and follow up in 2011 or 2012 with a larger device will retaining the 7-inch unit, not to mention current Touch units, by then effectively having them come down in price enough to supplant the current Nano.
They can't afford not to release a 10" because the competition has done so already, or is about to, and they are making inroads to customers, this is a race here and apple can't be late to it. And I very, very firmly believe that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ireland
Look, if you want a device that fits in your pocket get an iPhone or iPod touch. "What every pocket wants." Didn't you see the commercials?
If you want a touchscreen Mac you'll get your 10" tablet and you'll like it.
That's my view too. Large product differentiation is not Steve's way of doing things, and there's a lot of wisdom to that. In a very hypothetical scenario had apple not had a phone they might release too form factors there, but as things are they will not, not for the foreseeable future.
I?m really hoping they break the very poor model of making a standard virtual keyboard with their tablet. With the iPhone OS it?s fine because it runs on a 3.5? display because the hands are limited in their placement and the thumbs can traverse the compact keyboard easily.
I think that Apple will need to reset the multi-touch bar with a tablet keyboard. The tablet will need to accurately sense where my hands are placed, how many fingers are available for typing, if my palms are resting on the device and then determine the type of keyboard I?ll need.
I don?t expect something that takes up the bottom half of the display, but a split keyboard with curved key placement that allows for my fingers to only extend from their holding position on the device to reach the keys, not having to keep switching hands to type a message. While grasping with two hands while standing I think that the keyboard will be ideally set for thumb typing on the sides of the device.
You bring up a good point that seems missed in most discussions about an Apple tablet/slate. How do you hold the thing? Most mockups have an insanely thin bezel that makes sense on a iPhone which you hold in the palm of one hand. But a 10" slate form probably would be most comfortably held with two hands like in the above picture. That seems to put your thumbs and fingers in odd positions on the surface of the viewing screen.
I still can't figure out how this thing will work or even what it's raison d'être will be.
Like making an iPod that doesn't scratch, yeah? Please.
Sure, but we're talking about an iPhone class machine here, and the screens on the iPhone are famously scratch resistant. Either Apple learned from the iPods, or they consider these machines to be more of a premium segment. Either way, a tablet is certainly going to be closer to an iPhone than a Nano-- which, as it happens, has also gotten more scratch resistant over the years. Which, I dunno, involved Apple spending money to improve them?
Quote:
There's a difference between making it deliberately fragile and not wasting extra money making it exceedingly tough.
Fair enough, but there's a pretty good piece of distance between "fragile" and "exceedingly tough", and a whole world of leeway in defining "wasting money."
So what I'm saying is that making a product like a tablet pretty damn robust is a win for Apple, because that's a huge "feature" that's likely to drive sales, and sales are going to be a better profit center for Apple than repairs.
Will it be indestructible? Of course not. Will Apple go out of their way to make the screen scratch resistant and shatter resistant, and yes, spend some money of those things? Of course they will. On a device like this the screen is the whole thing, and the first person that tells their friend about how they dropped it and it came through with just a dent is worth more to Apple than a thousand Apple Care repairs.
They can't afford not to release a 10" because the competition has done so already, or is about to, and they are making inroads to customers, this is a race here and apple can't be late to it. And I very, very firmly believe that.
That's my view too. Large product differentiation is not Steve's way of doing things, and there's a lot of wisdom to that. In a very hypothetical scenario had apple not had a phone they might release too form factors there, but as things are they will not, not for the foreseeable future.
Apple has never been afraid to come late to the party and it has never been detrimental. I mean, did they invent the smart phone? Were they leading the way initially in the MP3 market? Yet now, clearly, Apple is a major player in both the smart phone and MP3 market.
Here's how it works. Apple lets other companies stumble around getting it wrong, takes notes, and then comes along and kicks butts with vastly superior, well thought out product that is properly supported. Frankly, while netbooks are useful in some situations, if what Apple will hope to do is outdo the burgeoning netbook market, they'll have little trouble doing that. I like my netbook but on more than a few occasions I have had to resist the urge to fling the beast up against an immovable object.
I never said you can't get glass that resistant to cracking, I said, and I self-quote:
Precisely my point, Apple will be looking to cut as many costs as possible. And they want your screen to break, rest assured they do. They make a lot of money from Apple Care, and if you drop it they make extra money.
No, if they have to FIX it they make LESS money.
People will buy applecare anyway or not. For apple to make fragile tablets would be the same sort of error that has cost MS millions in product replacement costs for the XBox in addition to getting a crappy reputation,
Comments
Thanks for pointing out my mistake, by the way...
OK, what are you up to? You know we've never seen a statement like that on the forum before. I, for one, can't make sense of it.
I think that's more like "you were unlucky."
No, he was lucky. When you drop an iPhone onto concrete and the glass doesn't break that's very lucky. The glass breaks very easily. There's websites that fix iPhone screens for a living, there's a reason for that you know. They're easy to break, so they fix them.
No, he was lucky. When you drop an iPhone onto concrete and the glass doesn't break that's very lucky. The glass breaks very easily.
You're mistaking anecdotal evidence (the experiences you or some friends had) for statistical evidence. I think if the breakage was exceptionally high the cost of apple care for the product would be higher. (anecdotally, i dropped mine once onto concrete and it scratched the corner but did not break the screen. That isolated incident says no more about the phone's hardiness than your experiences. But having dropped it once, i became more careful and haven't dropped it since. Maybe you're being rougher with your phones than the average user? Are you by any chance ever putting the phone in the back pockets of your pants? My daughter did that with tight jeans and trashed a cheap phone's screen.)
There's websites that fix iPhone screens for a living, there's a reason for that you know. They're easy to break, so they fix them.
That's equally faulty logic: Cars now have fewer mechanical problems than ever (check consumer reports, for ex) but there's still a bustling industry of auto repair shops. Your A just doesn't lead to B.
I don't know whether or not the product's as robust as it should be: i'm not privy to data that would allow an informed conclusion. I am opposed to bad logic and to leaping to conclusions.
I was wondering, however if this 10 inch device is not a tablet, but a new iBook laptop, and then smaller rumored device is the tablet.
10 inch is just too unwieldy unless the thing weighs ~ 1lb.
I'm apple fan boy, but I am pretty nervous about this....
This is very interesting if the 10 inch glass screen is confirmed. that means we'll not be seeing tactile feedback since that requires a plastic lattice.
I was wondering, however if this 10 inch device is not a tablet, but a new iBook laptop, and then smaller rumored device is the tablet.
10 inch is just too unwieldy unless the thing weighs ~ 1lb.
I'm apple fan boy, but I am pretty nervous about this....
There will be special headphones that send a signal to your brain tricking it into thinking it feels tactile response from the finger.
Hate to disagree with you but my Iphone (not in a case) has survived several drops on concrete and did a frighting bounce skip slide across my breezeway which has a tile floor and didn't crack just picked up a few scratches.
Ι will vouch for that too, my iphone has been dropped tens of times.
10" for anyone who's actually used e-ink devices to read documents and/or surf (such as the irex ones) are the ideal size. There is a chance that this will have a smaller 7" sibling, but I don't see any chance that the 10" isn't produced, it just isn't useful and versalite enough under this size, plus there's a lot of competition (see plastic logic que) at this or even higher size coming along, for apple to be dumb enough to create an inferior size.
Let me also say thanks to mactripper (who I have criticized a lot) for the very interesting links on the glass materials. Of course I do not subscribe to the notion that apple forces inferior glass material on us to retain their very high margins, I am under the impression that they will eventually solve the matte/anti glare conundrum as soon as they are able to get good prices for such a glass material. I can now see where this is heading because I was not aware of glass with such properties. But as always the price for these units has got to be right to be incorporated in a consumer product. Actually I am sure that as soon as such material is a viable option for consumer grade products apple will be the first to implement it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkXlriABfOo&feature=fvw
You're right that I didn't take all the factors into account but you're last commet is rather significant.
Here's a handy chart that's a good representation of what your eyes can resolve at a given distance. It doesn't go down to a 10" screen, but you can get a sense for the trend. Your 32" TV at 7 feet is just on the edge of seeing the full benefit of a 720p signal, but you'd have to sit at 4 feet to be able to see all of the pixels of a 1080p signal.
http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter
In my best-of-all-worlds scenario, Apple will offer two families of products with different screen sizes and features, much like they do with laptops.
1. 7-inch extended iPod touch with WiFi, GPS, a compass, and a iPhone-grade camera at a competitive price. It'd be for productivity, gamers and vacationers. No cellular means a lower cost of ownership.
2. 10-inch, color-screen, media-rich, Kindle-killer for those with money to burn, an addiction to news-on-the-go, and a briefcase always close at hand for storing it. It'd be priced high enough to serve as a status symbol and might even come with a year's free subscription to various magazines and newspapers. As with the iPhone, those who bought it would also need to purchase a cellular data plan. Given AT&T's woes, in the U.S. that data plan might come from Verizon. As media sources in other countries step forward and cellular technology improves, a global LTE model would be offered.
--Mike Perry, Seattle
I agree with a number of posters. I cut cardboard into 7-inch and 10-inch (diagonal) sizes. I much prefer the 7-inch. It'll fit in a coat pocket and maybe even a large men's shirt pocket.
Look, if you want a device that fits in your pocket get an iPhone or iPod touch. "What every pocket wants." Didn't you see the commercials?
If you want a touchscreen Mac you'll get your 10" tablet and you'll like it.
I agree with a number of posters. I cut cardboard into 7-inch and 10-inch (diagonal) sizes. I much prefer the 7-inch. It'll fit in a coat pocket and maybe even a large men's shirt pocket. Even more important, it's just big enough to get past the tiny-screen, tiny-keyboard feel of my otherwise marvelous iPod touch, and it fits perfectly in my typical-guy hand. Other than by adding a handle, I can't imagine how someone could hold a 10-inch version in one hand. Like the Kindle, it'd be for use sitting down.
In my best-of-all-worlds scenario, Apple will offer two families of products with different screen sizes and features, much like they do with laptops.
1. 7-inch extended iPod touch with WiFi, GPS, a compass, and a iPhone-grade camera at a competitive price. It'd be for productivity, gamers and vacationers. No cellular means a lower cost of ownership.
2. 10-inch, color-screen, media-rich, Kindle-killer for those with money to burn, an addiction to news-on-the-go, and a briefcase always close at hand for storing it. It'd be priced high enough to serve as a status symbol and might even come with a year's free subscription to various magazines and newspapers. As with the iPhone, those who bought it would also need to purchase a cellular data plan. Given AT&T's woes, in the U.S. that data plan might come from Verizon. As media sources in other countries step forward and cellular technology improves, a global LTE model would be offered.
--Mike Perry, Seattle
In the long run, yes, perhaps there could be a market for both sizes but there is merit in doing this in stages. Bring out the 7-inch device and wait a year or so to add the 10-inch unit. By then content designed for the 7-inch device will also work with the 10-incher, just as current Touch content could work on the 7-inch device. Also cost will come down as components are made in greater volumes. In addition, battery technology will be a year more developed and by 2011 processor technology will be another generation faster. So a 10-inch tablet brought to market in 2011 would be closer in price to what many of us would be willing to pay, there will be a collection of content suited to the device and distributed to many consumers, battery life would be better and so would overall performance. You'd also have a lot of consumers out there happily using 7-inch tablets who might be interested in upgrading to a somewhat larger device. In contrast, introduce the 10-inch tablet now and there is not much of an installed base of content, battery life would be an issue, and so, too, would be the unit's cost.
Myself, I predict, for what it's worth, that Apple will release a 7-inch unit early next year and follow up in 2011 or 2012 with a larger device will retaining the 7-inch unit, not to mention current Touch units, by then effectively having them come down in price enough to supplant the current Nano.
My bet would be a combination of some kind of film laminate and chemically strengthened (potassium-treated) glass.
I tried rubbing a banana on it. It didn?t work.
I'm not bitter, you're just over-defensive. If I was to make money every time a person dropped their phone I'd want them to keep dropping them. It's purely common sense. So yes, Apple won't waste a lot of money make this glass "unbreakable", and they'll make extra money when you try to get your dropped one fixed.
Here's some actual common sense: making a device that is intended to be carried around as sturdy as possible is a selling point. Making a device that is intended to be carried around deliberately fragile (which is in fact what you originally claimed) is market suicide.
And if they have to do a lot of repairs for people with Apple Care, Apple actually makes less money. They will make even less money if their tablet gets a reputation as being delicate and easy to break, since fewer people will buy one.
Apple could also make iPods with batteries that lasted 3 months, forcing you to replace them at that interval. That would not, however, be a clever scheme to increase iPod sales, it would be a clever scheme to make sure everybody quit buying them.
Pick up a DVD case, that's 9" across the diagonal, and it feels small in the hand. Add 1" to that and you got a decent sized small multi-touch screen. And a bezel to place your thumbs on and pop-out rest on the back for when typing on a flat surface like a table. Now make this device in a sleek curved shape on the back and add some MacBook-like material for grip and you got one awesome and more importantly "useable" device! Not to mention you now as a software developer at Apple have room for a awesome software keyboard that's about 8.5" wide.
A DVD case is the perfect size to me.
In the long run, yes, perhaps there could be a market for both sizes but there is merit in doing this in stages. Bring out the 7-inch device and wait a year or so to add the 10-inch unit. By then content designed for the 7-inch device will also work with the 10-incher, just as current Touch content could work on the 7-inch device. Also cost will come down as components are made in greater volumes. In addition, battery technology will be a year more developed and by 2011 processor technology will be another generation faster. So a 10-inch tablet brought to market in 2011 would be closer in price to what many of us would be willing to pay, there will be a collection of content suited to the device and distributed to many consumers, battery life would be better and so would overall performance. You'd also have a lot of consumers out there happily using 7-inch tablets who might be interested in upgrading to a somewhat larger device. In contrast, introduce the 10-inch tablet now and there is not much of an installed base of content, battery life would be an issue, and so, too, would be the unit's cost.
Myself, I predict, for what it's worth, that Apple will release a 7-inch unit early next year and follow up in 2011 or 2012 with a larger device will retaining the 7-inch unit, not to mention current Touch units, by then effectively having them come down in price enough to supplant the current Nano.
They can't afford not to release a 10" because the competition has done so already, or is about to, and they are making inroads to customers, this is a race here and apple can't be late to it. And I very, very firmly believe that.
Look, if you want a device that fits in your pocket get an iPhone or iPod touch. "What every pocket wants." Didn't you see the commercials?
If you want a touchscreen Mac you'll get your 10" tablet and you'll like it.
That's my view too. Large product differentiation is not Steve's way of doing things, and there's a lot of wisdom to that. In a very hypothetical scenario had apple not had a phone they might release too form factors there, but as things are they will not, not for the foreseeable future.
I?m really hoping they break the very poor model of making a standard virtual keyboard with their tablet. With the iPhone OS it?s fine because it runs on a 3.5? display because the hands are limited in their placement and the thumbs can traverse the compact keyboard easily.
I think that Apple will need to reset the multi-touch bar with a tablet keyboard. The tablet will need to accurately sense where my hands are placed, how many fingers are available for typing, if my palms are resting on the device and then determine the type of keyboard I?ll need.
I don?t expect something that takes up the bottom half of the display, but a split keyboard with curved key placement that allows for my fingers to only extend from their holding position on the device to reach the keys, not having to keep switching hands to type a message. While grasping with two hands while standing I think that the keyboard will be ideally set for thumb typing on the sides of the device.
You bring up a good point that seems missed in most discussions about an Apple tablet/slate. How do you hold the thing? Most mockups have an insanely thin bezel that makes sense on a iPhone which you hold in the palm of one hand. But a 10" slate form probably would be most comfortably held with two hands like in the above picture. That seems to put your thumbs and fingers in odd positions on the surface of the viewing screen.
I still can't figure out how this thing will work or even what it's raison d'être will be.
Here's some actual common sense: making a device that is intended to be carried around as sturdy as possible is a selling point.
Like making an iPod that doesn't scratch, yeah? Please.
Making a device that is intended to be carried around deliberately fragile (which is in fact what you originally claimed) is market suicide.
There's a difference between making it deliberately fragile and not wasting extra money making it exceedingly tough.
Like making an iPod that doesn't scratch, yeah? Please.
Sure, but we're talking about an iPhone class machine here, and the screens on the iPhone are famously scratch resistant. Either Apple learned from the iPods, or they consider these machines to be more of a premium segment. Either way, a tablet is certainly going to be closer to an iPhone than a Nano-- which, as it happens, has also gotten more scratch resistant over the years. Which, I dunno, involved Apple spending money to improve them?
There's a difference between making it deliberately fragile and not wasting extra money making it exceedingly tough.
Fair enough, but there's a pretty good piece of distance between "fragile" and "exceedingly tough", and a whole world of leeway in defining "wasting money."
So what I'm saying is that making a product like a tablet pretty damn robust is a win for Apple, because that's a huge "feature" that's likely to drive sales, and sales are going to be a better profit center for Apple than repairs.
Will it be indestructible? Of course not. Will Apple go out of their way to make the screen scratch resistant and shatter resistant, and yes, spend some money of those things? Of course they will. On a device like this the screen is the whole thing, and the first person that tells their friend about how they dropped it and it came through with just a dent is worth more to Apple than a thousand Apple Care repairs.
They can't afford not to release a 10" because the competition has done so already, or is about to, and they are making inroads to customers, this is a race here and apple can't be late to it. And I very, very firmly believe that.
That's my view too. Large product differentiation is not Steve's way of doing things, and there's a lot of wisdom to that. In a very hypothetical scenario had apple not had a phone they might release too form factors there, but as things are they will not, not for the foreseeable future.
Apple has never been afraid to come late to the party and it has never been detrimental. I mean, did they invent the smart phone? Were they leading the way initially in the MP3 market? Yet now, clearly, Apple is a major player in both the smart phone and MP3 market.
Here's how it works. Apple lets other companies stumble around getting it wrong, takes notes, and then comes along and kicks butts with vastly superior, well thought out product that is properly supported. Frankly, while netbooks are useful in some situations, if what Apple will hope to do is outdo the burgeoning netbook market, they'll have little trouble doing that. I like my netbook but on more than a few occasions I have had to resist the urge to fling the beast up against an immovable object.
I never said you can't get glass that resistant to cracking, I said, and I self-quote:
Precisely my point, Apple will be looking to cut as many costs as possible. And they want your screen to break, rest assured they do. They make a lot of money from Apple Care, and if you drop it they make extra money.
No, if they have to FIX it they make LESS money.
People will buy applecare anyway or not. For apple to make fragile tablets would be the same sort of error that has cost MS millions in product replacement costs for the XBox in addition to getting a crappy reputation,