This is untrue. Ink has been part of Mac OSX and works for single touch. The touchpad is multitouch and can do gestures. There's nothing that OSX can't do on a tablet that the iPhone OSX can.
Well then show me the UIKit for Mac OS/X? Look at it this way Apple can add to Mac OS/Xs APIs in anyway it wants, we all know that, but there is no way right now to run IPhone apps on the Mac as native apps.
Quote:
The fact also has been that slates have been far less successful than convertibles because they have keyboards and can effectively run legacy desktop apps.
Exactly! Apple won't be successful targetting a tablet at that portion of the market that requires keyboard input. For many Mac OS apps this input device is required. People aren't likely to have a good experience typing data into a data base or writing a long composition in a word processor on a tablet with a virtual keyboard. Such input is tolerable for transient input but is a non starter for serious use. This doesn't even get into controls designed for a mouse.
Quote:
Besides, to be any kind of useful replacement the multi-touch APIs matter far less than apps.
Now this is garbage, you can't easily write apps without an API. Multi Touch is what Aplles tablets are all about.
Quote:
Not even Apple is going to be able to port iLife and iWork to a tablet easily...much less coddle MS to port Office to a touch interface. The iPhone doesn't need iLife or MS Office. A real tablet does.
Actually they don't and probably shouldn't have such apps. It is looking like Apple has recognized this reality. It is better to avoid publishing apps that would likely lead to bad user experiences than to satisfy fringe elements with their desire to run office of all things on a tablet. IWork is a nice suite, I have it on my Mac right now, but translating those apps directly into Touch based apps would be a mistake. In fact it would be suicidal of Apple to release apps like those at the time this tablet is released as the user experience would be terrible. Now take some of the concepts and filefirmats and craft Multi Touch refactored replacements and we are ready to go. Keynote and Numbers ought to refactor well, but pages may require voice input or handwriting recognition. On the face though I don't expect that you would recognize the apps next to their Mac OS sisters.
Quote:
Unless all you want is a largish MID/eBook reader. That market sure as heck hasn't blossomed yet.
No MIDs fail for many of the same reasons tablets do. People try to use them as PC replacements and almost immediately end up frustrated. This is why the tablet needs to come from the iPod/Touch gene pool. It changes peoples expectations, so that they see the device as a video iPod or E-Book reader and make buying decisions based on that. Like iPhone and Touch the device can certainly have functionality beyound it's cell phone function but it has a clear reason for being and is very usable in that regard.
It becomes a question of marketing more than anything and being careful not to oversell a device until it sells itself with a large selection of apps. It is better to have the customer believing he is getting more than he bargained for rather than less.
[/quote]
iPhone already multitasks.[/QUOTE]
Yeah I know this but apparently you missed the whole point of my posting. The use of iPhone OS is all about creating a better environment for the user. Something Apple can't do with Mac OS on a tablet.
I know from experience that you are an angry guy and that you often post things that are more about how irritated you are in the moment than what you actually believe or will possibly even do, but this is a ridiculous statement. Especially since in the sentence previous you make an entirely sensible comment about having to see the device before making any such decisions.
Look at it this way. It's 100% certain that the "desktop" metaphor for a tablet is not only not a bonus but that it might actually hinder adoption (based on reviews of previous tablets). It's also obvious that if the way people use the device is substantially "new" that the applications used on it might need to be re-designed for the device rather than operating the same way their desktop counterparts do. All new "mobile" versions of your favourite apps are likely to be preferred.
The best option for a successful tablet device is clearly a custom UI, with custom apps designed specifically for it, not just sticking Snow Leopard (desktop version), on a tablet. The fact that the tactic you are arguing for (full desktop OS), has failed, and failed so often in the past supports this view.
The only thing iPhone OS is missing that would make it a "full" OS capable of running programs that create and edit data, is a file system and if you imagine a "stack" on the iPhone toolbar that leads to a dedicated "documents" folder you can see how easily that problem could be solved.
There is just no reason to bring desktop metaphors, hard drives and all that other old-fashioned crud along for the ride with the new platform. The average user doesn't *want* to look into their hard drive, install programs, configure their mobiles or know anything about that sort of crap. They want to start a program, do a task, and get on with their lives.
That is exactly what iPhone OS is. I'm not sure why you are so stubborn in this regard and can't digest the facts. So again if you don't believe us down load the SDK and see for yourself. Some of the APIs are exactly the same and others are simply trimmed for sanity or to work better on the smaller platform.
I really wish you would explain why your panties get twisted in a knot over iPhone OS. It can do everything that needs to be done on this tablet without the carry over of the garbage and depricated APIs of Mac OS. Really add to the discussion or stop the whining. Maybe you will change my mind, it's highly doubtful though as nobody here yet has come up with a good explaination for Mac OS on such a device.
For what it's worth, I did a detailed analysis of what it would mean for Apple to "re-invent" print media in digital form, concluding that Apple has three key things going for it that make it a natural:
A pre-existing 50M device footprint with the iPhone + iPod Touch that provides leverage for a new device;
A proven dynamic platform (read: integrated hardware-software-services-tools) for end-to-end content creation, application development, distribution, and global reach, supported by deep application and media libraries, and a robust runtime space;
A durable billing relationship with consumers to the tune of 100M credit cards on file (iTunes + App Store, Mobile Me).
Plus, the history of Steve Jobs dating back to Next suggests that this is strategic to him (and thus, Apple), something the post covers:
Rebooting the Book (One Apple iPad Tablet at a Time)
I'd also like to say something about bookstores, and Borders in particular, since it was mentioned there that they were on "life support".
When I went to London in the beginning of July, we went to Borders on, I believe Oxford Street. It was a big store, and on the first floor, in the back, was a large section for magazines and periodicals.
We bought a couple of books, and I bought every British high end audio publication I could find, to take them back.
When I went back at the end of August, I went to the store on a Sunday afternoon, to find it closed. But closed in a way that meant *Closed*. I hope it was for renovations, but I doubt it.
What amazed me was that in all my walking around london, I didn't find a single bookstore that wouldn't be called small. Not one! Londoners can correct me on this if I missed something in a place I didn't get to. But I found it strange. In fact, there were few bookstores at all. And no real large magazine shops. Not one! There was one small one that was closed on Sunday before I found it, but that was it.
In NYC, you can't go more than a couple of blocks without banging into a large bookstore, or large magazine store.
An Apple tablet targeted for magazines and papers could have a display optimised for low power consumption rather than quality, even if it stayed with being an LCD.
I doubt very much Apple would take this step. First, it completely violates the spirit of developing advanced devices that truly innovate. Second, it just doesn't make sense to build a device that plays to a single niche market. The reason the iPhone is so successful with respect to other such devices is (in part) that it has hardware and software robust enough to allow the device to serve many purposes beyond just being a phone, and the App store's 75,000 titles reflect this. Kindle, while interesting, simply proves the point: niche devices like Kindle appeal to niche markets; there is little upside in them. To make the point clearer, realize this: Amazon may provide a decent ebook in kindle, but Amazon won't get rich selling them nor will they revolutionize their market.
For a tablet device to be successful, that device is going to need to fulfill multiple roles. I think articles like this, which suggest that Apple is positioning their device to a specific niche, are misguided from the start, because they miss the economic fundamentals of developing products like this. Is it probable that Apple might be pursuing publishers to get content into iTunes? Maybe. Is it likely that Apple thinks people will buy a $600 + device so they can read their newspapers and magazines electronically? Not very. If and when this device comes to market, it will offer a suite of capabilities that far exceed being a glorified e-book reader, with the primary reason being that doing more than that is the only way Apple will sell enough of them for the effort to be worthwhile.
Mac OS X has Spaces. Perhaps some people use it quite often; I don't use it that much. It's a neat feature, and can occasionally be helpful, but it's generally not that useful.
But if Apple's tablet (running scaled-up iPhone OS with expanded App Store or running Mac OS X Touch) was purposed greatly for students to use in place of textbooks and notebooks....
Then Spaces has suddenly become very useful. Especially the "pop-out-and-rearrange-windows" function. You can have an Apple-designed note-taking app that stays open, and have different textbooks (or even sets of textbooks) open in different spaces. You can move the textbooks around based on what you're studying or what you're taking notes on. Current iPhone OS has Spaces in a way - the few apps that multitask stay open in different spaces, and you switch between them (like, between Safari and Messages) by pressing the home button, etc. It never has more than one "window" open, but the tablet has enough screen real estate to have multiple windows that can be moved around between spaces. For convenience, the windows would probably grow to fit the space you were focusing on.
I'd see their note-taking app as more than merely notes - it would be an organizational tool too. It would work with Calendar automatically...arrange by class, graphically....
Thanks for checking out. One of the "AHA" moments for me in writing the piece is how lost print media is without a ready supply of physical book stores to push and market their latest releases.
That, on top of all of the numbers about hemorrhaging of losses in the business, tells me that Apple is well-positioned here, especially since Amazon is seen as the boogeyman in this sector.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
Very good article. I bookmarked it.
I'd also like to say something about bookstores, and Borders in particular, since it was mentioned there that they were on "life support".
When I went to London in the beginning of July, we went to Borders on, I believe Oxford Street. It was a big store, and on the first floor, in the back, was a large section for magazines and periodicals.
We bought a couple of books, and I bought every British high end audio publication I could find, to take them back.
When I went back at the end of August, I went to the store on a Sunday afternoon, to find it closed. But closed in a way that meant *Closed*. I hope it was for renovations, but I doubt it.
What amazed me was that in all my walking around london, I didn't find a single bookstore that wouldn't be called small. Not one! Londoners can correct me on this if I missed something in a place I didn't get to. But I found it strange. In fact, there were few bookstores at all. And no real large magazine shops. Not one! There was one small one that was closed on Sunday before I found it, but that was it.
In NYC, you can't go more than a couple of blocks without banging into a large bookstore, or large magazine store.
The best option for a successful tablet device is clearly a custom UI, with custom apps designed specifically for it, not just sticking Snow Leopard (desktop version), on a tablet.
Who said "let's stick Snow Leopard on it"? Not me. You clearly are a very make-e-up-e guy. With great experience!
Mac OS X has Spaces. Perhaps some people use it quite often; I don't use it that much. It's a neat feature, and can occasionally be helpful, but it's generally not that useful.
But if Apple's tablet (running scaled-up iPhone OS with expanded App Store or running Mac OS X Touch) was purposed greatly for students to use in place of textbooks and notebooks....
Then Spaces has suddenly become very useful. Especially the "pop-out-and-rearrange-windows" function. You can have an Apple-designed note-taking app that stays open, and have different textbooks (or even sets of textbooks) open in different spaces. You can move the textbooks around based on what you're studying or what you're taking notes on. Current iPhone OS has Spaces in a way - the few apps that multitask stay open in different spaces, and you switch between them (like, between Safari and Messages) by pressing the home button, etc. It never has more than one "window" open, but the tablet has enough screen real estate to have multiple windows that can be moved around between spaces. For convenience, the windows would probably grow to fit the space you were focusing on.
I'd see their note-taking app as more than merely notes - it would be an organizational tool too. It would work with Calendar automatically...arrange by class, graphically....
Thoughts?
I disagree. I use it all the time. I normally keep Safari and Mail open in space one. I reserve CS4 and related apps for space 2. Three is usually reserved for installations and looking though windows on my drives, and for searching my desktop. 4 is for my newsgroup readers.
I use other spaces for other specific things.
This is great for having a bunch of differing apps and windows open all the time, or almost all the time. It's much easier to tap F19 to move things from one space to another than it is to do so on a overly crowded screen. And it's much easier to hit Control # to move between things than to use Exposé to find things, as it's best reserved when looking within A space.
$5K/chapter hardly seems like an obscene amount. For the 10 chapter book you referenced, that's $5OK total. That's peanuts to what Dan Brown gets as an advance for churning out pulp. The reason that (college) text books are expensive is that they have relatively limited sales, and relatively high production costs.
Production costs are often not thought of when people complain about the cost of textbooks. I designed K-12 textbooks for over 10 years, and there are a lot of people involved in creating them. It also can take a good two years of planning and production to get it done. You don't just have a writer put words on a page, run it through a "black box" program and get a book. In addition to the author or authors there is a team of editors, designers, production artists, art researchers, fact checkers proof-readers, and copy editors involved. Then there is an art budget to purchase stock photography or commission photography for the book, create tech art and illustrations. Then it all needs to be fact checked and aligned to state standards.
In the K-12 market there are also a lot of "freebees" that the schools get with the books as well which could include workbooks, teachers editions, transparencies, web content, CD-Roms, and in some cases even state specific books (there was one book that was being produced by my company for a major publisher that almost canceled a math book for the state of NY because they were used to getting it for free and the publisher wanted to charge for the new book). All the costs of this is wrapped up into the cost of the textbooks.
Another thing to think about, the quest for lower priced books is sending the work of producing these products to India and the printing to Mexico and China, which means more of your tax dollars supporting the economy of another country and good paying jobs disappearing here in the U.S.
I wonder if we even need a newspaper.... do we need just writers from a paper or does the paper itself perform a useful 'filtering' function? Could an iApp just aggregate articles from multiple newspapers? (I'm playing with NewsOne+ on iPhone) I guess I'd like an aggregator to actually filter the quality articles from the rest... if I was paying for articles perhaps I'd pay for a filtering app (like a newspaper editor?) which found the good stuff.
This is an excellent point: that a newspaper is not synonymous with news itself. Newspapers are just a medium and that medium, unlike 100 years ago, is today only one of many available. What was IN the newspaper was distinct from the newspaper itself and had no relation to or was defined by the medium (up to a point-- audio and video are not available in newspapers). I suppose in a way you could say reading news on one of these devices is still just reading a 'newspaper', but that's like the original autos being called 'horseless carriages'... seeing the future through a rear view mirror. But like a car is so much more than a horse, the Internet is much more than a hand held newspaper. I don't just mean it has audio and video...it can access information instantaneously and directly...no filters...unadulterated by a biased rendering or perspective. Or perhaps we get to select our own editors. This is in contrast to an editor-in-chief for a newspaper or TV/Radio program. Editors are middlemen second guessing public interest with economics in mind. My only legitimate concern is that people lose their common denominator by withdrawing into their own select spheres of interest, never knowing what their next door neighbors are reading.
The iPhone is whatever Steve tells you it is. Look into my eyes!!
no, it's OS X - with the same programming tools and many, but not all, of the same frameworks. It's pretty straightforward to write code that runs on both machines because the core of both is the same OS.
...The truth is that the majority of textbook content is knowledge that is un-copyrightable, and in a sense "open source." When the time comes to write the latest copy of "Biology" or "Chemistry" the publishers could simply go to public open sources but they don't. ...
The knowledge may not be protected by copyright law, but the wording of the original author is and it would be plagiarism to copy it word for word. Textbook companies spend a lot of money to permission photographs, illustrations, and text to be used in their products. Even "public domain" images can be protected by copyright, say like that photograph of the painting of George Washington or the Declaration of Independence. The painting is no longer protected, but that photograph is and if you use it without permission then you are subject to a lawsuit. And while you may be able to find an image that is in the public domain with some research it may take more time (and thus money) to find it than purchasing the rights to an image that is readily available.
That is exactly what iPhone OS is. I'm not sure why you are so stubborn in this regard and can't digest the facts. So again if you don't believe us down load the SDK and see for yourself. Some of the APIs are exactly the same and others are simply trimmed for sanity or to work better on the smaller platform.
I really wish you would explain why your panties get twisted in a knot over iPhone OS. It can do everything that needs to be done on this tablet without the carry over of the garbage and depricated APIs of Mac OS. Really add to the discussion or stop the whining. Maybe you will change my mind, it's highly doubtful though as nobody here yet has come up with a good explaination for Mac OS on such a device.
What I want is a touch-based version of Mac OS X. Not a giggly-iconed iPhone OS on a 10" screen that's great at selling me books. Yes, I'm aware the same tech in used, same language, same kernel etc. But I want the full Mac OS X with all the apps I get on my Mac, with a finger sized touch-based OS. They could slap the iPhone OS on a tablet tomorrow, what I want is to do the tablet from scratch, with one thing in mind: This tablet will be a Mac. There's a reason why Apple doesn't refer to the iPhone and iPod touch as Macs, and it's not just marketing or screen size.
no, it's OS X - with the same programming tools and many, but not all, of the same frameworks. It's pretty straightforward to write code that runs on both machines because the core of both is the same OS.
Did I hear a but in there?
You got to admit my look into my eyes comment was classic!
This is an excellent point: that a newspaper is not synonymous with news itself. Newspapers are just a medium and that medium, unlike 100 years ago, is today only one of many available. What was IN the newspaper was distinct from the newspaper itself and had no relation to or was defined by the medium (up to a point-- audio and video are not available in newspapers). I suppose in a way you could say reading news on one of these devices is still just reading a 'newspaper', but that's like the original autos being called 'horseless carriages'... seeing the future through a rear view mirror. But like a car is so much more than a horse, the Internet is much more than a hand held newspaper. I don't just mean it has audio and video...it can access information instantaneously and directly...no filters...unadulterated by a biased rendering or perspective. Or perhaps we get to select our own editors. This is in contrast to an editor-in-chief for a newspaper or TV/Radio program. Editors are middlemen second guessing public interest with economics in mind. My only legitimate concern is that people lose their common denominator by withdrawing into their own select spheres of interest, never knowing what their next door neighbors are reading.
Editors do a lot more than that.
Newspapers also have fact checkers, at least all the bigger and better ones do.
By the times when fact checking fails, we can see what would happen if there wasn't a newspaper controlling the writers.
All we would have is the undisciplined bloggers we have today, claiming to be reporters and news media, but actually no better than biased paid for shills of certain creeds. There's too much of that now.
I don't just mean it has audio and video...it can access information instantaneously and directly...no filters...unadulterated by a biased rendering or perspective. Or perhaps we get to select our own editors. This is in contrast to an editor-in-chief for a newspaper or TV/Radio program. Editors are middlemen second guessing public interest with economics in mind. My only legitimate concern is that people lose their common denominator by withdrawing into their own select spheres of interest, never knowing what their next door neighbors are reading.
How amusing...you're trading in one set of gatekeepers for a bunch of unknowns...namely blog writers and other "unfiltered" sources of information. Who are anything BUT unbiased.
Even Wikipedia is biased. You just don't know which way on any particular article.
Well then show me the UIKit for Mac OS/X? Look at it this way Apple can add to Mac OS/Xs APIs in anyway it wants, we all know that, but there is no way right now to run IPhone apps on the Mac as native apps.
You want me to show you cocoa touch? Jeez, you really think that it wouldn't run on Mac OS/X if there was hardware to support it?
Quote:
Exactly! Apple won't be successful targetting a tablet at that portion of the market that requires keyboard input.
Well that makes it a very limited product. Possible but the market for ebooks/ipod/mid in a tablet format is gonna be small no matter how awesome you make it given that the iPod Touch is a much more portable system that fills the same niche.
The compelling route would be as an eventual MB replacement and Apple needs to do this to justify a $999 price point for comfortable ASPs and margins. The MB just isn't going to be any more viable than desktops in the future.
Quote:
For many Mac OS apps this input device is required. People aren't likely to have a good experience typing data into a data base or writing a long composition in a word processor on a tablet with a virtual keyboard. Such input is tolerable for transient input but is a non starter for serious use. This doesn't even get into controls designed for a mouse.
Which is easily solved with a MBA like convertible tablet. Or a tablet that docks into a notebook base.
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Now this is garbage, you can't easily write apps without an API. Multi Touch is what Aplles tablets are all about.
Nope. Nobody cares how much sweat a programmer has to go through to produce a good app if this apps exist. You can have the most brilliant APIs and if no one is coding to them it doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter anyways because Apple already has Cocoa Touch which is based on the core Cocoa API.
Quote:
Actually they don't and probably shouldn't have such apps. It is looking like Apple has recognized this reality. It is better to avoid publishing apps that would likely lead to bad user experiences than to satisfy fringe elements with their desire to run office of all things on a tablet.
You mean fringe elements like students? You need to explain why a student is going to pony up $999 for a MB and another $500+ for an iTablet vs just buying an iTablet that can replace the MB for $999 AND be a multi-touch tablet with a stylus.
Quote:
IWork is a nice suite, I have it on my Mac right now, but translating those apps directly into Touch based apps would be a mistake. In fact it would be suicidal of Apple to release apps like those at the time this tablet is released as the user experience would be terrible. Now take some of the concepts and filefirmats and craft Multi Touch refactored replacements and we are ready to go. Keynote and Numbers ought to refactor well, but pages may require voice input or handwriting recognition. On the face though I don't expect that you would recognize the apps next to their Mac OS sisters.
Multitouch is not a panacea for all UI issues. If finger interaction was the end all and be all of input methods we'd all still be finger painting rather than using more precise writing mechanisms like pencils and pens.
Quote:
This is why the tablet needs to come from the iPod/Touch gene pool. It changes peoples expectations, so that they see the device as a video iPod or E-Book reader and make buying decisions based on that.
So you think that folks are going to buy a video iPod too big to fit in their pockets or an ebook reader?
Quote:
Like iPhone and Touch the device can certainly have functionality beyound it's cell phone function but it has a clear reason for being and is very usable in that regard.
Sure. It's a great MID/PDA combo. And phone too for the iPhone.
Quote:
Yeah I know this but apparently you missed the whole point of my posting. The use of iPhone OS is all about creating a better environment for the user. Something Apple can't do with Mac OS on a tablet.
Given that the iPhone OSX is the Mac OSX refactored to fit a phone I'd call BS. That's like saying "because you have a mouse and keyboard on Mac OS you can never have FrontRow and a remote" for a better media viewing environment for the user.
Mac OSX is more than capable of being a good tablet OS and be able to morph when multitouch is optimal, then to when a stylus is optimal, to when a remote control is most useful and to when a keyboard and mouse is optimal.
Comments
This is untrue. Ink has been part of Mac OSX and works for single touch. The touchpad is multitouch and can do gestures. There's nothing that OSX can't do on a tablet that the iPhone OSX can.
Well then show me the UIKit for Mac OS/X? Look at it this way Apple can add to Mac OS/Xs APIs in anyway it wants, we all know that, but there is no way right now to run IPhone apps on the Mac as native apps.
The fact also has been that slates have been far less successful than convertibles because they have keyboards and can effectively run legacy desktop apps.
Exactly! Apple won't be successful targetting a tablet at that portion of the market that requires keyboard input. For many Mac OS apps this input device is required. People aren't likely to have a good experience typing data into a data base or writing a long composition in a word processor on a tablet with a virtual keyboard. Such input is tolerable for transient input but is a non starter for serious use. This doesn't even get into controls designed for a mouse.
Besides, to be any kind of useful replacement the multi-touch APIs matter far less than apps.
Now this is garbage, you can't easily write apps without an API. Multi Touch is what Aplles tablets are all about.
Not even Apple is going to be able to port iLife and iWork to a tablet easily...much less coddle MS to port Office to a touch interface. The iPhone doesn't need iLife or MS Office. A real tablet does.
Actually they don't and probably shouldn't have such apps. It is looking like Apple has recognized this reality. It is better to avoid publishing apps that would likely lead to bad user experiences than to satisfy fringe elements with their desire to run office of all things on a tablet. IWork is a nice suite, I have it on my Mac right now, but translating those apps directly into Touch based apps would be a mistake. In fact it would be suicidal of Apple to release apps like those at the time this tablet is released as the user experience would be terrible. Now take some of the concepts and filefirmats and craft Multi Touch refactored replacements and we are ready to go. Keynote and Numbers ought to refactor well, but pages may require voice input or handwriting recognition. On the face though I don't expect that you would recognize the apps next to their Mac OS sisters.
Unless all you want is a largish MID/eBook reader. That market sure as heck hasn't blossomed yet.
No MIDs fail for many of the same reasons tablets do. People try to use them as PC replacements and almost immediately end up frustrated. This is why the tablet needs to come from the iPod/Touch gene pool. It changes peoples expectations, so that they see the device as a video iPod or E-Book reader and make buying decisions based on that. Like iPhone and Touch the device can certainly have functionality beyound it's cell phone function but it has a clear reason for being and is very usable in that regard.
It becomes a question of marketing more than anything and being careful not to oversell a device until it sells itself with a large selection of apps. It is better to have the customer believing he is getting more than he bargained for rather than less.
[/quote]
iPhone already multitasks.[/QUOTE]
Yeah I know this but apparently you missed the whole point of my posting. The use of iPhone OS is all about creating a better environment for the user. Something Apple can't do with Mac OS on a tablet.
Dave
... If this thing runs iPhone OS I won't buy it.
I know from experience that you are an angry guy and that you often post things that are more about how irritated you are in the moment than what you actually believe or will possibly even do, but this is a ridiculous statement. Especially since in the sentence previous you make an entirely sensible comment about having to see the device before making any such decisions.
Look at it this way. It's 100% certain that the "desktop" metaphor for a tablet is not only not a bonus but that it might actually hinder adoption (based on reviews of previous tablets). It's also obvious that if the way people use the device is substantially "new" that the applications used on it might need to be re-designed for the device rather than operating the same way their desktop counterparts do. All new "mobile" versions of your favourite apps are likely to be preferred.
The best option for a successful tablet device is clearly a custom UI, with custom apps designed specifically for it, not just sticking Snow Leopard (desktop version), on a tablet. The fact that the tactic you are arguing for (full desktop OS), has failed, and failed so often in the past supports this view.
The only thing iPhone OS is missing that would make it a "full" OS capable of running programs that create and edit data, is a file system and if you imagine a "stack" on the iPhone toolbar that leads to a dedicated "documents" folder you can see how easily that problem could be solved.
There is just no reason to bring desktop metaphors, hard drives and all that other old-fashioned crud along for the ride with the new platform. The average user doesn't *want* to look into their hard drive, install programs, configure their mobiles or know anything about that sort of crap. They want to start a program, do a task, and get on with their lives.
Read: Mac OS X touch.
That is exactly what iPhone OS is. I'm not sure why you are so stubborn in this regard and can't digest the facts. So again if you don't believe us down load the SDK and see for yourself. Some of the APIs are exactly the same and others are simply trimmed for sanity or to work better on the smaller platform.
I really wish you would explain why your panties get twisted in a knot over iPhone OS. It can do everything that needs to be done on this tablet without the carry over of the garbage and depricated APIs of Mac OS. Really add to the discussion or stop the whining. Maybe you will change my mind, it's highly doubtful though as nobody here yet has come up with a good explaination for Mac OS on such a device.
Dave
For what it's worth, I did a detailed analysis of what it would mean for Apple to "re-invent" print media in digital form, concluding that Apple has three key things going for it that make it a natural:
- A pre-existing 50M device footprint with the iPhone + iPod Touch that provides leverage for a new device;
- A proven dynamic platform (read: integrated hardware-software-services-tools) for end-to-end content creation, application development, distribution, and global reach, supported by deep application and media libraries, and a robust runtime space;
- A durable billing relationship with consumers to the tune of 100M credit cards on file (iTunes + App Store, Mobile Me).
Plus, the history of Steve Jobs dating back to Next suggests that this is strategic to him (and thus, Apple), something the post covers:Rebooting the Book (One Apple iPad Tablet at a Time)
http://bit.ly/zOoEu
Check it out if interested.
Mark
Very good article. I bookmarked it.
I'd also like to say something about bookstores, and Borders in particular, since it was mentioned there that they were on "life support".
When I went to London in the beginning of July, we went to Borders on, I believe Oxford Street. It was a big store, and on the first floor, in the back, was a large section for magazines and periodicals.
We bought a couple of books, and I bought every British high end audio publication I could find, to take them back.
When I went back at the end of August, I went to the store on a Sunday afternoon, to find it closed. But closed in a way that meant *Closed*. I hope it was for renovations, but I doubt it.
What amazed me was that in all my walking around london, I didn't find a single bookstore that wouldn't be called small. Not one! Londoners can correct me on this if I missed something in a place I didn't get to. But I found it strange. In fact, there were few bookstores at all. And no real large magazine shops. Not one! There was one small one that was closed on Sunday before I found it, but that was it.
In NYC, you can't go more than a couple of blocks without banging into a large bookstore, or large magazine store.
I was both surprised and disappointed at that.
An Apple tablet targeted for magazines and papers could have a display optimised for low power consumption rather than quality, even if it stayed with being an LCD.
I doubt very much Apple would take this step. First, it completely violates the spirit of developing advanced devices that truly innovate. Second, it just doesn't make sense to build a device that plays to a single niche market. The reason the iPhone is so successful with respect to other such devices is (in part) that it has hardware and software robust enough to allow the device to serve many purposes beyond just being a phone, and the App store's 75,000 titles reflect this. Kindle, while interesting, simply proves the point: niche devices like Kindle appeal to niche markets; there is little upside in them. To make the point clearer, realize this: Amazon may provide a decent ebook in kindle, but Amazon won't get rich selling them nor will they revolutionize their market.
For a tablet device to be successful, that device is going to need to fulfill multiple roles. I think articles like this, which suggest that Apple is positioning their device to a specific niche, are misguided from the start, because they miss the economic fundamentals of developing products like this. Is it probable that Apple might be pursuing publishers to get content into iTunes? Maybe. Is it likely that Apple thinks people will buy a $600 + device so they can read their newspapers and magazines electronically? Not very. If and when this device comes to market, it will offer a suite of capabilities that far exceed being a glorified e-book reader, with the primary reason being that doing more than that is the only way Apple will sell enough of them for the effort to be worthwhile.
Mac OS X has Spaces. Perhaps some people use it quite often; I don't use it that much. It's a neat feature, and can occasionally be helpful, but it's generally not that useful.
But if Apple's tablet (running scaled-up iPhone OS with expanded App Store or running Mac OS X Touch) was purposed greatly for students to use in place of textbooks and notebooks....
Then Spaces has suddenly become very useful. Especially the "pop-out-and-rearrange-windows" function. You can have an Apple-designed note-taking app that stays open, and have different textbooks (or even sets of textbooks) open in different spaces. You can move the textbooks around based on what you're studying or what you're taking notes on. Current iPhone OS has Spaces in a way - the few apps that multitask stay open in different spaces, and you switch between them (like, between Safari and Messages) by pressing the home button, etc. It never has more than one "window" open, but the tablet has enough screen real estate to have multiple windows that can be moved around between spaces. For convenience, the windows would probably grow to fit the space you were focusing on.
I'd see their note-taking app as more than merely notes - it would be an organizational tool too. It would work with Calendar automatically...arrange by class, graphically....
Thoughts?
Thanks for checking out. One of the "AHA" moments for me in writing the piece is how lost print media is without a ready supply of physical book stores to push and market their latest releases.
That, on top of all of the numbers about hemorrhaging of losses in the business, tells me that Apple is well-positioned here, especially since Amazon is seen as the boogeyman in this sector.
Very good article. I bookmarked it.
I'd also like to say something about bookstores, and Borders in particular, since it was mentioned there that they were on "life support".
When I went to London in the beginning of July, we went to Borders on, I believe Oxford Street. It was a big store, and on the first floor, in the back, was a large section for magazines and periodicals.
We bought a couple of books, and I bought every British high end audio publication I could find, to take them back.
When I went back at the end of August, I went to the store on a Sunday afternoon, to find it closed. But closed in a way that meant *Closed*. I hope it was for renovations, but I doubt it.
What amazed me was that in all my walking around london, I didn't find a single bookstore that wouldn't be called small. Not one! Londoners can correct me on this if I missed something in a place I didn't get to. But I found it strange. In fact, there were few bookstores at all. And no real large magazine shops. Not one! There was one small one that was closed on Sunday before I found it, but that was it.
In NYC, you can't go more than a couple of blocks without banging into a large bookstore, or large magazine store.
I was both surprised and disappointed at that.
The best option for a successful tablet device is clearly a custom UI, with custom apps designed specifically for it, not just sticking Snow Leopard (desktop version), on a tablet.
Who said "let's stick Snow Leopard on it"? Not me. You clearly are a very make-e-up-e guy. With great experience!
Interesting note.
Mac OS X has Spaces. Perhaps some people use it quite often; I don't use it that much. It's a neat feature, and can occasionally be helpful, but it's generally not that useful.
But if Apple's tablet (running scaled-up iPhone OS with expanded App Store or running Mac OS X Touch) was purposed greatly for students to use in place of textbooks and notebooks....
Then Spaces has suddenly become very useful. Especially the "pop-out-and-rearrange-windows" function. You can have an Apple-designed note-taking app that stays open, and have different textbooks (or even sets of textbooks) open in different spaces. You can move the textbooks around based on what you're studying or what you're taking notes on. Current iPhone OS has Spaces in a way - the few apps that multitask stay open in different spaces, and you switch between them (like, between Safari and Messages) by pressing the home button, etc. It never has more than one "window" open, but the tablet has enough screen real estate to have multiple windows that can be moved around between spaces. For convenience, the windows would probably grow to fit the space you were focusing on.
I'd see their note-taking app as more than merely notes - it would be an organizational tool too. It would work with Calendar automatically...arrange by class, graphically....
Thoughts?
I disagree. I use it all the time. I normally keep Safari and Mail open in space one. I reserve CS4 and related apps for space 2. Three is usually reserved for installations and looking though windows on my drives, and for searching my desktop. 4 is for my newsgroup readers.
I use other spaces for other specific things.
This is great for having a bunch of differing apps and windows open all the time, or almost all the time. It's much easier to tap F19 to move things from one space to another than it is to do so on a overly crowded screen. And it's much easier to hit Control # to move between things than to use Exposé to find things, as it's best reserved when looking within A space.
This is really the best of both worlds.
$5K/chapter hardly seems like an obscene amount. For the 10 chapter book you referenced, that's $5OK total. That's peanuts to what Dan Brown gets as an advance for churning out pulp. The reason that (college) text books are expensive is that they have relatively limited sales, and relatively high production costs.
Production costs are often not thought of when people complain about the cost of textbooks. I designed K-12 textbooks for over 10 years, and there are a lot of people involved in creating them. It also can take a good two years of planning and production to get it done. You don't just have a writer put words on a page, run it through a "black box" program and get a book. In addition to the author or authors there is a team of editors, designers, production artists, art researchers, fact checkers proof-readers, and copy editors involved. Then there is an art budget to purchase stock photography or commission photography for the book, create tech art and illustrations. Then it all needs to be fact checked and aligned to state standards.
In the K-12 market there are also a lot of "freebees" that the schools get with the books as well which could include workbooks, teachers editions, transparencies, web content, CD-Roms, and in some cases even state specific books (there was one book that was being produced by my company for a major publisher that almost canceled a math book for the state of NY because they were used to getting it for free and the publisher wanted to charge for the new book). All the costs of this is wrapped up into the cost of the textbooks.
Another thing to think about, the quest for lower priced books is sending the work of producing these products to India and the printing to Mexico and China, which means more of your tax dollars supporting the economy of another country and good paying jobs disappearing here in the U.S.
I wonder if we even need a newspaper.... do we need just writers from a paper or does the paper itself perform a useful 'filtering' function? Could an iApp just aggregate articles from multiple newspapers? (I'm playing with NewsOne+ on iPhone) I guess I'd like an aggregator to actually filter the quality articles from the rest... if I was paying for articles perhaps I'd pay for a filtering app (like a newspaper editor?) which found the good stuff.
This is an excellent point: that a newspaper is not synonymous with news itself. Newspapers are just a medium and that medium, unlike 100 years ago, is today only one of many available. What was IN the newspaper was distinct from the newspaper itself and had no relation to or was defined by the medium (up to a point-- audio and video are not available in newspapers). I suppose in a way you could say reading news on one of these devices is still just reading a 'newspaper', but that's like the original autos being called 'horseless carriages'... seeing the future through a rear view mirror. But like a car is so much more than a horse, the Internet is much more than a hand held newspaper. I don't just mean it has audio and video...it can access information instantaneously and directly...no filters...unadulterated by a biased rendering or perspective. Or perhaps we get to select our own editors. This is in contrast to an editor-in-chief for a newspaper or TV/Radio program. Editors are middlemen second guessing public interest with economics in mind. My only legitimate concern is that people lose their common denominator by withdrawing into their own select spheres of interest, never knowing what their next door neighbors are reading.
The iPhone is whatever Steve tells you it is. Look into my eyes!!
no, it's OS X - with the same programming tools and many, but not all, of the same frameworks. It's pretty straightforward to write code that runs on both machines because the core of both is the same OS.
...The truth is that the majority of textbook content is knowledge that is un-copyrightable, and in a sense "open source." When the time comes to write the latest copy of "Biology" or "Chemistry" the publishers could simply go to public open sources but they don't. ...
The knowledge may not be protected by copyright law, but the wording of the original author is and it would be plagiarism to copy it word for word. Textbook companies spend a lot of money to permission photographs, illustrations, and text to be used in their products. Even "public domain" images can be protected by copyright, say like that photograph of the painting of George Washington or the Declaration of Independence. The painting is no longer protected, but that photograph is and if you use it without permission then you are subject to a lawsuit. And while you may be able to find an image that is in the public domain with some research it may take more time (and thus money) to find it than purchasing the rights to an image that is readily available.
That is exactly what iPhone OS is. I'm not sure why you are so stubborn in this regard and can't digest the facts. So again if you don't believe us down load the SDK and see for yourself. Some of the APIs are exactly the same and others are simply trimmed for sanity or to work better on the smaller platform.
I really wish you would explain why your panties get twisted in a knot over iPhone OS. It can do everything that needs to be done on this tablet without the carry over of the garbage and depricated APIs of Mac OS. Really add to the discussion or stop the whining. Maybe you will change my mind, it's highly doubtful though as nobody here yet has come up with a good explaination for Mac OS on such a device.
What I want is a touch-based version of Mac OS X. Not a giggly-iconed iPhone OS on a 10" screen that's great at selling me books. Yes, I'm aware the same tech in used, same language, same kernel etc. But I want the full Mac OS X with all the apps I get on my Mac, with a finger sized touch-based OS. They could slap the iPhone OS on a tablet tomorrow, what I want is to do the tablet from scratch, with one thing in mind: This tablet will be a Mac. There's a reason why Apple doesn't refer to the iPhone and iPod touch as Macs, and it's not just marketing or screen size.
no, it's OS X - with the same programming tools and many, but not all, of the same frameworks. It's pretty straightforward to write code that runs on both machines because the core of both is the same OS.
Did I hear a but in there?
You got to admit my look into my eyes comment was classic!
This is an excellent point: that a newspaper is not synonymous with news itself. Newspapers are just a medium and that medium, unlike 100 years ago, is today only one of many available. What was IN the newspaper was distinct from the newspaper itself and had no relation to or was defined by the medium (up to a point-- audio and video are not available in newspapers). I suppose in a way you could say reading news on one of these devices is still just reading a 'newspaper', but that's like the original autos being called 'horseless carriages'... seeing the future through a rear view mirror. But like a car is so much more than a horse, the Internet is much more than a hand held newspaper. I don't just mean it has audio and video...it can access information instantaneously and directly...no filters...unadulterated by a biased rendering or perspective. Or perhaps we get to select our own editors. This is in contrast to an editor-in-chief for a newspaper or TV/Radio program. Editors are middlemen second guessing public interest with economics in mind. My only legitimate concern is that people lose their common denominator by withdrawing into their own select spheres of interest, never knowing what their next door neighbors are reading.
Editors do a lot more than that.
Newspapers also have fact checkers, at least all the bigger and better ones do.
By the times when fact checking fails, we can see what would happen if there wasn't a newspaper controlling the writers.
All we would have is the undisciplined bloggers we have today, claiming to be reporters and news media, but actually no better than biased paid for shills of certain creeds. There's too much of that now.
Pity their eyes though.
Heh heh, not to worry. Apple will be in the eyewear business soon!
You do realize you can contact your magazine provider and request to receive ones without the perfume?
Yeah, but you still have to deal with the smell of paper, ink, and glue.
I don't just mean it has audio and video...it can access information instantaneously and directly...no filters...unadulterated by a biased rendering or perspective. Or perhaps we get to select our own editors. This is in contrast to an editor-in-chief for a newspaper or TV/Radio program. Editors are middlemen second guessing public interest with economics in mind. My only legitimate concern is that people lose their common denominator by withdrawing into their own select spheres of interest, never knowing what their next door neighbors are reading.
How amusing...you're trading in one set of gatekeepers for a bunch of unknowns...namely blog writers and other "unfiltered" sources of information. Who are anything BUT unbiased.
Even Wikipedia is biased. You just don't know which way on any particular article.
Well then show me the UIKit for Mac OS/X? Look at it this way Apple can add to Mac OS/Xs APIs in anyway it wants, we all know that, but there is no way right now to run IPhone apps on the Mac as native apps.
You want me to show you cocoa touch? Jeez, you really think that it wouldn't run on Mac OS/X if there was hardware to support it?
Exactly! Apple won't be successful targetting a tablet at that portion of the market that requires keyboard input.
Well that makes it a very limited product. Possible but the market for ebooks/ipod/mid in a tablet format is gonna be small no matter how awesome you make it given that the iPod Touch is a much more portable system that fills the same niche.
The compelling route would be as an eventual MB replacement and Apple needs to do this to justify a $999 price point for comfortable ASPs and margins. The MB just isn't going to be any more viable than desktops in the future.
For many Mac OS apps this input device is required. People aren't likely to have a good experience typing data into a data base or writing a long composition in a word processor on a tablet with a virtual keyboard. Such input is tolerable for transient input but is a non starter for serious use. This doesn't even get into controls designed for a mouse.
Which is easily solved with a MBA like convertible tablet. Or a tablet that docks into a notebook base.
Now this is garbage, you can't easily write apps without an API. Multi Touch is what Aplles tablets are all about.
Nope. Nobody cares how much sweat a programmer has to go through to produce a good app if this apps exist. You can have the most brilliant APIs and if no one is coding to them it doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter anyways because Apple already has Cocoa Touch which is based on the core Cocoa API.
Actually they don't and probably shouldn't have such apps. It is looking like Apple has recognized this reality. It is better to avoid publishing apps that would likely lead to bad user experiences than to satisfy fringe elements with their desire to run office of all things on a tablet.
You mean fringe elements like students? You need to explain why a student is going to pony up $999 for a MB and another $500+ for an iTablet vs just buying an iTablet that can replace the MB for $999 AND be a multi-touch tablet with a stylus.
IWork is a nice suite, I have it on my Mac right now, but translating those apps directly into Touch based apps would be a mistake. In fact it would be suicidal of Apple to release apps like those at the time this tablet is released as the user experience would be terrible. Now take some of the concepts and filefirmats and craft Multi Touch refactored replacements and we are ready to go. Keynote and Numbers ought to refactor well, but pages may require voice input or handwriting recognition. On the face though I don't expect that you would recognize the apps next to their Mac OS sisters.
Multitouch is not a panacea for all UI issues. If finger interaction was the end all and be all of input methods we'd all still be finger painting rather than using more precise writing mechanisms like pencils and pens.
This is why the tablet needs to come from the iPod/Touch gene pool. It changes peoples expectations, so that they see the device as a video iPod or E-Book reader and make buying decisions based on that.
So you think that folks are going to buy a video iPod too big to fit in their pockets or an ebook reader?
Like iPhone and Touch the device can certainly have functionality beyound it's cell phone function but it has a clear reason for being and is very usable in that regard.
Sure. It's a great MID/PDA combo. And phone too for the iPhone.
Yeah I know this but apparently you missed the whole point of my posting. The use of iPhone OS is all about creating a better environment for the user. Something Apple can't do with Mac OS on a tablet.
Given that the iPhone OSX is the Mac OSX refactored to fit a phone I'd call BS. That's like saying "because you have a mouse and keyboard on Mac OS you can never have FrontRow and a remote" for a better media viewing environment for the user.
Mac OSX is more than capable of being a good tablet OS and be able to morph when multitouch is optimal, then to when a stylus is optimal, to when a remote control is most useful and to when a keyboard and mouse is optimal.