Apple Tablet Computer

I've had an ipod touch now for under 2 months (we have no iphone service available in Montana at this time) and in that time i continue to be amazed at what a break through technology the iphone and ipod is. At work I just received a new Samsung Omnia running Windows Mobile 6. Others in my office picked up the Blackberry Storm. The very notion that these mobile phones are being compared to the iphone/ipod is just ridiculous. Yes, if you look at a bulleted list of hardware features they LOOK comparable. Just as the DOS/PC and Windows/PC looked comparable to the Mac. But when you use them concurrently you realize that the iphone/touch is in a class by itself. As one pundit said, its not a smart phone its a genius phone.

Which brings me to the long rumored Apple tablet computer. Its well known computer lore that Steve Jobs will sell no computer before the hardware and software are there to make it a reality. He'll happily sit on a concept for years if necessary until all the component parts are there — including external factors like market and infrastructure. This is what sets the iphone/touch apart and this is what will set the Apple Tablet Computer apart.

Last night watching my 4 year old son, Peter, play Rolando and Galaxy on Fire on the ipod Touch my wife commented on how wonderful it is that the player moves the entire ipod to play the game and that you can intuitively touch the screen to interact with elements. "Kids are always trying to do that with television," she said.

That's when everything gelled in my brain. The moment of epiphany. I knew what the Apple Tablet computer was going to be. Well, my theory anyway.

So here it is.

The Apple Tablet will be a new consumer electronic product catagory, and like the ipod and iphone before it, it will kill several existing service and product catagories.

The Apple Tablet will be the full realization of the interactive TV concept that has been floating around for decades. It will start out as a consumer device but then move aggressively into vertical professional fields such as medicine, education, finance and just about anything else imaginable. It will finally replace the Mac and the personal computer.

Apple will take everything it has learned from the AppleTV, the ipod, iphone and itunes music store and wrap it into a new hardware and service under it's own brand.

Apple has needed an end run around the stranglehold cable providers and set top boxes have on the consumers TV viewing habits – just as in the 70s cable TV pushed into the mainstream competing with broadcast TV, and we might say ultimately hobbling it, if not essentially killing it.

Apple is poised to do the same to the cable TV industry today. They will have help. Hulu. Netflix. YouTube. All of these are nails in the coffin of cable TV as we know it.

Last night i also read about a piece of the infrastructure puzzle that will allow Apple to move forward with its tablet computer, HTTP Live Streaming. Which essentially allows Apple and anyone on the web bypass the cable TV video strangle hold.

Alright. All a preamble argument to what i think the Apple tablet computer will be. It is hard to describe. Because the feature list won't do it justice, just as the feature list of the Mac and iphone don't do them justice. Its all about user experience, specifically consumer experience – as opposed to IT pros, engineers and pundits. I actually don't care about the hardware specs and features of the Apple tablet. It will be of optimal size and have a multi-touch UI and OS X based OS to leverage the huge iphone, OS X developer base.

The tablet will be all about user experience (UX). Just as the Mac and iphone have been since day one. This is the very core of these products that all the FUD has been very successful at burying in a blizzard of technical BS. Similarly the Apple tablet won't be the most robust hardware in its niche. Nor will it fit conveniently into an existing niche, just as the iphone is not simply a phone — nor a smart phone, though pundits will try and shoehorn it into several pre-existing product catagories.

You will be able to do things with the Apple tablet that will just make sense. You'll say 'duh, this is so obvious' once you use it. You'll wonder why someone didn't do it before. That's because getting to 'duh' in UX is hard. Incredibly hard. It takes patience and commitment. It takes a willingness to hold a product back from the market and keep refining it until it is just 'right.'

It will be conveniently portable. When I first saw the iphone i was amazed at its features. But a bit dissappointed at its size. It was small, but thick. Then the 2nd gen ipod touch came out. When i first saw one i lusted after it much more than the iphone. It is so thin. Amazingly thin. And it only lacks the camera and phone features of the iphone. Looking at the touch last night with fresh eyes i still marveled at the physical thinness but robustness power. Galaxy of Fire is no Metal Gear Solid, but its still amazing that it runs on such a tiny slim device. And all the games and apps that take advantage of the iphone/touch's UI simply, to me, make other mobile game platforms such as Sony's PSP and Nintendo's Gameboy, DS and DSi irrelevant. I compare the touch to my Gameboy and DS and I marvel at how big and bulky and awkward they are with all the buttons and cartridges.

So, the tablet will be a gaming platform. A web browser. an ebook reader. A video platform; movies, tv content, if not actual live tv. Music player of course. Maybe a remote ui to your desktop computer and cable box. It, shudder, harkens back to that Microsoft piece of FUD/vaporware known as Origami as embodied in the cool video that was produced to promote it. But instead of concepting it, Apple will just do it. And do it right. They will do it differently.