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The rumored 10-inch Apple tablet: Would you buy it and use it as your main e-reader? Kindle replacement?
July 25, 2009 | 7:27 am
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By David Rothman
An Apple tablet with a 10-inch color screen is supposed to come out in the first quarter of 2010.
Read the news items, then share your current thoughts on (1) the suitability of the 3G-capable tablet as an e-book reader and (2) its usefulness for other apps.
We’re still hearing talk of perhaps a %700 price tag, which reduces the attractiveness of the tablet as mainly a book-reading machine. But is that all you may have in mind? Meanwhileremember that the images are just an artist’s renditions, published by AppleInsider, which broke the story.
Flagship Apple product?
One TeleBlog regular, Donald Smith, is excited enough about the tablet to point me to a Seeking Alpha piece headlined Why Apple’s iTouch tablet will become its flagship product.
Will anyone hold off on buying a Kindle as a result of the news—or avoid or reduce the purchase of Kindle-format books?
Of course, the rumored tablet is a big argument for ePub, ideally without DRM, so that you can easily migrate your library to your new gizmo if it’s of interest. Very possibly Amazon will offer a Kindle-format app for the 10-inch tablet, but we can’t say for sure. Look how Amazon stranded iPhone/Touch owners who’d mistakenly believed that Jeff and friends would allow Mobipocket to come out with a DRM-capable version for the Apple devices. Don’t you love DRM?
Important detail: I wonder how easily such major e-reading apps as Stanza can be ported over. I’ve read that Apple encouraged developers to design apps for screens of different sizes. Anyone have further info on this?
Thought: At least when prices go down, could the Apple tablet give a major boost to multimedia e-books, including textbooks and fiction such as romances?
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Comments:
I think the Apple fans are projecting too much on the gadget.
I think the gadget is more likely to be a large iPod than an actual tablet.
And I think the gadget will be more media player than webpad.
A 10″ color LCD screen is going to be problematic for either the pricing or battery life or both. It will also seriously impact portability as a media device.
The device they’re describing is physically a lot like the old Compaq TC1000/TC1100 tablet which I own.
A great web surfing device and a good ebook reader except for the battery life.
Assuming an ARM processor rather than an x86 CPU and flash storage instead of an HDD the limiting factor is going to be the battery; best guess would be an optimistic 8-10 hour claim with real-world performance in the 5-6 hour range. And pricing it ala Apple would drive a 10 incher into the $1000 range, with weight closer to 2 pounds than 1.
So, for starters; I’ll be skeptical about the 10″ screen; the 7″ form factor is more appropriate for a personal media player and the screens are a lot cheaper. Going smaller also reduces screen power needs and weight.
The evolution of the iPxxx’s is that they’re all built-off personal media playback as a core feature, which would not be true for a 10″ device. And, of course, Apple’s presence is minimal in the corporate market so going to 10″ to meet document needs is contra-indicated for a personal media device.
My own best guess is the large format iPod comes in at 7″ like the Archos and Viliv devices already on the market but with an ARM processor to push battery life to a real-world 8-12 hours, priced at about $6-800. Screen will be a modest 720×480 resolution but considering how folks rave about ebooks on the half-vga iPhone that will not likely be an issue.
And if Apple is at all serious about ebooks, which is not a given, we’ll see iTunes get into ebooks, probably with ePub wrapped in Fairplay. If they’re not particularly serious, they might cook up a deal with Amazon or (less likely) B&N (Apple prefers market leaders over wannabes–notice how they deal with Google instead of Yahoo?) and if they really don’t care about ebooks they’ll go with the hands-off iPhone approach.
Given the size and likely usage profile of the device I doubt we’ll see Kindle running on it for at least a year but Stanza should be there on day one as will the B&N-branded eReader.
Given the early 2010 delivery date I expect nothing revolutionary but hype worthy of a presidential campaign and sales in the low millions.
$0.02
If this tablet is a real computer running OS-X, then Stanza will run on it. I have Stanza on my desktop now and have had it longer than the iPhone app has been out.
I would likely buy an Apple tablet whether or not I could read e-books on it. As one who dislikes long reads on the computer screen, however, it would be AWESOME if it had the ability to change to non backlit LCD or to e-ink. In which case, that would solve the problem of books which are in pdf format. So far, these do not convert well for the K1 and K2. I do not have a DX and with the Apple tablet rumored, doubt I will get one, at least not at its current price. The best pdf conversion at the moment (using a Mac) is to send it to Kindle’s free conversion address. The results are a tad flaky, but usable. Thus far, with pdf files Calibre has produced results which are not readable for me because of symbols which turn up in place of other things. However, I’m off to try the new version of Calibre (0.6.0)and live in hope.
The short answer is: I do not want to read books on a backlit screen nor do I want to give up the books already purchased for Amazon.
Felix: Nice analysis; it pretty much mirrors mine, so clearly we must both be right
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I agree that a 7″ iPod Touch is likelier than a 10″ screen. One possibility: Could Apple make it 100% compatible with existing iPhone / iPod Touch software simply by “doubling” the pixels displayed onscreen? It wouldn’t look as nice as stuff written to native resolution, but it would give them 65,000+ software titles at launch time.
It would also be the best ebook reader for *my* tastes; you could immediately read books with Kindle, Barnes & Noble, and Fictionwise DRM; and Stanza is a very nice reader for content you create yourself. (For that matter, so is mobile Safari.) People who prefer battery life should stick with eink, but I’d rather have beautiful, vivid, responsive full color.
If Apple wrote their own ebook software I’m sure it would be gorgeous, and they could easily become a huge ebook publisher–why not have an ebook store alongside the App store?–but alas, I doubt they’re interested.
Maybe Verizon will subsidize the cost. But still we’d have to factor in the monthly payment to Verizon over the contract period.
I’d be more interested in this if it were a personal computer, had no monopoly phone company hooks/contracts on it, and ran real OSX.
So, I guess I’d go with a convertible netbook running Win7 over this baby.
Don’t forget too, that the era of ARM-based ‘smartbooks’ hasn’t even started yet. This Apple tablet will be only one of many, and some are bound to have PixelQi screens, and cost under $250. And then they will bust out with Windows Mobile 7, which MSFT is hoping to bring to market in a year or so.
Options galore.
I too have a hard time seeing Apple launching a 10″ device – a “paperbook” or A5 screen size with 16×9 aspect ratio for video makes more sense to me. Given Apple’s leadership and their approach to markets – they will be looking at the whole eco-system – if they actually produce a “media tablet” then I think they will want to have a media store and distribution system behind it – they will also want to be more revolutionary than the current crop of e-readers – looking at the multi media and social elements of mobile content consumption and creation.
I will backtrack on my previous comment – and suggest that maybe something around the B5 size of 6.9 × 9.8 does in fact make some sense – so actually having looked at this more closely the approx 10 inch diagonal size for the Apple “media tablet” is small enough to be carried around while giving enough screen real estate for books, magazines and newspapers as well as movies and video games. A lot it’s mass market appeal will depend on pricing and potential carrier subsidies.
As an Apple fan, I’m very interested in the long awaited tablet. However, for me price will be a big issue. Since I already own a Sony PRS-500 and an iPhone, I’m not going to fork over more money for the latest and greatest. In fact, I need to watch my spending or I won’t have any money left over to buy any ebooks!
As a student, I want a device with a physical keyboard for taking notes in class that folds into a tablet for convenient reading of PDFs, etc. I guess I basically want an Asus T91, though apparently those are somewhat sluggish. If the Apple tablet included a physical keyboard, I would be all for it. As it stands, I might just wait till I graduate and get one anyway! The $700 price point is too high for my taste — I think $500-600 would be much more reasonable, but then again it is Apple… Probably wouldn’t stop be from buying it in the end, admittedly. Keyboard issues aside, this really is the kind of future reading device that I’ve been hoping for.
Owen: have you looked into the Gigabyte 912x?
It’s more expensive than the T91 but it runs a 1.6GHz Atom instead of 1.33GHz and a higher-res screen.
I’m waiting for the T91 to get Win7′ed in a couple months and the Archos tablet to hit the market to see how they stack up to the Gigabyte. My main interest is weight; the keyboard I can do without but I’d rather have something under 2 pounds.
Hi Felix,
Thanks a lot for the tip – the Gigabyte 912 looks pretty sweet. Is it available in the U.S.? Good point about waiting for Windows 7 on the T91, too…
To me, it looks like a bigger iPhone. And, for the projected price, I would just spend the several hundred more for a MacBook.
Owen: Dynamism carries pretty much everything under the sun and if the manufacturer doesn’t offer US support, they support it. But they’re not the cheapest.
Run a few web searches on Bing and Google and you might find a better deal.
Regardless, Dynamism has a few sweet windows tablets that aren’t available elsewhere.
Also, the upcoming Archos 9 tablet comes with Win7 and MS Office…
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/archos_9_pc_tablet_comes_us
Just noticed the Archos 9 will have a baby brother:
The Archos IMT (internet media tablet):
http://www.pcworld.com/article/159209/archos_tabletphone_to_use_android_os.html
http://news.prnewswire.com/ViewContent.aspx?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/02-09-2009/0004968821&EDATE=
5″ screen, running android, up to 500GB HDD, 10 mm thick
Due in sept.
Worth keeping an eye on to see what Apple will have to better.
The proposed device would be that much closer to the “digital scrapbook” idea that I’ve been kicking around and looking forward to for years. For reading e-books, it would not be worth it to me. But a device this size could do so much more than simply read books.
If, for instance, I could transfer all of my magazine subscriptions to e-mags on such a device, keep selected “clips” of articles and associated media and discard the rest, organize the clips, and store other info and media… it would be like carrying my entire library of magazines and media with me, wherever I went.
Such a device would be worth the price tag they’re likely to place upon it. Without those items, I wouldn’t be interested.