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You really think Apple is asleep during the Kindle-mania?
December 8, 2007 | 2:02 pm
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By David Rothman
Oh, the rumors, the rumors, the rumors—of an Apple tablet or mini-tab fit for reading books. At one point a gadget blog was even saying that Apple and major book publishers had been in touch. What’s more, some TeleBlog readers may remember this drawing.
Now Robert Cringely is speculating: “The next logical WebKit product for Apple, it seems to me, is a much larger version of the iPod Touch. It would be Apple’s first tablet computer and, while they’ll still claim it runs OS X, Apple WON’T call it a Mac.”
Why would this make sense for Apple? Here are the five reasons from “an old friend who is much smarter than I.”
- There could be a software developers’ kit not jut for the iPhone in February but also for this new product.
- A multitouch interface would be patent-protected and be less likely to show up on clones.
- “…a nice form-factor tablet could be a significant addition to a video-viewing ecosystem.”
- “…an iTablet with a camera built in could potentially have the power and bandwidth to enable portable video communication.”
- “The fact that an iTablet could be a great e-book reader, too, is not a driving reason for such a device, I don’t believe. But it’s a nice capability. Read the book and watch the movie. Then watch Amazon’s new Kindle go up in flames.”
Cringely goes on: “To this I might add a sixth reason for an iTablet intro, which is because AT&T last week stole the thunder from an Apple 3G iPhone announcement. Jobs sorely needs something even better to announce.” And he concludes:
“Frankly, I wasn’t fully convinced until reaching point five. Killing the Kindle and deflating Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos — now that’s something worthy of Jobs and Apple.”
At least we know that with Apple on the, er, job, the results won’t look like a prop from an old sci-fi movie.
Well, it’s time to give some positives about the Kindle, and later today I’ll supply just that—-from a happy new owner, who also has some tips to share.
Related older items: Latest Mac tablet rumor to be skeptical about and other posts on tablet rumors.
And elsewhere on the hardware scene: Michael Jensen’s skepticism that handhelds will be The Next Big Thing (in Publishing Frontier).
(Big thanks to Mike Cane for the Cringely link.)
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Comments:
What about the Newton? The only reason it wasn’t called a Tablet PC is because the term wasn’t around then.
I like the idea of Apple coming to the party, but we need a moment of reflection.
Ebook devices (really portable ebook libraries), most important feature is reading stability and long, long, battery life.
This is fundamentally different to reading ebooks on other devices, there is a technical threshold that once crossed decreases the new functionality of the 8,000 page turns per charge.
Lightness, and long battery life, pages that stay on when the device is off. These distinguish a dedicated reader from other devices that may be used to read. A device that is designed for reading first and foremost is a critical watershed in the future development of ebooks.
Apple will produce an excellent tablet, I like Apple products, it may well fatally dent Kindle, but only if it is more a reader than a tablet, and that is a big technical difference at the moment.
At the moment that means eink or epaper. Every extra is a battery killer, do SD cards need to be “on” when not in direct use? Same with USB sticks, indeed Wifi and anything else (stylus use) must be used sparingly, turned “on” when in use, automatically turned “off” when not being used. These are the technical questions that need better solutions.
Colour, size, lights and other functions should be, in a good reader design, subordinated to the battery. We should be aiming for months of use between charges, and no more weight than in a heavy p-book.
Unless there is a dramatic change in battery design, substantially more power and proportionately much less weight, and long over-all life, then it is the battery that sets the limits and that means a true reader has to be a dedicated device and a cheap one, with probably not many functions.
A light tablet, that uses a eink/epaper device as a secondary screen that can be used independently, might at this stage of technical development be worth pursuing by Apple, or anyone else. After all it would only need a cover design that would allow the user to use one or the other, or both together.
If the academic and student market is to be captured (I would argue they are critically important to the future of ebooks), the reading device has to be bistable, cheap, light, robust and requiring few recharges over a year (also available in different sizes, I would argue).
I do not want to see the adoption of ebooks further delayed by nice function rich gizmos that fail the longevity test. Reading has to be calculated in days and weeks, not hours!
One thing I don’t understand is why is Apple missing the holiday shoppers?
Looks to me that even though they’ll announce the new product On Jan 15 probably won’t be available for a couple of months… it will be an early announcement for 2008 products.
>>>One thing I don’t understand is why is Apple missing the holiday shoppers?
iPhone OS X SDK is why.
I’m sure Jobs would have liked things to move faster, but he won’t be missing much money what with iPod sales still going through the roof.
And he is, thank god!, more driven by getting things done *right* than by an arbitrarily-set “deadline.”
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