My Thoughts on the Apple Tablet

I'm guessing that we're going to be starting the migration with music files so podcasts make sense. They'll use the power within your home network (or sell you an airport if you don't have one) to sync the "in-play" files between your networked devices. I think we are a ways off with HD content streaming over 3G and 4G networks. The video files will have have to loaded before you go. Audio may be capable of streaming, we're already seeing car headunits that control Pandora streamed through your iPhone over blue tooth. Books are a no brainer, it'll be interesting to see what publishers they have on day 1.

I'm guessing that we're going to be starting the migration with music files so podcasts make sense. They'll use the power within your home network (or sell you an airport if you don't have one) to sync the "in-play" files between your networked devices. I think we are a ways off with HD content streaming over 3G and 4G networks. The video files will have have to loaded before you go. Audio may be capable of streaming, we're already seeing car headunits that control Pandora streamed through your iPhone over blue tooth. Books are a no brainer, it'll be interesting to see what publishers they have on day 1.

I'm guessing that we're going to be starting the migration with music files so podcasts make sense. They'll use the power within your home network (or sell you an airport if you don't have one) to sync the "in-play" files between your networked devices. I think we are a ways off with HD content streaming over 3G and 4G networks. The video files will have have to loaded before you go. Audio may be capable of streaming, we're already seeing car headunits that control Pandora streamed through your iPhone over blue tooth. Books are a no brainer, it'll be interesting to see what publishers they have on day 1.

Thanks for the link, good info.

Thanks for the link, good info.

You got it, only tech heads care about those standards and parts. Most of my friends and relatives know almost nothing about the stuff that makes up an iPhone or Touch. They just know it works for them and it's easy to use. They know they can go to their local Apple retail store and get help when they're having some minor problems or need some training. I'm in the minority and Apple is targeting the vast majority of non-geeks who just want products that work. The "walled garden" approach is best for those type of people. As a tech-head I'll just work around whatever problems I have with the Apple platform. I'm not going to complain because I know for a fact that Apple knows what its doing since I can tell by the company's growth and revenue throughout the recession. That's not something easy to do. You have to have loyal customers to keep coming back and continue spending more money. They're coming back for a reason because they surely have cheaper alternatives if they weren't satisfied. All of the Windows switchers (basically long-term Windows users) I've asked always said that things are just more simpler to do with their Macs, iPods or iPhones and it was worth paying more money for the products because they didn't feel like they were abandoned after they left the store with their products. So even if you don't wish to say about Apple products that "They just work", new users feel that Apple will at least try to get it to work, as promised. Merely weighing features on a Nexus to a Droid to a Pre to an iPhone means nothing in the big picture for consumers. Consumers want a complete package of hardware/software/content/customer service and that will keep consumers coming back time and time again. If you can afford it, that's the way to go. People laugh at the Apple logo, saying it means nothing and is worthless, but the Apple brand logo is a very powerful symbol that stands for quality and support. Only a fool would be blind to that fact.

It always seems to come down to "I can buy a netbook for $300 so why pay more for a tablet (or any other computer)." Because you're buying into Apple's iTunes-based ecosystem and strong customer support. How anyone can compare a $300 netbook to Apple's unibody MacBooks are a puzzle to me. You wait and see what kind of a tablet you're going to be getting for $400. Some plastic piece of junk. I'm not really trying to convince you to buy anything Apple offers. There are always going to be people that buy things because they're inexpensive and that's good for them. But people like yourself are going to ruin even the Windows PC industry by always buying the least expensive computer you can find. Businesses can't survive long-term by selling only low-margin items when they have costlier items in inventory. Whatever, Apple only needs a 10% to 20% U.S. tablet market to make huge amounts of revenue. There are enough of those people that are willing to open their wallets to buy a high-end tablet with an Apple logo on it. The rest of the people can buy their Android-powered plastic tablets. I hope Apple is able to meld it's own P.A. Semi chips into its tablet. Hopefully, there'll be some battery life or graphics improvements that users won't get on any other platform. It'll give the Apple tablet a hardware edge along with its ecosystem edge. Keep the Apple mobile platform unique enough in a world of fragmented Android devices.

We've been talking about this a lot lately and all I can come up with to make this usable is a killer application that needs to marry with it. There are two pieces that will make this a killer device. The first is cloud based storage for all your media. Using cloud based storage should be a no brainer for Apple. They sell one copy of a song thousands of times over and all they need to do is set an ACL on the server side. This way you can access your music where ever you are on the go and Apple provides your backup solution. This would finally make their MobileMe service useful to consumers. The only problem with this I can see is how to you share your collection with your family easily. This is the first step, but what I really see as making the tablet a killer device is what I'm calling MediaSync for lack of a better term. Imagine linking all your devices together, your iPod/iPhone, laptop, iSlate and Apple TV. Apple through their cloud service manages all the media between the devices and based on your usage patterns automatically loads the device with your most utilized media. With the iPhone or at home you can stream anything that isn't stored locally in your collection. So now you're sitting at home with your iSlate on your lap with the TV running in the background, tell your wife "Hey, check out this YouTube video", flip on your Apple TV and now you're playing it live in your living room for your wife. You get up from the office and start a podcast on your iPhone listening all the way home. Pause it as you pull in the driveway, turn on the Apple TV and continue to listen in the exact place you left off in the car. Your wife gets home and wants to watch last nights Grey's Anatomy so you're forced to pull out your iSlate and continue listening right where the AppleTV left off. This is really the only killer component that would make the iSlate useful to most consumers. You're also able to play all the games and apps from your iPhone on the iSlate, but without the MediaSync capabilities you're just going to see another me too device with no real purpose. I guess we'll all just find out in 17 days.

Yes, pure openness exists in pipedreams, but once you throw in products, market forces and humans, it doesn't work, and never will. Apple follows the pre-breakup of AT&T strategy... basically, when phones "worked" every time you picked up the handle. They owned the lines, the owned the switches, they owned the phones. It worked well if you remember, and was quite cheap. It was solid efficiency. Today, Apple products all fit together under the same strategy, they own the OS (rooted upon AT&T UNIX), they own the distribution of their equipment (AT&T), and control the creation of the software that runs on them. It works DARN WELL... so while it appears "closed", it's actually very open since anyone can join the party and not get stuck with the Windows or Linux headaches. It's Apple's secret... shhh... don't tell... -

Yes, pure openness exists in pipedreams, but once you throw in products, market forces and humans, it doesn't work, and never will.Apple follows the pre-breakup of AT&T strategy... basically, when phones "worked" every time you picked up the handle. They owned the lines, the owned the switches, they owned the phones. It worked well if you remember, and was quite cheap. It was solid efficiency. Today, Apple products all fit together under the same strategy, they own the OS (rooted upon AT&T UNIX), they own the distribution of their equipment (AT&T), and control the creation of the software that runs on them.It works DARN WELL... so while it appears "closed", it's actually very open since anyone can join the party and not get stuck with the Windows or Linux headaches.It's Apple's secret... shhh... don't tell...-

If all you require is netbook capabilities, why buy a workstation PC? By your logic, I should buy an SUV when I only need to transport myself around. If I buy things I don't need, I am supporting economic subsidies, minimal study of Macroeconomics suggests that subsidies create economic inefficiencies which result in consumers paying more for less. If my Android tablet can do whatever your Apple tablet can do, for half the cost, purchasing an Apple tablet doesn't make sense to me.I think netbooks have created a new class of tech "layperson" that is infinitely more educated as to their buying power. They have found that they can satisfy their computing needs without buying hardware that they will never use. This normalizes prices for everyone, bringing more computing power to the masses. 3 years ago everyone (myself included) laughed at OLPC (one laptop per child's) stated goal of bringing a <$100 laptop to the masses. I know that I am now not only convinced at it's practicality, but also that these laptops will not be crippled. But I digress, I too would like to see Apple succeed, simply to create more competition. I think the more of these tablets that are actually good products, the more competition will ensue, creating more innovation, and more efficient manufacturing, and lower consumer prices. Those are the gains from specialization. Competition breeds creativity, so if you truly desire quality you should hope Apple is challenged by many competitors to create and refine the best product possible.If Apple creates a compelling, innovative tablet more power to them, but it is a little hasty to crown Apple 'King of the Tablet' simply because of past performance. I feel the tablet PC will become a great medium for computing (yes it has been around a while!) but this current focus on it will make the consumer see the capabilities.PS. Wal-Mart and Southwest are both companies that have thrived in weak economies; operating on low margins and functioning with high-efficiency. In the business world, they are lauded and oft mimicked for their ability to streamline operations and offer low-cost high quality products.

This article is riddled with errors. We don't know that it be $1000, it likely be more like $599. It's NOT going to be a simple netbook, it's going to be a touch based, wifi, color kindle, with 8 hour battery. Ah, batteries for an 3rd Gen iPod are less than $10, why didn't you just get a new battery? Apple never used DRM, it was the recording companies that required it... now, there is no DRM on iTunes and hasn't been for a year or more. Apple doesn't use proprietary formats, everything they use are open standards like AAC. Proprietary software? You mean Microsoft, not Apple. iTunes is really a "database" which makes it extremely easy to make simple playlists and click "sync", it's far superior to manually dragging and dropping since it gives you more "data" about the music, podcasts, video, audiobooks, etc. DisplayPort is an open industry standard, and is the replacement for the proprietary HDMI, Apple only uses "standards" don't forget, they use no proprietary ports. Ah, OSX is 90% open source, Windows is 100% closed source. Linux is just a hairball that cats cough up. Yes, Apple has a lot more skill at this level of chip design than Intel or NVIDIA since they deal with tiny electronics, not desktop level components. Yes, tablets open many new doors as we've all seen by the wildly popular iPod Touch, so even a 7 inch version would sell millions in the first few weeks. Throw in the 128,000 App Store, millions of books, newspapers and magazines, a forward facing camera, iLife & iWork and you have an unbeatable combination. Apple has always been the world's masters at miniaturization and at "wow" feature innovation, so no matter what happens, Apple will take the lion's share of nascent tablet market.

Topperge - I'm 100% with you. Interoperability (through cloud services) is key. Allowing a user to access all their "stuff" from any device is a poweful concept. Imagine bookmarking important sites, keeping good versions of files, reading your e-books, and listening to your music, from any device you have. If Apple pulls off this feat I'll be more than impressed. But, that requires an inordinate amount of bandwidth, which isn't available yet on 3G, and is only barely there on 4G. Further, not every home has >1Mbps broadband, making most people "disadvantaged users." Until 5-10Mbps bandwidth is the standard, I think we're looking at a pipe dream.I agree with your vision - Cloud Entertainment is the future, but until someone proves it can work now - and satisfy HD snobs like myself - I'm calling BS.

Are you sure you are CTO? You mean DisplayPort proprietary created by VESA? So Flash is not proprietary. You want Apple to pay Adobe forever. You mean ARM and imagination chip that is used in iPhone is non-standard. So the Zune has some kind of fancy battery different from ipod, right and you use Zune more than iPod. Prey tell what poweruser feature are you using everyday that ipod does not allow. So there is no DRM in Zune, right. What a ...

I reckon it's going to be closer to $800 and be a 10.1 incher. You seem to be more of a Notion Ink kind of guy - and even they seem to be locked into a $500-800 zone using Pixel Qi and Nvida Tegra components.

You got it, only tech heads care about those standards and parts. Most of my friends and relatives know almost nothing about the stuff that makes up an iPhone or Touch. They just know it works for them and it's easy to use. They know they can go to their local Apple retail store and get help when they're having some minor problems or need some training. I'm in the minority and Apple is targeting the vast majority of non-geeks who just want products that work. The "walled garden" approach is best for those type of people. As a tech-head I'll just work around whatever problems I have with the Apple platform. I'm not going to complain because I know for a fact that Apple knows what its doing since I can tell by the company's growth and revenue throughout the recession. That's not something easy to do. You have to have loyal customers to keep coming back and continue spending more money. They're coming back for a reason because they surely have cheaper alternatives if they weren't satisfied. All of the Windows switchers (basically long-term Windows users) I've asked always said that things are just more simpler to do with their Macs, iPods or iPhones and it was worth paying more money for the products because they didn't feel like they were abandoned after they left the store with their products. So even if you don't wish to say about Apple products that "They just work", new users feel that Apple will at least try to get it to work, as promised.Merely weighing features on a Nexus to a Droid to a Pre to an iPhone means nothing in the big picture for consumers. Consumers want a complete package of hardware/software/content/customer service and that will keep consumers coming back time and time again. If you can afford it, that's the way to go. People laugh at the Apple logo, saying it means nothing and is worthless, but the Apple brand logo is a very powerful symbol that stands for quality and support. Only a fool would be blind to that fact.

This might interest you: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/04/28/how-apples-pa-semi-acquisition-fits-into-its-chip-history/

Apple has been in the chip design business before. They are not Dell. The Power PC architecture was a superior chip architecture to x86. "A simple check of CES shows that there is a deluge of tablets coming our way, so how does Apple plan to differentiate (other than pricing in the stratosphere?)." Well designed UI & product line & an ecosystem that is years ahead of the competition. A superior & faster chip architecture....something others can't easily copy. Which is pretty much what will happen. Look at the iPhone...no one is really offering anything different. They are all working within the box Apple has established. As long as these devices use common formats & protocols there is no reason that they can be built with different chips.

It always seems to come down to "I can buy a netbook for $300 so why pay more for a tablet (or any other computer)." Because you're buying into Apple's iTunes-based ecosystem and strong customer support. How anyone can compare a $300 netbook to Apple's unibody MacBooks are a puzzle to me. You wait and see what kind of a tablet you're going to be getting for $400. Some plastic piece of junk. I'm not really trying to convince you to buy anything Apple offers. There are always going to be people that buy things because they're inexpensive and that's good for them. But people like yourself are going to ruin even the Windows PC industry by always buying the least expensive computer you can find. Businesses can't survive long-term by selling only low-margin items when they have costlier items in inventory. Whatever, Apple only needs a 10% to 20% U.S. tablet market to make huge amounts of revenue. There are enough of those people that are willing to open their wallets to buy a high-end tablet with an Apple logo on it. The rest of the people can buy their Android-powered plastic tablets.I hope Apple is able to meld it's own P.A. Semi chips into its tablet. Hopefully, there'll be some battery life or graphics improvements that users won't get on any other platform. It'll give the Apple tablet a hardware edge along with its ecosystem edge. Keep the Apple mobile platform unique enough in a world of fragmented Android devices.

We've been talking about this a lot lately and all I can come up with to make this usable is a killer application that needs to marry with it. There are two pieces that will make this a killer device. The first is cloud based storage for all your media. Using cloud based storage should be a no brainer for Apple. They sell one copy of a song thousands of times over and all they need to do is set an ACL on the server side. This way you can access your music where ever you are on the go and Apple provides your backup solution. This would finally make their MobileMe service useful to consumers. The only problem with this I can see is how to you share your collection with your family easily. This is the first step, but what I really see as making the tablet a killer device is what I'm calling MediaSync for lack of a better term. Imagine linking all your devices together, your iPod/iPhone, laptop, iSlate and Apple TV. Apple through their cloud service manages all the media between the devices and based on your usage patterns automatically loads the device with your most utilized media. With the iPhone or at home you can stream anything that isn't stored locally in your collection. So now you're sitting at home with your iSlate on your lap with the TV running in the background, tell your wife "Hey, check out this YouTube video", flip on your Apple TV and now you're playing it live in your living room for your wife. You get up from the office and start a podcast on your iPhone listening all the way home. Pause it as you pull in the driveway, turn on the Apple TV and continue to listen in the exact place you left off in the car. Your wife gets home and wants to watch last nights Grey's Anatomy so you're forced to pull out your iSlate and continue listening right where the AppleTV left off.This is really the only killer component that would make the iSlate useful to most consumers. You're also able to play all the games and apps from your iPhone on the iSlate, but without the MediaSync capabilities you're just going to see another me too device with no real purpose. I guess we'll all just find out in 17 days.

Thanks for your post, I had not heard of the tablet for $599, almost every post I have seen regarding the tablet post the cost around $1000 dollars. When you say it is "NOT going to be a simple netbook, it's going to be a touch based, wifi, color kindle, with 8 hour battery," what do you mean? Most netbooks are color, have WiFi, long batteries (some into the teens), and offer reading options. Acer has their Acer Aspire Timeline 1820T, which is a touch based ultra-light notebook. Kindles use e-ink, which has terrible refresh times, I doubt the Apple Tablet will use e-ink as their screen of choice, because it pretty much eliminates video media.Have you you ever seen another device with the iPhone charger? It's completely alien to other chargers, similarly, what about their MacBook chargers? HDMI is featured in (almost) every HDTV right now, and I think we have all seen how adoption beats out "Technical Superiority" every time (Betamax anyone???).Is it really fair to say "Apple has done it in the past, it is impossible for them to fail?" I disagree, and would rather wait to see the tablet before I put it on a pedestal. I think the proof is in the pudding as they say, and in March we will have some proof.

I can't wait for the Google Tablet. Do you really think using non-standard connectors is a benefit? As we have more and more devices (especially ones that are not replacing others) don't we want to be able to use the same connectors/cords? HDMI is a great standard, that allows a lot of bandwidth and options - and is on almost every HDTV in the wild. The EU's legislated move to 1 cellphone charging standard is a great precedent, one which will truly benefit the consumer more than any other party.Since we have yet to see a truly consumer ready tablet, I don't believe the "game" has been defined yet, so I am going to wait to see what manufacturers create before stating that anything is game changing.

Hi,Thanks for the reply. I realize DisplayPort is not Apple proprietary, but a quick look at the HDTVs on the market shows that very few of them use it. I believe a major attraction for many would be the capability to easily plug their tablet into an HDTV to watch movies, surf the web, or display powerpoints.I don't know what to say if you don't believe that a lack of Flash compatibility is a drawback, but with more and more flash on the web, it would be impossible for me to imagine a tablet w/o Flash capabilities.I never said the Zune was better/worse than an iPod, but rather that both constrict the user to only their defined programs for interaction (marketplace/iTunes) which is more than a little annoying to me. I think that iPhone's heavily censored apps marketplace is problematic. In addition, where's the Google Voice love?Anyways, thanks for reading, please continue to, and share your opinions.

I have heard 10.1" and 12" varieties (possibly the $800/$1000 split?). I know the 12" option offers many technological challenges in regards to touch screen.The Notion Ink "Adam" looks great, but I am not letting myself get tied to anything yet! Most Android/Tegra 2.0 tablets look cool (though still rough) but I am not against a Windows 7 machine. I just imagine that most of the tablets will run <$400, and 2x the cost for the Apple may be unattractive to many.Thanks for the post, please keep reading and let me know what you think. I know everyone is very excited for the official unveiling later this month.

JS,Thanks for the post + link. I enjoyed the linked article, great read. I think it's hard to say "superior and faster" chip architecture, not that the PA Semi will be bad, but that time will tell. The iPhone was truly a game-changer - but a REAL tablet meant for consumers hasn't been released. China is shipping out some cool tablets (SmartQ V7, and the A8100) but they are not commercialized. I think the iPhone appstore is a good start - but when bragging about 100k + apps, how many are of value? Plus how tightly controlled the appstore is a detraction to me. Having played around w/ Android 1.6, and 2.0, I genuinely believe it will be a great OS for tablets.I'm not sold on the iPhone being that different than a Windows Mobile system, just with a more intuitive interface (plus the Apple branding). With the iPhone, Apple made available all the smartphone capabilities while avoiding a learning curve. I believe you meant "can't be built with different chips" which I don't disagree with at all - it gives consumers more choice, and I am certainly interested to see how it works.By product line? I have heard of 12" and 10.1" varieties (obviously much remains to be released), and well-designed UI? Android/Chrome OS have often been chosen. I think it's hard to say that iPhone OS 4.0 (the purported OS for the tablet) will be superior to the Android/Chrome option. I know users need a Google account to fully enable Android, which may be a point of contention to some users, but since I am a Google user myself, it does not bother me.If you don't mind, elaborate on the "ecosystem years ahead of the competition"Thanks.

Please take no offense, but NOBODY cares about "openness" but us nerds and geeks. As you freely admit, you are a power user. Billions of others are not. Those are the people Apple target. I find it funny that tech geeks (I'm a geek too) can't get past a closed ecosystem. But what that system provides to the average consumer is a trouble free experience. Nobody wants to regurgitate the Windows experience here. The general public wants it to "just work". They don't have time to hack the shit out of everything they own. We (tech nerds) are a very small minority in comparison to the masses of mindless cows (PC users), wondering the planet. In that respect Apple provides a unified, safe, easy to use, and most importantly... centralized media distribution environment. That's what people want. THEY DON"T CARE ABOUT OPENNESS.......... Get it? Only us dorks with little else to live for enjoy that crap.

This article is riddled with errors. We don't know that it be $1000, it likely be more like $599. It's NOT going to be a simple netbook, it's going to be a touch based, wifi, color kindle, with 8 hour battery.Ah, batteries for an 3rd Gen iPod are less than $10, why didn't you just get a new battery? Apple never used DRM, it was the recording companies that required it... now, there is no DRM on iTunes and hasn't been for a year or more. Apple doesn't use proprietary formats, everything they use are open standards like AAC. Proprietary software? You mean Microsoft, not Apple.iTunes is really a "database" which makes it extremely easy to make simple playlists and click "sync", it's far superior to manually dragging and dropping since it gives you more "data" about the music, podcasts, video, audiobooks, etc.DisplayPort is an open industry standard, and is the replacement for the proprietary HDMI, Apple only uses "standards" don't forget, they use no proprietary ports. Ah, OSX is 90% open source, Windows is 100% closed source. Linux is just a hairball that cats cough up.Yes, Apple has a lot more skill at this level of chip design than Intel or NVIDIA since they deal with tiny electronics, not desktop level components.Yes, tablets open many new doors as we've all seen by the wildly popular iPod Touch, so even a 7 inch version would sell millions in the first few weeks.Throw in the 128,000 App Store, millions of books, newspapers and magazines, a forward facing camera, iLife & iWork and you have an unbeatable combination.Apple has always been the world's masters at miniaturization and at "wow" feature innovation, so no matter what happens, Apple will take the lion's share of nascent tablet market.

Basically you are deconstructing the Apple Tablet and reconstructing it as a tablet that should use the NVIDIA Tegra or Intel CPU, with OpenSource software and standard connectors- i.e. no real change from what is out there. Yawn! Apple is in the market definition, game-change business. What you are really waiting for is the GoogleTablet.

Are you sure you are CTO?You mean DisplayPort proprietary created by VESA?So Flash is not proprietary. You want Apple to pay Adobe forever.You mean ARM and imagination chip that is used in iPhone is non-standard.So the Zune has some kind of fancy battery different from ipod, rightand you use Zune more than iPod. Prey tell what poweruser feature are you using everyday that ipod does not allow. So there is no DRM in Zune, right.What a ...

I reckon it's going to be closer to $800 and be a 10.1 incher. You seem to be more of a Notion Ink kind of guy - and even they seem to be locked into a $500-800 zone using Pixel Qi and Nvida Tegra components.

This might interest you:http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/04/28/how-ap.....

Apple has been in the chip design business before. They are not Dell.The Power PC architecture was a superior chip architecture to x86."A simple check of CES shows that there is a deluge of tablets coming our way, so how does Apple plan to differentiate (other than pricing in the stratosphere?)."Well designed UI & product line & an ecosystem that is years ahead of the competition.A superior & faster chip architecture....something others can't easily copy. Which is pretty much what will happen.Look at the iPhone...no one is really offering anything different. They are all working within the box Apple has established.As long as these devices use common formats & protocols there is no reason that they can be built with different chips.