Dick Pountain/22 January 2010 12:53/Idealog 186
I have quite a short neck which means that I don't suit turtle-neck sweaters, but it's good because it makes me less reluctant to stick it out. I'm writing this column a full week before Apple reveals its new tablet device to the world, if that is indeed what's planned for late January 2010 (it could be something totally different like a toaster). Nevertheless I intend to pontificate on the significance of this device sight unseen.
What everyone expects Apple to launch is a communicating tablet, somewhere between A4 and A5 in size with a hi-res, colour multi-touch screen that employs the same interface as the iPhone, possibly somewhat enhanced. The significance of such a device can hardly be overemphasised. All previous attempts to popularise the tablet PC format have been fatally compromised because they were, well, PCs. Hardware-wise they stank because they were obliged to provide a hard keyboard, which meant inventing ever more ingenious/baroque hinge technologies: I clearly remember havering over an Acer C111 in a Tottenham Court road emporium six years ago, then chickening out because I could imagine its wasp-waisted swivel hinge coming apart in my hands.
Beyond that steep hurdle you still faced the irreduceable fact that Windows, even with added tablet functions, makes a rotten multimedia operating system, fit only for the techiest of techies like myself. And it's not only Windows. I wrote favourably here about my Sony PRS-505 eBook Reader a while back, but I've since realised that it too is actually unfit for civilians: apart from the total lack of keyboard (and hence search facility) that I griped about, the downloading process is baffling to non-techies. One friend of mine, a highly professional journalist, was given a Sony a year ago but has never mastered loading it, and I suddenly realised that I choose to load books directly into folders via Explorer rather than Sony's clunky library application.
The paradigm cases for ease of content access nowadays are Firefox add-ons and iPhone apps - click an icon and the content is just there, done, finished. Amazon's Kindle with its always-on mobile connection is a step toward it, but those black-and-white digital paper screens on the Sony and the Kindle, while excellent for flicker-free, contrasty book reading with long battery life, are an obstacle to viewing movies or TV content. I already know non-techies who watch TV on their iPhones, and a tablet with a far larger colour screen and instant touch-and-go content access is going to finally crack open the niche every manufacturer dreams of, the universal portable entertainment centre.
That has implications that go well beyond Apple Corp's bottom line, though it won't hurt that either. The other great dream among online media companies is to get paid for content, and Apple has that too partially cracked. iTunes, because of its unbreakable linkage to Apple's hardware, gets more people to pay up than just about anyone else manages, and it's no secret that not just book publishers like HarperCollins, but also media giants like CBS and Disney have been in deep pow-wow with Apple recently. It seems very probable that if the tablet is as good as everyone expects - that is, as far *better* than every alternative as the iPhone was - that might enable them to extend the iTunes model to TV and movie content, and people will be prepared to pay up. Rupert Murdoch's solution of fencing off in future content that is at the moment free is backward looking and unlikely to succeed (in fact it looks back all the way to The Enclosures). The formula for extracting people's wallets has always been perfectly well known - offer them a better mouse-trap, and that's what I believe Apple plans to do.
Does this mean that I'm turning into a grizzled Apple fanboy? Not likely, but then neither am I an irrational Apple hater. I've always given the company credit for innovation in user interfaces and design, as in the iPod and doubly with the iPhone. (I never became a Mac user because I'd already suffered to become fluent in Windows, and MacOS simply isn't better enough).
One regret is that the Apple tablet's OS won't be open-source, and in fact will be tightly closed and regulated like the iPhone's with strict nanny-like control over developers. OK there are an awful lot of iPhone apps out there, but apps are mere Smarties compared to the three-course dinners that a large screen touch interface will make possible, and open-sourcing it would attract masterpieces. The iPhone has by far the best visual interface yet invented, and by rights ought to sweep Windows and its like away for ever, but Apple's business model has always held it back from true OS jihad. Perhaps this tablet might spur Google to do something open for the rest of us, via a future Chrome/Android combo (that is, once the inevitable legal wars have died down).
Of course once we can consume all our media through a single slim slate, all meaningful human contact might collapse, Fahrenheit 451 style, which would be unfortunate. And of course I could be wrong about all this, it might be a clunker, in which case you've wasted the last 5 minutes. Sorry.
[Dick Pountain once had to phone-a-friend to find out how to turn on a Macintosh (duh, press both the Apple keys...)
www.dickpountain.co.uk]
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