Brave New Worlds

Welcome to 2008.

I think that my first blog post of the year needs to start with a little rememberance. And, to quote directly from Apple's website:

"Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone."

There has been much talk in the news about the Macworld announcement, and whether there will be a sub-notebook, a 3G iPhone, an iCar, a tablet, and iTunes movie rentals. For now, I will focus on the sub-notebook and the tablet.

Currently, both ultralight notebook computing and Tablet computing is not mainstream, it makes up 1.5% for tablets and for ultralights; well, it can't be found on the first page of a google search for it and therefore is too small to matter (I would guess around 0.5%). So, if Apple makes a sub-notebook, a tablet, or a sub-notebook tablet, it will have to attract more than the 2% of mobile computer users that are interested in this kind of technology. Apple sells 5 computers. It would not necessarily be worth it for apple to add another computer into the mix, and therefore a harder choice to make at an Apple store, just to capture a small part of the market for computers overall.

What I would expect in terms of branding is for Steve Jobs to announce "We've made the MacBook thinner!" at Macworld, and then reveal the new ultralight MacBook that would replace current macbook models. Just a MacBook upgrade that makes it even more portable.

Off of the top of my head, I can only think of a few reasons to use a tablet, and most of them are for designers. Throw a little Apple implementation into the mix, and the market opens up a little. However, try these exercises to remind you of what using a tablet may be like.

• Touch the top, then the bottom of your screen repeatedly for three minutes.
• Write (with a pencil) for a couple of hours.
• Compare your finger to the size of the icons in the menu bar, and the size of the menu itself.
• Draw 1/2 cm boxes on a piece of paper at irregular intervals. Quickly use a pencil to draw a dot in the center of each box.

The iPhone can pull off all of its touch screen awesomeness because it is in a very small form factor and large, finger-friendly buttons and targets. The Mac OS would have to have a major UI overhaul to accommodate simple tasks such as pressing the close buttons– and not all of the apps will follow this new behavior. In addition, if one wanted to use an Apple tablet with a tablet version of Windows, Apple would need to provide various hardware buttons on the tablet itself to appease the windows gods. Oh, and just a final blow: Text recognition does not work in Parallels.

Apple has a fair bit of work to do before it starts implementing a tablet, however an ultralight may be possible, or a new Apple TV, iTunes rentals, or iTunes radio. It's all in the hands of the gods, now.