I Dream Of Tablet

[NOTE: This post is a horribly-titled compilation of a series originally published on AppleMatters which constituted baseless speculation on a hypothetical Apple tablet computer. Everything below assumes that Apple is, in fact, working on a touchscreen device with a larger form factor than the iPhone, to be used as a platform for digital books/magazines/newspapers, as well as, perhaps, a better way to view HD video.]

I. Devices like the Kindle and the upcoming Nook have made a point of using e-ink displays, and if Apple’s making a tablet-style device it’s going to be thinking long and hard about which display tech will most effectively translate print media to the digital screen. Below are a few examples of what kind of displays we might see on devices of this form factor—not just from Apple, but its potential competitors in this space as well.

Let’s first focus on e-ink displays, because the number of reading devices utilizing this technology is growing fast: to accompany the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle, there’s new entrants into the field from companies like Plastic Logic and Barnes & Noble. The main advantages of these displays are their very low power consumption—they only require power to generate a new image—and various factors that make them easier to read, like a larger viewing angle than conventional LCDs. However, color e-ink displays are a long way off, with even Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is telling shareholders that current color e-ink prototypes are “not ready for prime time.” They’re also incapable of rendering smooth animation or video without drawing large amounts of power disproportionate to the capabilities of today’s mobile batteries. If Apple used one of these displays, the company would probably have to create a new interface from scratch — iPhone apps in their current, slick, full-color incarnation would be essentially useless.

But then there’s a company named Pixel Qi, which is manufacturing a kind of dual LCD/e-ink display—with the flick of a switch it can seamlessly transition between a transmissive color display and a monochrome display that, like e-ink, reflects ambient light. The result is a high-resolution screen that’s perfectly readable in direct sunlight, and its website states it’s marketing the device for manufacturers to incorporate within netbooks and e-readers. It’s not completely infeasible Apple might take an interest in this idea—Pixel Qi’s even been able to create a touchscreen display with their technology, which it’ll possibly be incorporating into an upcoming iteration of the OLPC.

Perhaps even more promising in the realm of electronic paper are Qualcomm’s mirasol displays, which produce text with a similar level of clarity as e-ink, but with drastically reduced power consumption. In fact, as opposed to e-ink, mirasol displays can support full-color images and video playback with battery performance that exceeds even a traditional LCD display. Qualcomm’s working with LG, along with various manufacturers whose names it won’t disclose (Apple, anyone?) to get these displays out in mass production by the end of 2010.

But the safest bet is still to assume that Apple’s just not going to be taking any risks. It could just go with a full-color screen like the iPhone’s LCD. Or, more likely, an OLED screen like the Zune HD’s, which not only draws less power but looks astoundingly better. The iPhone OS would have no issues rendering graphics on this screen, and even though LCDs often have a lower resolution than e-ink displays, why would Apple care? Third-party e-reader apps like Stanza and Classics have already established the iPhone and iPod touch as a legitimate e-reader/e-book platform. I have no doubt that if Apple introduces a sufficiently excellent device, it could swoop in from nowhere to dominate the e-reader market as it did the smartphone market, even if the device has an LCD screen.


II. But this currently hypothetical tablet’s screen would rank low on Apple’s pressing design decisions. For one thing, if Apple wants to use this device to push HD video, the screen for this device would probably be at least 1280x720 pixels —all the better to display the 720p videos and iTunes LPs sold on the iTunes Store. So Apple is going to have to redraw the entire GUI so that it fits on this larger screen. Not to mention iPhone OS’ biggest strength -the App Store. This is, perhaps, the biggest argument against the existence of an Apple tablet: those 100,000+ mobile applications that Apple’s so proud of would be automatically incompatible with the new device because of its larger resolution. Off the top of my head, there are three solutions I see to this dilemma.

First, Apple could just upscale all the current iPhone apps to the resolution of the new device. Just like the DVD player on your computer upscales the disc’s standard-definition video to the resolution of your monitor, Apple could automatically enlarge applications and games created for the iPhone so that they fit on the screen. But one immediate downside I can see to this solution is the relatively lackluster graphics performance of the iPhone’s hardware. It’s on par with other mobile devices and even other portable consoles, sure, but I don’t think its games would look so great on an 8-inch screen. And even if Apple slaps a next-gen mobile graphics processor like Tegra or Snapdragon into this tablet to handle HD video, when the average consumer downloads an iPhone game (designed for the iPhone’s hardware) off the App Store and it looks all blurry and pixelated they’ll think their device is broken or contains lackluster hardware inside.

So to avoid this problem, the company could just start a new App Store from scratch, segregating it from the iPhone/iPod touch and creating a marketplace in the iTunes Store specifically for this device. This actually might be a pretty smart idea. It’s not like developers wouldn’t be interested in creating third-party apps for the device - they’d be falling over themselves to take advantage of the larger screen and higher resolution.

On the other hand, Apple could be tempted to keep the App Store for this device closed and proprietary, like they’ve done for the iPod classic and nano. Rumors from a few months back say that Apple’s trying to court mainstream print and publishing companies to put their publications on this tablet. Maybe Apple intends to restrict development to just those companies. It could very well be that the section of the iTunes Store specific to the Apple tablet could just contain a bunch of digital newspapers, books and magazines, and maybe a few games from large game developers that Apple’s given the tablet’s SDK to, like Gameloft and EA—again, imitating the iTunes Store’s marketplace for the iPod classic and nano thus far. A closed platform for an exclusive device.


III. Speaking of a digital marketplace for print publications, Apple’s been in the business of revolutionizing the way media is sold—first with music, then with movies and TV shows, then software. So it makes complete sense that the company would be trying to do the same with print, and maybe even building a device to accommodate the new medium. If the tablet actually exists, it’s just the latest in the many, many attempts by print media to make a profit migrating their content to the screen before they collapse under the dead weight of an industry many analysts dismiss as having lost to the Web. (Remember the CueCat?) Look at Time, Condé Nast, The New York Times. These are all major companies whose main business involves printing things on paper… and they’re also companies rumored to have been approached by Apple with an offer to place their content on Apple’s mythical tablet.

I think a big selling point of any publications formatted for this device is going to be design—through interactivity, shareability or other innovations, these tablet-formatted publications will transcend the limitations of both anything printed on dead trees and the plain justified text of what you see in your browser window on the magazine’s web site, or on the copy of the New York Times delivered to your Kindle. Having said that, how has this approach been attempted on the Web in the past, and what strategy is Apple looking to take?

Apple doesn’t have to aim high to top the current quality of experience available to online readers. On one hand, many magazines offer digital copies of their publications in a DRM-protected format offered by Zinio, compatible with the company’s Zinio Reader—it’s identical to the print version to a fault, advertisements and all. Sure, the URLs listed in articles (as well as all of the advertisements) are hyperlinked, but otherwise it’s a pretty minimal and rigid interpretation of a digital magazine. (Some free and alternative magazines/publications offer their product for free in PDF format, which gives off pretty much the same effect as a Zinio file, design-wise.)

On the other hand, you have experiments in interactivity in the form of all-Flash publications, often utilized by the alternative press and sometimes released as odd experiments from the NYT web team. The issue here is that as creative as these publications can sometimes be, Flash is a usability nightmare: it’s difficult to copy and paste, you can’t provide permalinks for sub-pages within a Flash document, and Adobe’s never worked very hard to make Flash less resource-intensive and buggy on Macs.

But some recent mockups created by both Time Inc. and Wired of a platform-agnostic digital magazine format (mocked up on a nondescript, oddly iPhone-like device) give an idea of what print design may look like on an Apple tablet, if it were to be released. Here, see both of them for yourself:



These two mockups get me pretty excited for Apple’s inevitable implementation (whether on the Mac or on a tablet device) of this format, and make me feel optimistic for the future of print design: on a screen. Though sticking to the grid of a print magazine, the opportunities provided by a fully digital touchscreen interface will allow conventional print designers to be more dynamic and flexible with things like layout and positioning. (For example, check out the way the text automatically repositions itself, while still staying within the complex grid of the magazine’s design, when the device switches orientations from portrait to landscape.)


IV. Again, iTunes LPs and iTunes Extras seemed to be tailor-made specifically for a hypothetical device like this: at 1280x720, they’re too big for an iPhone or iPod to view. What device could they be for? Well, they’d be perfect for viewing on a device with a larger screen, intended to view the 720p television shows and movies sold on the iTunes Store, at full resolution. Perhaps a device with a next-gen mobile system-on-a-chip like Tegra or Snapdragon, optimized for graphics performance and HD video playback. But why would you buy a device with an 8- or 10-inch screen, one you can’t even fit in your pocket, when you can watch your iTunes purchases on your laptop, or on a giant HDTV instead?

A large portion of this debate comes down to whether we, as consumers, care about video fidelity and resolution across the board. Considering how many people hold the opinion that videos encoded in SD on YouTube are perfectly watchable and even halfway-decent, I’m not sure that’s the case for the average computer user, and I don’t think you could sell a device like an Apple tablet solely on the grounds that your videos will look better on its screen. Certainly there are times when I can imagine that the resolution of a larger HD mobile device would come in handy: a digital artist displaying her portfolio to a colleague with ease, a businessman more easily able to view documents and spreadsheets while on the go. But the use cases seem too limited for me to really envision this device having broad appeal based on the screen alone.

So it seems to me that Apple’s got to have something up its sleeve to pull out at the introductory keynote, something that makes this device really stand out, both as an Apple product and a success story, amidst the wasteland of failed tablet computing attempts (Windows XP Tablet Edition, and possibly the CrunchPad, immediately comes to mind). Whether it’s the introduction of interactive features for video that the tablet can only take advantage of, or some new game-changing HCI method that’ll be the killer feature multi-touch was for the iPhone, or just a bunch of new media formats like the one for digital print publications, I think there needs to be an extra gimmick for this device. Of course, Apple could prove me wrong, like it’s done for so many in the past who’ve tried to predict its next move. But I don’t think you can sell something like this based on extra resolution and horsepower alone. Apple will have to think long and hard about this tablet’s potential use cases in the weeks and months leading up to its release, tailoring the physical attributes of the device to its practical applications.