Let me start off by saying that I, obviously, don’t have any knowledge whatsoever about future apple products. Everything written in this article is merely an opinion and a lot of wishful thinking.
My iPhone really changed my day to day life. I used to carry around my laptop everywhere I went. I’m an internet addict and can’t spend a day without e-mail. All my news I get online. That’s right, I don’t watch television anymore. Maybe it’s just the news channels in my country but when I watch the news on TV I keep seeing stuff I read hours, and in some cases days ago online. They don’t bring new insights or background information to those ‘news’ stories either. When I bought the iPhone I didn’t expect it to have such a big impact on the way I consume news and the way I’m connected to the world. Since my iPhone provides me in all the basic needs of staying connected and some form of relaxation (games). I lost the need to carry my laptop everywhere I go.
Like I said, the iPhone kicks ass in many ways and reduced the need for me to carry my laptop everywhere I go. It still doesn’t replace my computer however. I still write my reports, blogs and software on a mac. Still organize my music and pictures on my mac. So my mac can’t be replaced, yet!
The Tablet
So here comes the tablet. Like I mentioned above I don’t really need a new device to read my e-mail or to browse the internet. Sure the tablet would be better for watching movies. But I’m not a big fan of spending around $ 1000 just for that. So what requirements would the tablet have to meet in order to justify a purchase for me ? In other words, which things should the Tablet do well in order for it to be a acceptable replacement for my aging Macbook Pro.
As mentioned earlier it would have to do the stuff I currently can’t do on my iPhone. The stuff that causes me to move back from my iPhone to my Mac.
The iPhone is a great media player, but it can’t organize your media (aside from pictures in a limited way). I can’t change titles on songs or get album artwork. It doesn’t allow me to add music to my library aside from buying it from iTunes. It doesn’t even let me remove songs I currently have on there. The only thing I can do, is create playlists. The same goes for movies. So in order for the tablet to be a replacement for my mac it should be able to actually manage my media.
Writing
Allot of people with much more experience in writing then me have written loads of articles about the importance of text-input for the success of the tablet. I agree with most of what they’re saying. In order for the tablet to be a success writing on it should be a breeze. I can’t imagine myself writing long documents on my iPhone. Neither can I imagine writing long reports on a Tablet without a physical keyboard. As I’m writing this most of the time I’m looking across the room instead of at my fingers or at my screen. That simply isn’t possible on a touch screen.
Since we all know apple isn’t going to put a physical keyboard on this thing, the tablet would need to be able to connect with a bluetooth keyboard. What also would be a necessary feature (for me) is the ability to connect to an external display. I’d like to come home with my tablet, plug it into my dock and have my keyboard and screen connected to my tablet. So I can continue to work on my tablet as I would on a mac.
The Cloud
People have been saying for years that ultimately everything will be moved to ‘the cloud’. All software will be turned into services instead of products and all your information will be stored and managed online. Without getting any deeper into the whole debate wether or not that’s a good thing. I think apple is moving there. They already started moving iWork to the cloud with iWork.com (yes I know the possibilities offered at iWork.com are nowhere near the possibilies of iWork, but it’s a start) and I think we will see iLife follow. Storing and managing your pictures, although limited, is already possible with MobileMe. Aside from that apple just bought LaLa, a streaming music company. Many people have already suggested that this acquisition is the first sign of iTunes moving to the cloud completely. No more app, just a web-app. If my iTunes would run in the browser I’d be able to manage my music from my iPhone/Tablet and thus eliminating one of my needs for still using my laptop. As long as the web-version of iTunes would still allow me to upload my own music and videos it would completely replace my need for an app.
That leaves the writing. Web-apps like Google Docs have proven that the rich web-apps can replace desktop apps. Apple seems to agree with that point of view. MobileMe and iWork.com are proof of that. These online counter-parts are nowhere near ready to replace their desktop counter-parts but soon they could be.
Native apps
This is a no-brainer. Of-course the tablet is going to have native-apps and my before mentioned concerns about missing functionality could be fixed with native apps ass-well. However I think the concept of Software as a Service makes more sense to me. Apple has a few apps on the appstore. Remote (extension for iTunes), Keynote (extension for Keynote), iDisk (extension for MobileMe), Gallery (extension for MobileMe). Since MobileMe is a paid service, the last two apps only serve a purpose if you actually pay for that service. That’s the same thing I expect to see happening with iWork and Keynote themselves. Moved to the cloud with native apps as extension to the service offered by the web-app.
Consumption vs Creation
What I’m trying to say is this. The iPhone is great at content consumption. The Tablet should be great not only at consumption of content but also of creation.
