1. User Experience and Fatigue

Top on my wish list is of course just the fact that it will be the ultimate gadget from a user experience perspective.  Specifically what I mean by that is comfortable to use in many different situations, easy to carry and store, something that can be tossed around and not get scratched, and something that naturally becomes just as much as appendage as the iPhone has.  I expect nothing less from Apple.

My wife’s been experiencing some arm pain, similar to a carpel tunnel type injury, because of her use of the iPhone touch screen.  In the past I’ve suffered some from playing too many Xbox 360 games.  More recently I was getting sore from playing a game on the Wii.  Any new user input device can come with use-related injuries.  I hope that the new Tablet OS is comfortable to use and doesn’t create too much fatigue.

Example: I actually painfully wrote my first draft of this post in the notes app of my iPhone, in bed, while my wife was asleep beside me. Hopefully I haven’t painted a creepy picture, but night is often when I get inspiration to write and a laptop is simply too large and bulky to take to bed. I always sleep with my iPhone near by.  And lately I’ve been wondering if a 10 inch tablet would be more or less conducive to bedtime work (and typing) than the iPhone.  Ease of typing is a huge concern when considering how one would (or will) use touch screen tablets in the real world.

2. Power Cords / Interface Cable

As silly as it might seem I would love to see the tablet use the same interface connector as the iPhone / iPod touch. I already have so many of these laying around. Already have them in my cars, next to my bed, at my office, and at home.  I don’t want to all the sudden need a new set of cables. Sony kills me wih all their different batteries and power adaptors. Recently I spent 3 hours trying to find a lost power cable for my video camera which is why I did a writen review of the webstation instead of a video review. I did find 3 other Sony power cable and 2 other Sony battery chargers. But they’re all slightly different and incompatible.  Annoying!  So please Apple – keep to your own standard.

3. Powerful Processor.

I felt the iPhone 3gs was a significant improvement over the original iPhone in terms of speed. I hope the tablet will be MacBook pro fast. If it’s going to be more costly than a well equipted netbook it should be more powerful as well.

4. Real Flash Support.

Come on, mobile safari is fine for the iPhone but this thing needs to support hulu, the real YouTube, and flash gaming.  I know that Apple’s MO is to try to ‘encourage’ media buying from and for the device, but I hope it’s not at the expense of blocking hulu or any other media that I might want to play on it.

5. My Cloud / Mobile Me

I’m crossing my fingers for a killer remote desktop / screen sharing app.  Get this concept: if you could use the mac tablet with a mobile me / back to my mac account to access and control your main home mac from anywhere, in a way it would be like being able to take your home computer with you everywhere you go.  In a way it would be just as good (or maybe better) than having the tablet run the full Mac OSX.

I read someone online mention that if the tablet ran the full os it could take sales away from the desktop computer business.  I think it’s safe to say that it won’t “run” the full OS X.  But I think if the tablet acts as a controller or a window to your desktop computer, it actually promotes desktop computer sales.

It also opens up a new possible business for Apple: renting virtual (cloud) Mac OSX computer desktops to tablet users.  Rather than purchasing a $5000 mac pro, purchase a tablet and rent the power of a mac pro that you access via your tablet.  I believe that improvements could be made to the concept of remote desktop that would enable it to be more like actually having that computer inside your tablet.  Things like how files and data are shared between the two devices, and how input data could be recorded at a higher frequency – could make it possible to even use photoshop remotely.  But in this concept the remote computer is in a farm somewhere in the cloud.

6. Remote for Apple TV

The Remote app on the iPhone is one of my favorite apps.  Think of this app but bigger, better and stronger and for Apple TV.  The convergence between the computer and the TV could be solved by using the tablet as an input device for a computer that sits on your TV.  About 4 months ago I saw this (http://www.vimeo.com/6712657) interesting video of the 10/GUI user interface concept.  The basic idea is that the screen is duplicated down to a touch screen where your keyboard would be.  Watch the video.  This concept would work great as an interface for your TV as a computer.  Right now web surfing on a TV is a horrible experience.  Using this MO it could become second nature.  The Apple TV could become a device to visualize your tablet’s screen to your TV and conversely the tablet could be the ultimate remote for the Apple TV.  This marriage could honestly be a game changer.

7. Tablet as a Phone

Ok, I think this is a stretch but it’s possible.  So of course I don’t want to pay for both iPhone connectivity and tablet connectivity.  It’s possible that the tablet could be a ‘phone’ and inlcude a small handset or headset that wirelessly connects to the tablet.  Not bluetooth please but something with a much longer range like wifi.  And the handset would need a small touch screen so you could dial with it and search contacts (like an iPhone Nano).  But all the real work would happen in the tablet.  It’s probably impractical but it’s still made my list.  Another option in this same vein would be for the tablet to get it’s 3G from your iPhone, which is more of a traditional tethering concept.

8. eBook eMag reader – NOT eInk

I’m not much of a book or magazine reader, but this video (http://vimeo.com/8217311) got me excited about what electronic magazines could become.  Still eInk does me no good.  eInk doesn’t emit light except for backlighting models which look about as good as my Newton.  I think if you want an eInk reader that’s easy on the eyes go buy a Kindle or a Nook.  Maybe Apple can have an ebook mode which changes the lighting on the display and makes it easier on the eyes.  Still, it needs to have a beautiful screen for watching movies.  That’s more of a priority for me.

9. Front facing camera

Please.  Everyone knows why and everyone wants this.  And we don’t want to wait for the 4th hardware version.  Just give it to us.  Thanks!

Conclusion

My overall hope for this tablet is that it will have many many real uses.  Not just be a big iPod Touch or another gadget that I’ll buy and carry around and surf the web with.  But be the one device that basically does it all – an honest game changer.  Apple has a huge opportunity to change the way we use computers here.  I just hope that they don’t disappoint us all on Wednesday and just announce a new iLife.

About 2 months ago I was mocking up my own concept for a mac tablet when real life got in the way of blogging.  Since then I’ve blogged very little.  I’ve also seen (on other sites) a couple of very cool mockups, one that would be completely awesome but is at least a few years off due to it’s flexible OLED design, and another that is extremely close to what I was planning.  Whipping up a fake now would be completely academic.

Being somewhat of a fan boy myself it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between my wish list and what I expect will really be released.  But here’s my take on WWDC 09…

Steve Jobs

Let me start with the Steve Jobs thing.  I started writing this post a few days before it was announced that Phil Schiller and other executives would be giving the keynote.  I’ll just say that I wish Steve all the best.  I had hoped that SJ would be recovered enough to be present and give the keynote.  Although, as gizmodo.com pointed out, Steve did say that he would be out until the END of July.  And since WWDC is July 9th I should have known.  The fan boy in me would love to see Steve do the “one more thing”-thing one more time.  Still, I strongly believe, and have stated it here in the past, that Apple needs to move beyond Steve as a singular figurehead.  If someone else announces the next big thing it should prove to the financial community that Apple can thrive with or without Steve.

iPhone rev 3

I think there have been enough rumors floating around regarding a new iPhone that at least some of it has to be true.  Not to mention the clues within the 3.0 iPhone OS.  I think a faster processor, larger RAM, 32GB capacity, better camera, video recording and editing functionality are all a given at this point.  The open questions lie in the form factor, the possibility of a front facing camera, and the idea of 3G being bumped up by 2x or even 4x.

While I would love to see another update to the physical design of the iPhone, sadly I expect that it will remain the same.  As far as a front facing camera, it’s a feature that mixed with video chat would be awesome.  However if the form stays the same, I doubt a front-facing camera will be included in this version.  Also, Apple has a tendency to save features for later revisions and without a redesign of the iPhone’s body it’s highly unlikely that they’ll add in a 2nd camera.  I also don’t see a camera flash in this release for the same reason.  I hope that I’m wrong and that it’s all crammed into a new body, but I doubt it.

MacBooks

When Apple announced the MacBook Air I was very disappointed and felt like they missed an opportunity.  The idea that the product was so-named because it was ‘as light as air’ (or whatever the reasoning was) seemed like a waste.  To me the MacBook Air should have been a mac with built in wimax or 3G connectivity – the ‘Air’ then conveying freedom, or getting it’s connectivity from the air.  This time around it seems that 3G MacBooks are a strong possibility.  And I hope there will be a way to add the functionality to current MacBooks.

What about a smaller MacBook Air?  Could it be Apple’s answer to a netbook?  I doubt it.  Not to mention that it wouldn’t have a competitive price point.  No, my money is still on some sort of tablet.  Read on to see what I expect that to be…

Mac Tablet

This concept from MacFormat is about the closest you could get to what I was thinking.  The tablet could dock when at work or at a desk to provide that MacBook feel, attach to a real keyboard, charge the unit, and maybe gain other connectivity.  Undock it to take it on the go and the touch screen would take over working much like an iPhone.

One side note:  It’s easy to miss out on the sense of scale in this render.  Because the designer chose a thicker beveled edge, at first this device doesn’t appear much larger than the current iPhone.  But when you consider the keyboard to be a normal sized mac keyboard (which is the same height as the current iPhone) it means that the tablet would be standing over 10 inches tall.

But what operating system will this tablet use?  For the longest time I always assumed Mac OS because I wanted as much power as possible, and for example, the ability to run photoshop.  Then at some point I was led to believe that this didn’t make sense and the tablet would use the same OS as the iPhone.  Today, I bounce back and forth between the ideas. Will run iPhone OS or Snow Leopard?  It could go either way and there are benefits to each.  Here are the arguments – on both sides:

Number One – When the iPhone was first announced Steve said that it ran OS X.  We’ve since come to realize that this was quite a stretch.  Whether or not it was based on OS X, the iPhone’s OS is in fact it’s own thing.  Last year WWDC’s theme showed two roads.  Apple is good at FUD and good at sweeping things under the carpet.  They can completely change the rules in the middle of the game and their cult followers all say “oh ok.”  (Well, more and more people are complaining – but I digress…) They’ve since renamed the OS to iPhone OS.

Well, why call it iPhone OS if it is also going to support a whole new category of personal computing devices – devices that are not phones?  One simple answer is that the iPod Touch is not a phone, yet it runs under iPhone OS.  Does it make sense?  No.  But hey, it’s Apple.  Another answer could be that the tablet might actually be a phone and come with a decent range handset to go along with it.  An interesting idea – not sure how practical.

Number Two – Snow Leopard now has touch support, and patents, patents, patents.  These are of course arguments for the tablet being a ‘real’ mac, which as a consumer I might prefer.  Gizmodo did a nice write up yesterday on “Apple’s Tablet” which used some of these arguments to favor the tablet running Snow Leopard.  Check it out.  And as I said above, I would like a tablet with enough power to run MacBook Pro apps.  But the other side of this argument is that Apple tends to remove functionality that they think no one needs.  I could see Apple releasing a tablet as more of an appliance, initially providing only the core functionality that they think most users will want in such a device.

Number Three – As I write this my laptop is sitting, well, on my lap – and it’s HOT!  To keep battery life longer and the tablet running cooler they could use a different processor that runs cooler and uses energy more efficiently.  And let’s not forget about ARM and Apple’s purchase of P.A. Semi.  Of course a non-intel processor isn’t going to run Snow Leopard without a major port of the OS.  It would however be much less work to port the iPhone OS to such a platform.

Number Four – The gizmodo.com article I mention above argues that the iPhone OS wouldn’t work in a larger device because it would be more trouble than it’s worth to reconfigure the core interface for a 10″ screen.  Ahhh, don’t put it past Apple to figure that one out.  I doubt we’ll see a 10″ screen filled with tiny little iphone app icons, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t just create a totally different summerboard launcher similar to the Leopard dock.  They could also allow multiple apps to run at the same time on different spaces.

Giz also argues that current apps wouldn’t work refitted to a 10 inch screen.  Well again, that’s not thinking it all the way through. You have to consider that the iPhone OS always had support for multiple screen sizes.  The first thing you do in every program is check the screen size and fill your window to that size.  If an 10 inch iPhone OS device were on the market tomorrow developers could start writing apps for it tomorrow with no further extensions.  All Apple would have to do is give us a simulator for that device and if it has a different processor, a compiler for it.

Also let’s consider that not all current apps work on both iPhones and iPod Touches.  Just because an app is developed for iPhone OS doesn’t mean that it has to run on all iPhone OS hardware platforms OR even on the same microprocessor.

So no, as is Trism isn’t going to work on a larger tablet.  But it could easily be modified to run on it.  The concept of an iPhone OS tablet would give developers a new platform to develop on, more screen real estate to work with, and an opportunity to make more money off of current apps simply by modifying existing code.  It really could be a win-win.

Number Five – The App Store worked so well on the iPhone and is making Apple (and developers) so much money that they’ll likely want to repeat it.  And as I said, the current app store has apps for iPod Touches and iPhones.  It’s completely capable of supporting another device and distinguishing between them all.  One way or another Apple will eventually extend the app store to other devices – because it’s a cash cow.

Where does this leave us?

It leaves us waiting for WWDC.  Looking over my own arguements above I think I’m leaning toward the tablet being iPhone OS.  That app store arguement is hard to ignore.

Well, I hope Apple does announce a tablet in four weeks. And no matter if it’s Snow Leopard or iPhone OS, I believe that Apple will re-invent it enough to make it the next big thing – and hopefully revolutionize personal computing again.

To my point, a similar thing has certainly happened to the makers of the iPhone app Bang!Bang! and Boom!BOOM! Shotgun Free (iTunes links).  They had what they thought was an original idea. They set out to make it professional, using realistic graphics and hollywood sound effects, and they worked it through the iPhone app approval process.  Only to find out that Apple was approving several ‘gun’ apps all around the same time.  No proof of this of course, but I suspect that Apple might have held theirs back to time the releases closer together. I believe theirs did hit the store first, but others soon followed, including what can only be described as an extremely cheap knock off called Shotgun Pro.  But plagiarism is the best form of compliment, right?  And competition is what makes this country great.

But still, the idea that Shotgun Pro had made it to #2 on the Entertainment charts got under their skin a bit.  And to be honest it also makes me scratch my head as it is a somewhat un-inspired soundboard app.  So to combat it they too set out on a mission, to ‘pop a cap in the arse’ of the competition.  Take the jump to read on and see the video…

Here’s what seems to happen in the app store: When someone comes up with a decent idea and makes an app, others follow and make a bunch of copy-apps.  In the interest of good competition, you would expect the copies to raise the bar, thus forcing the original apps to also add features and get better.  But instead it seems that the copies are often cheap imitations with a little less going for them.

There’s also the whole bogusness (that’s a word) of the review process.  A fairly cheap campaign is to hire a few hundred of your friends to buy your app and praise it, and/or buy the competition and slam it.  As a side note, it’s the same problem that DIGG has. I could DIGG an article with exclusive photos of a meteor hitting a school bus, but unless I have 100′s of friends to dig it for me it will get buried in about 45 seconds.  Similar problem exists with the app store.  Unless you’re willing to play this game and also exploit the system your app will be rated fairly low (from the competition).  Normal average honest app purchasers rarely rate apps, so until your app has 10′s of 1000′s of buyers the bogus ratings will weigh down your overall score.

Check out the ratings for Shotgun Pro (as of March 27th 2009)…

How is it possible in the real world to have 129 people who just LOVE the app, and 112 people who hate it?  Those ratings are clearly ‘fixed’ by people buying the app just to rate it.  Probably on both extremes of the scale, the high side by them and low side by their competition.  By the way, I don’t blame Apple too much for this nor do I have a suggested solution.  Any system that can be exploited will be exploited.  It seems to me that if you really want to know if an app is good or not talk to a friend who has it, or look at an app review site like toucharcade.com.  I also suspect that iPhone OS 3.0 might help – as it should allow free versions that are upgradable to pay versions.

Dambia’s first move was to release Boom!BOOM! Shotgun FREE, which works similar to the Bang!BANG app that I premiered a few weeks ago.  But this week they’ve gone a step further and released BoomBOOM Shotgun PRO, which contains 5 different guns, better help pages, and a few surprises.

A company representative had this to say, “We were trying to elevate things above “soundboard” apps by adding motion, decent graphics and incredible sound… you know, because it’s an iPhone.”  But the competition just slapped the word PRO on their versions which didn’t have any pro features, had static images, and sound effects that clipped.  In response they said that they “decided to make it right for the consumer and reset the bar.  Anyone that wants to buy this sort of app shouldn’t be paying for distorted audio, amateur UI’s and clip art.”

For more info you can go to kaisakura.com/firearms/

Small Enough

While now it actually looks kind of big compared to that pack of gum, the original was revolutionary small.  Small enough to get lost in your pocket, but still big enough that you could feel the controls.  How small is too small on devices that cost 80 bucks?  This morning my wife brought me a 4GB memory stick that went through the washer and dryer.  (it still works fine by the way – thanks for asking)

Big Enough

Ok.. It’s never big enough. But my 1GB unit was enough to hold 240 songs, which honestly is enough for me.  Let me clarify.. FOR an iPod Shuffle!

Use ANY Headphones

One of the big tech complaints of the day is that the new iPod Shuffle has virtually no controls on the unit and they’ve been moved to the headphones. This means that you’re stuck using Apple’s earbuds.  And if they get lost or chewed by you’re dog it’ll probably be $20 – $30 to replace them.  The original iPod Shuffle had a simple click-wheel on the unit and could use any headphones.

USB Mass Storage Mode

One of the featuers of the original iPod Shuffle was that you could also store files along with your music.  In iTunes you could divide up the 1GB (or 512 MB) and assign a certain amount of it for data storage.  It’s a feature that would be nice on the newer models and, for me, would help justify the purchase.

Completely Self-Contained

This is where they totally lose me and why the original iPod Shuffle wins.  How is it better to have a dock or a cable?

Why not put the USB connector right on the unit?  Go ahead and make the unit smaller, but keep the USB connector so I don’t have to carry a bunch of crap around with me.  The previous generation Shuffle was the worst, with that annoying little dock.  But even this new one requires a cable to attach it to a computer:

What do you guys think? Does it bother you to have to take a dock or a cable with you? What’s your favorite iPod and more specifically, iPod Shuffle?