Douglas Tarlow Design

Apple Tablet: Two Important Questions

I got an instant message today from my friend Nina, that Apple would be developing a tablet.

me: How do you know?
Nina: I don’t actually know, I just saw rumors all over my RSS feed.
me: oh…

I believe that the Tablet Project is going on at Apple, but there are two important questions that must be figured out before one can know the roadmap by which an Apple Tablet will be released, if ever. That is to say, I do not believe that a Tablet will be released unless it can be done right, Apple is smart enough, not to release a half-way-there product.

One of the more important questions to any impending Apple Tablet release rumor is this: How do they get cell service in the Tablet, namely 3g wireless, without having to get the FCC approval that would reveal their product to the public 6 months before its release?

With the iPhone, they announced the product, “the world’s greatest iPod, cell phone, and mobile computer all in one device”, then made everyone wait 6 months for their product. As a side note to this, it did build an amazing amount of excitement. I actually ditched my summer research job at Stanford for 2 days, and waited in line just behind Scoble and his son at the Palo Alto Apple Store to be one of the first to get the new iPhone.

What however is unclear, is how the 3Gs remained a secret if while still meeting FCC disclosure rules. Perhaps Apple has found a loop-hole? Or more likely, they submitted a new design to the FCC, that didn’t need to contain any of the details of the new features, so that it would be hard to know if it were just a minor update, or a new feature release.

This leads me to believe that Apple may be able to get a new Tablet approved by the FCC by simply using the exact same internals as the iPhone or some other coy trick like this. Anyway, enough about this FCC and secrecy thing, the next topic of this Tablet discussion, is why I believe that Apple has a Tablet program going on.

First, I apologize, I’m not going to do all the proper background research to justify all my points here, I simply don’t have the time at the moment, so we’ll leave this a mere conjecture, which it is anyway.

If I understand Apple, which I believe I do, I don’t believe that they started a Tablet project, as they claim, and then it turned into the iPhone. Instead, I believe that it is part of a bigger, over-arching plan and test. The iPhone was wildly successful, but it used a bunch of new user interface tricks and methods that they couldn’t have known would work, in particular, I’m talking about the touch-screen keyboard.

My argument is that the iPhone wasn’t the morphed outcome of a Tablet project, but instead the first step in a Tablet project. Apple loves to tout its technology as Revolutionary products, but the truth is, you can’t change too fast for consumers, and you’ve got to teach them how to use new technology, this is a core value at Apple, and one of the reasons why I believe that the iPhone was and is critical to the Tablet as a precursor to educating people on how to use a direct touch input computer.

Prior to the release of the iPhone, touch-screen devices were clunky, hard to use, and generally poorly thought of. Consumers were uncomfortable and unfamiliar with touch-screens and gestural interfaces. The iPhone introduced people to Apple’s concept on how touch-screens should work, and it was wildly successful. Now consumers believe the iPhone interface is easy and simple to use. This is a major victory for the tablet project, which I assure you, will not include a stylus.

So, on one hand, Apple has been educating us, the public, on how to use their direct multi-touch interface, while also continuing to refine and develop their technology for the summation of this project, a Tablet (or more probably Macbook Touch).