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Apparently, I was the first person to leave the Nashville Apple store with a new iPad this morning.
Since it was officially announced in January, I’ve tried hard to avoid blogging about the iPad. (However, I haven’t displayed such restraint on Twitter.) Frankly, I’ve been burned out on iPad blogging since writing a speculative guessay last March. I was wrong on my timing — I predicted it would be announced last May — but the device, including price, is pretty close to what I predicted.
Regular readers know that since 2006, I’ve written dozens of posts about a speculative device that is now the iPad. It was in 2006 when I started using the term “”Rumor #3″ as shorthand for the prediction of “a device that is sort of like an 8?x10? iPod that does everything a computer does but it won’t be called a tablet computer or an iPod.” The following year, in 2007, I wrote a rather long piece when the Kindle was announced, saying, “What I’d rather have than an eBook reader is an “iPod Touchbook.” It was at that point that I did a mock-up of what I thought the device would look like. (Eventhough I hadn’t seen it at that point, I would later marvel that Chris Messina had already nailed the device, and he even guessed its name would be the “iPad Touch.”
Now that the iPad is here, I’ll be posting a lot with it, but probably not writing much about it. It’s like I said last night on Twitter, “One of the downsides of spending time pondering the future is that by the time it arrives, you’re bored with it.”
I can tell you this already: I won’t get bored with the iPad anytime soon.
But I am extremely tired of talking about it.
(Later: See the next post. You knew I couldn’t not stop talking about it completely.)
Over the past couple of years, I have talked with several individuals in the book-publishing field about Apple talking with book publishers. These weren’t people “speculating” that Apple wanted to use the iTunes channel (or something similar) to offer eBooks. These are people who know. Their timing was off, however. But they assured me it was on its way.
So when I read that “12th hour talks between Apple and book publishers are taking place,” I know it’s not the first time such meetings have taken place over the past two years.
In my opinion, this is the key quote in the The Bookseller article:
“What is clear is that US publishers are desperate to combat the $10 Kindle price tag pushed by Amazon.com, and believe that if enough weight is given to it other retailers will be forced to follow.
Rather than repeat myself, here are links to previous posts that address this topic:
What I’d rather have than an eBook reader: the iPod Touchbook: (11/18/2007) In a comment on this post that disappeared when I switched to Disqus commenting but I reposted here last year, book publisher and ubber-social median Michael Hyatt wrote:
“I would much rather have an Apple Touchbook than the Kindle (which I own). However, you’re forgetting one small detail. The device is only one-third the equation. iTunes is another third. So far so good. A seamless way to get content from the store onto the device. What Apple is missing is the RELATIONSHIPS. They don’t have any relationships with book publishers that enables them to get access to the content…Could Apple develop these relationships? Sure. My point is that they haven’t started and this is where Amazon has a leg up. For most of us, they are one of our largest customers and we trust them.”
For those who follow Michael Hyatt’s blog, the CEO of the nation’s 6th largest book publisher provides bread crumbs along the way from that two year old comment to his recent telegraph of how he believes a device like the iSlate/iPad (or, in his post, the SI Tablet, a conceptual device to show what an iPad could be) will “be the end of book publishing as we know it.”
In other words, despite him never saying it or remotely implying it on his blog, I think Apple has talked with Thomas Nelson long before any 12th hour.
Two posts on the economics of eBooks: The notion that $10 an eBook is “cheap” is ridiculous. But whatever the book publishers want to charge is up to them, not the retailer. Frankly, as much as I like wholesalers and printers and binders and bookstores, the value of an eBook should be based on the cost of only two steps in the channel — the author (and his/her “people”) and the publisher (specifically, how much demand they can create in the marketplace). Much smarter people than I have figured that out. Tim O’Reilly, for instance, who charges more than $10 for eBooks he publishes — but also gives away others for free — sometimes the same book is available for free and for pay. My best post on the topic of eBook pricing actually quotes legitimate sources, and doesn’t depend on my hyptheses: Yet one more mystery about the enigmatic book publishing industry.”
And lastly, my post last week about gizmo channels: It’s not the gizmo that makes a gizmo successful explains, if you read it closely, that book publishers have never understood that it’s the “channel” not the device or the content that will ultimately determine their fate. Sorry, book people. Your key to success is not dictating prices (it’s against the law, I believe). Your key to success is finding great authors and rewarding them well by editing and marketing their “content” the best way(s) possible. Forget trying to dictate prices for digital content based on what it costs to pulp paper and warehouse “product.” That ship has sailed.
Is it now news because the WSJ is reporting it?
I read every word of the story that is now exploding on Techmeme — the story that has this quote in it: “An Apple spokesman said the company doesn’t comment on rumors and speculation.”
If you have a pulse and haven’t known for a couple of weeks that Apple has rented a hall to make an announcement about a “tablet device,” then stop reading this post right now. In fact, go back under the rock you’ve been living under for the past few years.
The other day, Louis Gray did a great job recounting the past decade of rumors related to a Mac Tablet (it’s great, even though he left out the history of Rumor #3).
I joked with Louis that he left out the rumors dating back to Alan Kay’s Dynabook or that it was included in the writings of Nostradamus.
That it is now “news” because it has appeared in the Wall Street Journal is what really is amusing. Because the Wall Street Journal article couches it in the same caveat-eese as MacRumors.com: “…say people briefed by the company” being the standard rumor-site lede.
As an arm-chair pundit who has joked about and postulated upon this rumor for the past 3+ years, here’s my advice on how to handle the next few weeks.
1. This is going to be like the two weeks before the Superbowl. Yada, yada, yada. Prediction, prediction, prediction. Advice: Tune out everything about this announcement, including this blog post.
2. If you want to read one thing, and one thing only, about what the iSlate will be, read John Gruber’s post on Daring Fireball called, “The Tablet.” For that matter, don’t ever read anything anyone writes about Apple products except Gruber, who is, in my opinion, the most insightful, intelligent and literate of Appleologists.
3. Get ready for a flood of posts on why the device will fail. Why? Because a marginal tech or marketing writer knows that the surest path to getting lots of incoming links and onto the Techmeme leader-board is a 300+ word essay on why the writer believes he is wiser than Steve Jobs when it comes to developing consumer technology.
4. And you can also spend the time preparing to tell me I’m wrong when I predict for the zillionth time since 2006, the word “tablet” will never pass Steve Jobs’ lips when he unveils this device.
As for the device not shipping until March…Geez, that’s another one of those evergreen rumors:
Just catching up with this Berg Design and Bonnier R&D Beta Lab concept video that shows what experiencing content in a “magazine metaphor” interface on a pad mobile device could be like. Like many others, I love this video. But to me, it’s merely a wonderfully produced video of what I’ve tried to use too many words to explain over the past few years. When a device becomes available that’s like a large format iPod Touch or iPhone (a “pad” device” is what I’m calling them), content will be displayed in the way we today call “apps.” The web browser has defined our use of the computer screen, keyboard and mouse to interact with content during the past 20 years of the “computer web.” The “app” will define our access and use of these these future devices and the mobile web.
This concept, along with the Sports Illustrated concept video, and Wired’s, are helping to redefine the perception by people of what “a magazine” can be on a new touch-pad, web-enabled device.
As I was saying to a reporter this morning, I love the technology and look forward to developing content for such devices. I’m less confident that large publishers can figure out the business model for “making money” using these devices, than I am for the devices.
But again, the concepts are little more to me than concept apps for displaying content — which is more about usability and interface design, than technology. And, as I see these apps living on a device that has 100,000 other apps for doing everything else one wants to do, “reading” magazines is a tiny slice of what will impress me about the devices.
That said, this is, nonetheless, an excellent concept of what a magazine-metaphor app could be like on a device like the mythological Apple iPad.
A “Tablet” computer
First off, if you are a reporter and you want to write about the coming digital devices that are going to be whatever Apple is going to come out with next year, stop calling it a tablet. Here’s a Wikipedia article about tablet computers. What you’ll read there is a device that has only one thing in common with the mythological Apple device — it is rectangular. So listen up: When it comes to anything that’s like a computer, the word “tablet” means something completely different than what is about to hit the world. Apple (and, those who attempt to enter the fray after seeing the Apple device) won’t call it a tablet. I believe Apple will call it an iPad (a name I credit Chris Messina with using first.). And we will all be talking about pad media in six months as if it had been around for longer than, well, I haven’t heard it called “pad media” before, so, now. Tablet is a word that describes fully functional computers that geeks have loved, but the only people who use them are doctors, some industrial process people and actors playing FBI and CSI agents on TV.
A pad device won’t be a fully functional computer — like a notebook computer. But you’ll be able to run “apps” on it and surf the Internet. It will be like an iPod Touch, only with a bigger screen.
Okay, that’s out of the way. Let’s get on to what this re-rant is really about:
If you’ve read this blog for ten days or ten years, you know one thing: I don’t believe the best use of a new medium is to attempt replicating an old one. So I cringe just a bit when I read a story like the one in Wednesday’s NY Times about the way in which (as has been discussed on this blog many times) magazine publishers are getting ready for the magical appearance of the mythological Apple iPad “and other such devices.”
The article includes a key point that most of the publishers quoted seem to miss (as typical):
The new approaches depend on two assumptions: that consumers will finally embrace the tablet computers that manufacturers have promised for years, and that they will want to read magazine-style content on them. Publishers are creating magazine like products for these devices, but different mediums lend themselves to different reading styles, as the Web showed.
(Sidenote: Can someone remind me who those manufacturers are who have been promising tablet computers for years? Manufacturers have been manufacturing tablet computers for years. What they haven’t been manufacturing, they haven’t been promising. I follow this stuff pretty closely and I’ve heard pundits and bloggers and fan-boys and Michael Arrington promise the devices, but “manufacturers”? No. But back to the main point.)
So, first important thing to note: The devices that are going to be coming out are, I’m sorry to disappoint the publishers, not going to be marketed as “magazine reading devices.” And despite all of the “getting ready for the tablets” activity, people aren’t going to be running out to buy them so they can replicate the magazine reading experience. No more than they purchase computers or videogame platforms to replicate the magazine reading experience.
People replace old media with new — they don’t replicate old media with new. (Well, at first they do, but not in the long run.)
Even the Kindle, perhaps the only gadget I have that seems most to replicate a preceding medium (the book), is not a success for the “replication” reason. How do I know that? Well, about a month before the Kindle was announced, I purchased a book called Print is Dead and chapter 7 of that book, page 115 in the ironically printed version of the book, is the author’s ill-timed explanation of why the eBook was such a flop — to that point.
How “FAIL” was that? To come out with a book about the end of print — but feeling the need to write a chapter on why the eBook was a failure at precisely the point in time when it suddenly became a success.
But I’m glad the author wrote that chapter because it allows me to echo what the author was saying at the time: eBook readers have been around since the 90s — and they flopped.
So it was not the technology that made the Kindle a success. But if it wasn’t the technology, why did Amazon succeed where others had failed?
Amazon got two things right:
1. The Kindle Store
As a reading platform, the Kindle device was not really that much of an advancement over the decade of attempts that came before it. Where they succeeded was in the way the digital books were delivered. For all of Amazon’s lack of learning from Apple’s mastery of product design, Amazon learned one thing from watching Apple capture the digital media download market — at the correct price point, digital media will sell if you get the “store” part and “storage” part and the “playing” parts all working together — and drop-dead simple for non-technical people to understand and use.
So, like the iTunes Store and the iTunes desktop software and the iPod/iPhone, Amazon set up the Kindle store so that a user could seamlessly find, buy, organize and read a book all on the same device. They even out-did Apple: they made it where nothing about the Kindle had to be plugged into a computer to be used. I’ve had a Kindle for almost two years and I’ve never plugged it into my computer — never.
I’m still amazed with the ability I have to hear about a book on NPR and have it purchased and loaded into my Kindle within 60 seconds. That is what is revolutionary about the Kindle — the ability to turn book purchasing into an impulse market among people who don’t hang out at bookstores.
2. Pricing
Listen up publishing industry who is licking its chops about all the money they’ll be able to make from publishing magazines on the mythological Apple iPad that may or may not be appearing next year. The Kindle dropped the price of reading a newly published book by half — and more, in many cases. I can now read first novels or dense biographies for $10 instead of $25 and up.
In other words, it was “dropping the price of books” that made the Kindle a success.
Every article I’ve read about magazine publishers and new devices has focused on how the publishers believe they can increase the price of digital media by packaging it in a magazine format (perhaps spiced up with video) that is displayed on a rectangular thin hunk of plastic instead of on a computer screen.
No doubt, some people will line up to purchase some content — and some of that content will be packaged like a magazine, but the notion that integrating video into print and offering on a pad media device is going to suddenly convince people to whip out their squares, well, I’m sorry to be the barer of bad tidings.
Bottomline: I love magazines. And I will love creating magazine-like content for iPads. I will love creating e-magazines and ebooks and e-you-name-it. But reading a magazine is going to get only a tiny, tiny segment of the time I spend using an iPad. It’s a device that will connect me to the world — with everyone I know or have known or will know. I will be able to help run a business on it. I will be able to talk — probably video conference — with co-workers, clients, friends and family using it. I will be able to listen to every song ever recorded and watch every TV show and movie ever produced on it.
It will be a place where people live.
To think the iPad’s highest and best use will be reading content presented via a magazine-metaphor interface is, well, missing a rather big point.
 Sorry, kid. Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the reality distortion of Mac fan boys and Apple rumor site bloggers jittered-up on Red Bull. Your friends sound like the type who would believe any rumor or photo-shopped concept — anything they see (i.e., if they blogged, they’d be on Techmeme every day). They think that nothing can’t be if they can make it up in their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be Apple bloggers or CNet or stock analysts who follow Apple, are little — well, except maybe for John Gruber’s. In this great universe of ours, Mac fan boys have imaginations that are as boundless as the world about them, unfortunately they don’t have the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
No, Virginia, there will be no Apple iPad Touch. Not this Christmas. And, face it, sweetie, maybe never.
Unfortunately, in a perfect world, Steve Jobs’ love and generosity and devotion to those fan boys would mean he’d provide them the device they believe would raise their life to its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary the world is because Mr. Jobs went years believing no one reads books, so why would anyone need a device that some idiotic reporter will surely describe as an “ebook reader” Kindle-killer. I hate to tell you, Virginia, as creative a man as Mr. Jobs is (he makes Santa and his elves look like slackers), he can sometimes be rather dreary about ideas that other people come up with — especially if they remind people of the Newton.
Frankly, Virginia, it’s time for you and your little friends to grow up. Apple doesn’t always do what customers want, despite all the hype. Kids like you and your friends need to grow up and drop that childlike faith in Apple. If you’d quit worshiping them so much, it might make it easier to tolerate their existence.
Virginia, learn to enjoy Apple products, but stop worshiping the company. The eternal light which Apple products fill is pretty cool, But you need to unsubscribe to RSS feeds of all Apple rumor blogs.
Believe there will be an iPad in February! You might as well believe Tiger Woods has stopped cheating on his wife. You might get your papa to hire men to go out to Cupertino and threaten Apple to go ahead and launch the damn thing, or, if not, just go ahead and put out an announcement that they aren’t really going to come out with such a device because they’re afraid of the Kindle, or some device called the Nook-e-book reader or JooJoo or the SI Tablet.
But what would that prove?
It would prove that nobody gets to talk with Steve Jobs, because those guys your papa would hire won’t make it past the Cupertino city limits. Face it Virginia: The Apple iPad is one of those things in the world that neither children nor men can see — but a Mac fan boy with Photoshop can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may create the greatest iPhone app and send it to Apple, but there is a veil at Apple covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart — and for no reason whatsoever, you won’t get your app approved. So what makes you think Apple is going to grant your little friends’ wish for a Tablet, much less one that is affordable to a bunch of 8 year olds. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside the Apple curtain and view the supernal beauty and glory beyond its walls — or so believe your friends. Is the Apple tablet for real? Sorry, Virginia, in all this world there has never been such vapor as the Apple Tablet iPad myth.
Your pal,
An Apple iPad in February? Thank God! it won’t happen. Thank God, because that means the rumor can live on forever.
A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, Mac fan boys will still be predicting there will be an Apple tablet in three months.
[Illustration: H. Caldwell Tanner]
If you don’t follow the tech blogosophere, first, congratulations, it must be nice to have a life.
Second, even if you don’t follow the tech blogosophere, you’ve still likely heard that Apple is supposed to be launching a new device that’s: 1. A netbook 2. A tablet computer 3. A Kindle-killer 4. A trainwreck-waiting-to happen 5. The greatest thing ever since Apple’s last greatest-thing-ever.
In large part, the rumors swirling around this device have been attributed to “sources” that are “inside Apple” (likely untrue) or someone in their supply chain (likely untrue, but since it’s attributed to someone in China, who knows?). More likely, such mythology springs from the imagination of Apple fanboys in a process similar to the literary faux-genre called fan fiction, described on Wikipedia as, “stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator.”
In Apple fanboy fan-fiction, the plot is always the same: New device is rumored. Characters named “The Source” and “Friend O’Mine” and “Person Who Knows” are introduced. Mockups of products (usually, very poorly created in Photoshop) are “discovered.” Supply chain mystery occurs. A big announcement is planned. The device is, or is not, released. If not released, a small group of fan boys are secretly relieved they’ll have six more months of making up stories about “The Source.”
Newton Message Pad, 1998
I’ve already confessed on this blog that when I started writing about such a device in July, 2006, it was complete and utter fan fiction. That first post included some prominent references to a concept device called the Knowledge Navigator that was touted by John Sculley during Steve Jobs exodus from Apple (translation: Steve Jobs hated it). However, as some of the people who were doing the concept thinking on the Knowledge Navigator were also helping to develop the Newton OS and Message Pad (translation: Steve Jobs killed it when he returned to Apple), it doesn’t take a very creative author of fan fiction to connect the dots between a “small screened” PDA and large screened PDA. Once your concept of what a PDA is matures into an iPhone, the same dot connecting should lead you to a large screen touch screen iPhone or iPod Touch.
Of course, most tech writers, bloggers, or media executives try to connect dots in a linear fashion. To them, an Apple tablet device in their imagination is their pre-conceived idea of what a table computer should (our could not) be if you shrunk it down. Or if the new device includes the ability to access a 3GS network, they think it’s an iPhone that won’t fit in your pocket. Those are the people who shouldn’t be writing fan fiction. And those are the people who would last a day at Apple’s advertising agency — the ones who will be responsible for helping cram into consumers’ minds how the device will grow hair on a bald man.
And as I’ve said for three years, it won’t be called a “tablet” or “a computer” or and “iPod” — however, I like a 2007 name from Chris Mesinna, the iPad.
Here’s a confession: It used to be fun to blog about Rumor #3. But now, it’s perhaps the second most boring topic I encounter on the chattering web. The most boring, of course, is Twitter.
So, because I’m sick of the topic, I’m swearing off of it until September when it will be or wont’ be announced.
At first, I couldn’t decide whether Michael Scalisi’s opinion piece on PCWorld.com today should receive the “John Dvorak Mac Fan-Boy Troll Award” or the “Al Reis Why the iPhone will Fail Award.”
But after 30 seconds of consideration, I decided the Al Reis award was more appropriate.
So why does Scalisi deserve an award?
First off, “the IT manager based in Alameda, California,” starts off his piece with this set up: “the rumored Apple tablet is a such a train wreck from start to finish that I don’t know where to begin.”
From there, Scalisi demonstrates why he should have listened to himself and not begun anywhere. He proceeds to demonstrate he has little idea of what the conceptual product is — imagining it to be a netbook or a tablet or an iPhone with a big screen or something that proves he is, indeed, an expert in train wrecks of misunderstanding.
Dvorak, at least, has the talent to put some logic and words together with enough skill to deserve the protest of Apple fan-boys. Reading Scalisi causes one merely to cringe — in a train wreck-watching sort of way.
So what does an award named for a once best selling marketing-book author come from?
On June 18, 2007, two weeks before the iPhone went on sale, Reis, wrote a column for Advertising Age (subscription link) that had the headline: “Why the iPhone Will Fail.”
In it, he too fell into the trap Scalisi has — a trap Apple always sets for those who think in linear, IT, PC sorts of ways. In his piece, Reis predicted the iPhone would be a “spectacular failure” because it was a “convergent device,” rather than a “divergent device.” In hindsight, the failure of his prediction is spectacularly ironic, in addition to being spectacularly wrong.
People just want a good phone, wrote Reis — they don’t want a Swiss Army Knife product.
Just think of the iPhone ads and those iPhone apps that do everything you can imagine. Think of those 1.5 billion apps customers have downloaded because they can converge nearly everything they can imagine into one device. Think of perhaps the most successful consumer electronic device of all time being the most convergent product ever created, and you’ll only then begin to comprehend the irony of Al Reis’ prediction.
And that is what Mr. Scalisi has to look forward to.
Actually, the headline and opening paragraph of the Financial Times story is focused on Apple “working with the four largest record labels to stimulate digital sales of albums by bundling a new interactive booklet, sleeve notes and other interactive features with music downloads, in a move it hopes will change buying trends on its online iTunes store.”
Who cares?
What this blog cares about is in the second paragraph:
“The talks come as Apple is separately racing to offer a portable, full-featured, tablet-sized computer in time for the Christmas shopping season, in what the entertainment industry hopes will be a new revolution. The device could be launched alongside the new content deals, including those aimed at stimulating sales of CD-length music, according to people briefed on the project.”
In April, I wrote what I called a guessay predicting (guessing) that Apple would try to hit the back-to-school sales season with the device I’ve called Rumor #3 since September, 2006 and have been trying to perpetuate the rumor since July, 2006.
I will note that while I’ve seen lots of mainstream media report that “Apple rumor websites” predict the device, this is the first time I’ve seen one that does not couch the device in words like “rumored” or “speculated” or “reported.” This is coming from the Financial Times, rather than a fan-boy site, in other words.
[Disclosure: I own Apple stock.]
It’s time once more for the blah, blah, Apple media pad, blah, blah, Apple tablet, blah, blah, Chinese supplier, blah, blah, chip orders, blah, blah, Rumor #3.
Bonus link: Why I not longer predict dates for when this rumor will stop being a rumor.
Ever since I posted my three-year old All the Apple Rumors You’ll Ever Need, I’ve been doing all I can to champion Rumor #3, the perpetually rumored oversized iPod Touch (Media Pad, Touch Book, etc., etc.)
However, another item on that list is Rumor #9, a small device about the size of a mouse that utilizes a laser projector.
I threw in that rumor as an exercise in fan fiction — a complete figment of my imagination. Recall, my list came out before there was such a thing as the iPhone and iPod Touch.
So it was with amusement that I saw a rumor bubbling up today (via: appleinsider.com) that suggests Apple and other manufacturers of smart phones “reportedly all plan to launch handsets with built-in micro projectors by the end of this year.”
That’s cool, but I’d rather have a Media Pad.
I wonder sometimes what real people must think of the months of anticipation and the endless rumor-parade that precedes a day like today. What is today? Wow. If you are wondering what I’m talking about, then consider yourself lucky. You have not wasted hours or days of your life keeping up with the fluff and silliness that takes place in the Apple fan-boy* universe as the Apple-obsessed get all lathered up for a big announcement event.
Today, the announcement event takes place at the WWDC, an acronym for Worldwide Developers Conference but, to be honest, to me it sounds more like an acronym for one of those “What would Jesus do?” bracelet knock-offs.
Last year — and everyone assumes, this year, also — “the announcement event” will be limited to news about the next generation of iPhones that will likely (and by likely, I mean “certainly”) hit the shelves of Apple and AT&T stores in a few weeks.
You could surf around and read all the predictions, but John Gruber tends to be the most rational and plugged-in of the prognosticators, so if you’re not a fan-boy, but actually are curious, I suggest clicking there.
As for me, there are only a couple of announcements that could genuinely excite me (although I’ll likely be upgrading, no matter what — it’s just a bad habit):
1. I think video is more than a done deal, so that’s a “discounted” prediction — however, if there’s a camera pointed towards the user (thus enabling iphone-based video chat), it would be one of those long-promised sci-fi features I think I’d find Dick Tracy enough to get excited about. (No doubt, there are other mobile phones that do this, but, well, they aren’t an iPhone, so does it really matter?)
2. Anyone who reads this blog with any regularity should know by now what the only other announcement that will get me stoked. Here’s how Gruber addresses that rumor:
“The Tablet: I’m completely convinced that the tablet is real. But I am almost just as convinced that it is not ready to be announced. Patience on this one.”
Okay, Jon. I’ll be patient.
*The term “fan-boy” is not limited to one gender.
The New York Times is reporting that as early as this week, “according to people briefed on the online retailer’s plans,” Amazon will introduce a larger version of its Kindle wireless device tailored for displaying newspapers, magazines and perhaps textbooks.
Buried in the story is this:
“Then there is the looming presence of Apple, which seems likely to introduce a multipurpose tablet computer later this year, according to rumor and speculation by Apple observers. Such a device, with a screen that is said to be about three or four times as large as the iPhone’s, would have an LCD screen capable of showing rich color and video, and people could use it to browse the Web. Even if such a device has limited battery life and strains readers’ eyes, for many buyers it could be a more appealing alternative to devices dedicated to reading books, newspapers and magazines.”
I don’t know why, but I appreciate the honesty of the reporter (or editor) including the phrase, “according to rumor and speculation.”
However, for the record, as a long-time Apple observer who has blogged continually for three years about the impending announcement by Apple that it is launching such a device, I’d like to clarify that I have not based any predictions on rumor or speculation.
I find guessing a lot easier.
Unless an amazing half-court shot goes in, I’m within a couple of days of air-balling on my “guessay” prediction that Apple will announce a larger format iPod Touch by May 1.
As long-time readers of this blog know, I’ve been making this prediction since 2006, so missing the date is nothing new to me. In fact, since September of 2006 when I listed the device as Rumor #3 on my list of perpetual Apple rumors, I’ve been writing a steady (some have said, “obsessive”) stream of posts about a device that would make Rumor #3 a reality.
So, yes, I’m amused whenever I see such a device described as “something new” but I hope it’s apparent that I enjoy each and every new wave of rumors that comes along predicting it. So here’s the latest:
Late yesterday, a story by Spencer Ante and Arik Hasseldahl appeared on BusinessWeek.com claiming that Apple is in talks with Verizon Wireless* about introducing two iPhone devices – a smaller version of the current iPhone and a larger “media pad.”
A “media pad”? A new term, but a familiar rumor.
According to BusinessWeek:
“The media pad is smaller than an Amazon Kindle electronic reader, but its touchscreen is bigger than the Kindle’s, says the person who has seen it…”The media pad category might go to Verizon,” said the person who has seen the device. “We are talking about a device where people will say, ‘Damn, why didn’t we do this?’ Apple is probably going to define the damn category.”
Good rumor-relaying BusinessWeek, but as a long-time monger of this rumor, I will make the following rumor analyguesses:
1. No way, no how, will Apple introduce a “media pad” that is exclusively a Verizon Wireless device, as in, the owner will have to go set up a monthly deal with Verizon. Did I say “no way”? Apple is the master and commander of “fan-boy marketing,” a strategy that depends on re-selling early adopters the next version of an existing device. The fan-boy nation has already moved to AT&T because of the iPhone, so Apple will not (despite those who believe Apple could do anything) cut itself off from the predictable early adopters. However, if you embed the Verizon connectivity in the device the way Amazon embeds Sprint EVDO in the Kindle (i.e., the user doesn’t need to change carriers), then such a barrier won’t exist.
2. While there may be talks with Verizon (and likely AT&T) about a “media pad,” such a device is not dependent upon connectivity to a cellular network. It’s a wifi device. Just like the iPod Touch is an iPhone without the phone, there is nothing about a Rumor #3 device that causes it to need phone coverage. Indeed, its size makes it a rather awkward phone device. I don’t know about you, but my iPhone goes in my pocket and the Kindle goes in my computer case/bag. I think a “media pad” would work the same way. In other words, I think there are two rumors swirling — the iPhone lite and the media pad — that are getting mashed up. That’s not to say, a “media pad” with cellular connectivity wouldn’t be a nice option — I have an AT&T cellular modem for my MacBook Air for convenience. Also, why wouldn’t Apple simply offer existing iPhone owners the ability to tether such a device to the iPhone for such connectivity? (Again, a rhetorical question.) That could certainly bring joy to the fan boy nation.
Bottomline: While I’m likely wrong on the date and we’re apparently going into overtime, I think the buzzer is about to end this game of Rumor #3 posts.
*Apple’s exclusive iPhone deal with AT&T ends next year — but there’s a debate among Apple analysts between those who believe it will be extended and those who believe Apple will strike deals with other carriers.
Please note, I gave this post the title “Guessay,” which is a portmanteau of the words “guess” and “essay.” What you’ll read in this post is my conjecture based on several years of tracking one topic, first as a joke about Apple “fan-boys,” then out of geekish curiosity and now, with legitimate, business-related interest.
For three years, I’ve regularly posted items about something I call “Rumor #3, a device that is an oversized iPod Touch. As I’ve explained before in detail, I started describing this device before there were such things as an iPod Touch or iPhone. In some ways, these posts have been a running gag for me. However, as the owner of a media company that develops and manages magazines, video and an array of online media for corporate and association clients, I have a professional passion that causes me to always look for new ways in which old and new media can help develop closer relationships and conversations between people who work at organizations and the individuals they serve.
And so, with this background and a little bit of piecing together some fragments of a puzzle, I’ve decided it is time to post this guessay that attempts to put forth some predictions that will soon prove I’m an insightful technology forecaster, or (and this is what makes blogging fun) that it’s time you pulled my RSS feed off your newsreader.
Let me acknowledge also that all of the pieces of this story are not “new,” it’s just my piecing together of several parts of the puzzle and stepping out on a limb that is.
The 2009 introduction of a Rumor #3 device has been swirling for months: Starting back in December, TechCrunch said an oversized iPod Touch would launch this fall. A couple of weeks ago, there were rumors about Apple placing orders for 8×10 inch touch screens. Yesterday, there were rumors about some mystery code in the next generation iPhone/iPod Touch beta. But to me, more telling than any of these rumors, however, was the recent release of the Kindle iPhone App. This was a piece of the puzzle that I wasn’t expecting. However, after using it a few weeks, I’ve come to understand how (as I’ve said for three years) the new Apple device is not an eBook reader in the way the Kindle is an eBook reader, and so therefore, Apple is going to work with Amazon, rather than compete.
Also, I forgot to fill out an NCAA tournament bracket, so I was feeling that I should make some complex prediction that requires some far-fetched theory, so here goes:
Within the next 45 days, not later than May 1, Apple will unveil the “Rumor #3 device” — an oversized iPod Touch.
Along with that prediction, I’ll make the following educated guesses based on my experience of trying to fan the fires of this rumor for the past three years:
The comparative size
of an iPhone, a Kindle I
and an 8 x 10″ display.
The device will be an iPod Touch, not a netbook or a tablet computer: I can’t emphasize this enough: It’s not going to be “an eBook reader” (or a “Kindle Killer,” see below) or “a netbook.” I don’t believe the device will have a physical keyboard and Apple will be explicit in its marketing that this is NOT merely an “eBook reader” or in any way, a computer replacement. It will be marketed as a complimentary device that fits between your iPhone and desktop or laptop computer. It will operate just like an iPod Touch but the display will replicate the foot-print and weight of a spiral-bound notebook popular on college campuses. The rumored 8×10″ screen means the full device will have dimensions extremely close to the size of a standard 8 1/2 x 11 inch sheet of paper.
The first marketing push will be towards University students: The larger format for music/HD movies/YouTube app/Facebook app — those are all no-brainers for you to understand why this will appeal to this group. But think “interactive textbook applications” that will automatically synch with your computer via iTunes. For those familiar with the iphone, web and desktop software application Evernote, think of a textbook that way: a multimedia application that allows you to take notes (written, photographed or recorded) that synchs in real-time to the iPod, to the web and to ones computer desktop. Oh, and did I mention, it will hold lots of your music and you can watch HD movies or you can stream YouTube video. In fact, the reason I’m guessing an April unveiling of the device is related to the text-book “app” possibilities it offers. The first great opportunity for sales of this device is not the fourth-quarter holiday season, but the “back to school” window. One of the few promotions Apple runs year-after-year is one in which a person with a student ID can purchase a new Mac and receive a free iPod. While I doubt they’ll be giving the devices away, I believe the promotion will be centered on this device and will include a tremendous discount. I believe you’ll also be seeing an explosion of university-oriented and campus-specific iPod/iPhone Apps appearing during the summer, as well.
The price of the device will be no more than $500.
This is not a “Kindle Killer”: When it is unveiled, there will be lots of analysis about what this device will do to the Kindle. However, that type of analysis will miss the point of what this device is all about. I think the Kindle will find a place among those who want a single-function gadget that is as close to reading a physical book as possible. (Think book lovers, not gadget freaks.) The developers of the display technology used on the Kindle have been obsessed with replicating paper for decades and in that, they’ve been successful. Amazon has created a device and e-commerce process that makes purchasing books for that device drop-dead simple.
But Amazon, by releasing the iPhone Kindle reader App, has also demonstarted a “Second Phase” that is central to the company’s core expertise: It sells books. While I predict that within 18 months, more “Kindle-format” ebook files will be read via the iPhone App than on Kindles, there will still be plenty of Kindles around — and they will continue to be loved by those who want to use reading lights and have a battery that lasts for 20 hours. And Amazon will be making lots of money selling Kindle books to people who don’t own a Kindle.
Steve Jobs will announce the product: Again, this is a guessay. But I believe Steve Jobs will view this device as belonging to the pantheon of god-like products for which he’ll long be remembered.
Final thoughts: A couple of years ago, when I first wrote about such a device in comparison to the Kindle, one of my favorite bloggers, Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Nashville-based Thomas Nelson, the sixth largest book publisher in the U.S., made a comment on my post.
In that comment, Michael wrote:
“I would much rather have an Apple Touchbook than the Kindle (which I own). However, you’re forgetting one small detail. The device is only one-third the equation. iTunes is another third. So far so good. A seamless way to get content from the store onto the device. What Apple is missing is the RELATIONSHIPS. They don’t have any relationships with book publishers that enables them to get access to the content…Could Apple develop these relationships? Sure. My point is that they haven’t started and this is where Amazon has a leg up. For most of us, they are one of our largest customers and we trust them.”
I wonder if Apple has started developing such relationships? I’m sure Michael or others in the book publishing world may already have a good clue as to whether or not the guesses in this post have any merit.
But unlike when Michael wrote that comment, Apple may not even need a direct relationship to kick off this product.
Maybe that’s what the Kindle iPhone/iPod App is all about.
On May 1 or before, I look forward to seeing how my iPod Touch bracket predictions played out.
[See all the Rumor 3 posts from the past three years.]
[Note about the photo illustrations: At the top of the post is my attempt to photoshop (actually, I used Keynote, but I'm using "photoshop" as a generic verb) something that would compare the scale of a current iPod Touch to one that is 8 1/2 x 11 inches. The photoshop illustration on the left of this story compares the size and display of an iPhone, Kindle and 8x10 inch horizontal display.]
Technorati Tags: apple, ipodtouch, kindle, amazon
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