The rumour mill has been swirling – Apple Tablet they cry. “Doom to fail” they sneer. I’m not so stupid as to predict an Apple device to fail, if we’ve learnt anything since SJ’s return it’s that, Apple learns from it’s mistakes!
I shall enumerate these “mistakes” and point out the silver lining:
1. Apple Cube… Mac Mini and Apple TV
2. Newton (and killing it)… iPhone/iPod Touch
3. Mac Clones… Intel processors
4. No iPhone SDK (at launch)… The App Store
5. Apple TV… Apple TV 2
6. Apple TV 2… TBA
Recently I wrote a post called iDevice, the one paragraph that keeps popping into my head is this:
Back in the late 90’s when Steve came back to Apple he gave a Keynote (I have it on VHS somewhere), where he talked about the similarities of digital watches and computers (bare with me). He pointed out that in the 80’s the average American household had 1 digital watch and today (late 90’s) it’s 8 (NB: I’m writing form memory but the point stands). — iDevice
I now believe this to been even more relevant. Any new iDevice from Apple will try and fill the gap between laptop and iPhone. Just as we all now own 8 digital watches we’ll all have 3 or 4 iPads/iDevices/What-ever by the dawn of the next decade.
Apple has no interest in Netbooks, it has MacBooks to fill that gap. It is however, very interested in selling a few billion more Apps and defining an entirely new market segment.
The killer App here is an eBook reader, but not necessarily for novels. The iPhone SDK 3.0 has in App purchase, and the ability for subscriptions. My guess is; newspapers and magazines.
Download the OK Magazine App or New York Times App, the publishers finally get a revenue from online content, Apple gets 30% (or more like 10% form big publishers) and you get the daily papers downloaded to your iDevice before you leave the house in the morning — ready to read on the train.
Add to the mix; games, web access, external keyboard and mouse and you get a Netbook killer not iPhone sales eroding.
Don’t expect an Office type suite, Google Docs or what ever Microsoft are calling Office online today, (Office Live.Net XP SP 3?) will do just fine thanks (oh and Apple’s own Mobile Me).
The best guess for price will be $100 more that the most expensive iPod Touch. But, a subscription to a mobile data plan at $10 / month might half that price. Apple want you to buy 2 or more of these; office, lounge, bed room and one for the kids. So a 3 pack — as bizarre as it sounds — is a real option, maybe for as little as $899 (with a data plan). You can’t get a MacBook for that, the family pack; 3 iDevices for under $1000 would be very attractive.
*Pricing: I’ve used $ and not £ values because Apple seem to price every thing in $ and then use their own exchange rate to convert to £. I love to see 3 devices for £500 but it’ll be more like £800.