Monthly Archives: January 2010

On the eve of the Apple special event, and considerably more information dribbling out from sources that we are looking at a tablet-format device, spare a moment for those naysayers asking why the world “needs” another tablet, when the models before (powered by flavours of Windows) have all but failed to make an impact, except for very highly specialised fields, such as medicine and logistics.

My reading of their assertions, usually anonymously posted in the comments sections of mainstream IT or Apple websites and blogs, has all the echoes of past attributions about previous Apple breakthrough devices, specifically the iPod and the iPhone. (Most of the commenters are too young, judging by the grammar and spelling, to be around when the other breakthrough device, the Macintosh was released in 1984.)

Others of a more erudite nature are asking what solution the tablet is seeking to address, which is a reasonable question to ask of any technology. But they forget the history of technologies in human development, as I usually elaborate upon in my workshops on Technologies and Society. (I am often asked by professional colleagues to address fellow psychologists who wish to be updated on technology trends and how to better incorporate changes into their practices. I always start by giving a potted history of mankind’s relationship with technology).

Technologies like the tablet always bring a curious mixture of hope, doubt, powerlessness, and empowerment to those who spend time considering how a new technology might impact them. Change, not of your own decision-making, is hard. IT departments in large enterprises know that about 50% of IT projects fail in their implementation, either because it was the wrong solution for the estimated problem, there are cost overruns, loss of significant project personnel at a critical time sees the project delayed, there is political interference should a merger take place simultaneously, and finally, the end user – the data entry staff – reject the new technology because it is a poor match for what they do, they are so accustomed to how to do things, or their training has been poorly managed.

But like most things Apple, this new device is not aimed at taking over the enterprise market place. I’m sure Apple is very content to leave that to the likes of Microsoft and Oracle for instance. Big profits, but big headaches too, with Windows Vista being a good example of the latter, and not the former.

In these introductory minutes I spend with workshop groups, I attest to how technologies have been used down the ages: as tools to enable, extend, augment, and connect humans and their innate abilities. The best technologies, those that have the most impact for the most people, do all four. These technologies often leave previous technologies that bear a faint resemblance to their purpose, as archival pieces, to be studied in history class, or to be repurposed.

Those who believe the tablet will be just another computer but in a different, but hitherto unsuccessful  physical form, and thus doomed to failure, are dooming themselves to repeat history: that of misunderstanding how technology progresses, and in particular how Apple conceives of technology and its place in human-computer interaction.

You only need to recall the negativity when rumours of an Apple cell phone began in earnest in 2006: “.. the market is too mature for an outsider like Apple to enter” was the gist of one type of message heard. “What does Apple know about making phones…?” was another, utterly forgetting that Apple is a hardware company as well as a software developer. Given the “maturity” of the cellphone market, meaning the stuff that makes them operate was now so ubiquitous and cheap that the cost of entry to the cellphone market was not the issue – it was how to differentiate oneself from the usual suspects.

And this is where Apple’s design superiority and integration caught the senior citizens of telephony flatfooted, locked as they were into seeing hardware as the differentiator (how many models does Nokia have at any one time – dozens if not scores. Makes choosing just the right one easy, right? Wrong!), rather than software.

Apple saw that universal access to the internet (web, email, file sharing etc) was the next bold step for a portable device to take, and its mobile Safari browser was at the time the best reproduction of a desktop browser available, compared to the poor excuse for internet connectivity of other phones.

As the iPhone went through generational improvements (in Australia we got the 3G version to start us off) it became clear to many users that the phone had much of the functionality of their laptop computer, albeit restricted to the connectivity aspects. But in other respects, the iPhone, via the innovativeness of its ecosystem of developers, exceeded the functions of a laptop. Ask a long term user of the iPhone how often they now feel naked if they leave home without their laptop…

Witness such new endeavours as SquareUp, (left) with its e-commerce abilities, and hardware addons. Or in the medical field, what a company called AirStrip Technologies is doing with the iPhone.

Did Apple envision the iPhone performing these tasks in 2004 or 2005, when Steve Jobs is said to have moved Apple towards a cellphone business? Who knows, but it’s clear Apple does not wait for others to lead the way forward with respect to human-technology interaction. It waits until the hardware components have sufficiently matured (i.e., small enough, reliable enough, cheap enough) to then apply its software and design savvy to new solutions to the same old problems of the big four: “enable, extend, augment, and connect humans and their innate abilities.”

It’s true other technology companies often enter a field earlier than Apple, but too often their technologies are too big, too unreliable and too clumsy to use other than for specialist needs and where there is very limited competition. And thus also too expensive to break out of the enterprise and into the consumer world.

Apple takes the reverse path, designing for the masses (yes, those in the mass who can afford and appreciate well-designed and built equipment). Later, those early adopters bring it (e.g., the iPhone) into the enterprise, where IT staff are made to kick and scream in protest that it’s all too much and their expertise – and importance – is being challenged by those who don’t understand the role of enterprise level IT. Go here to read what I’m sure has to be a tongue in cheek apocalyptic blog entry from an IT specialist).

So, the lesson is that Apple releases groundbreaking devices that change how we both think about and interact with digital technologies, usually in fields already explored but not exploited by other companies, and does it in a compelling fashion not for IT geeks, but for those who want something better than “good enough“.

When the tablet is unveiled, you’ll see a combination of gasps and disappointments. Some will immediately see the road ahead, especially developers who can see how to extend their product line and reach new audiences, and who have learnt from the iPhone’s introduction to look beyond the initial release product and roadmap. And the disappointment will be from those who expected some miracle device in a version 1.0 product without understanding how Apple operates.

They’ll stick as long as they can with their Kindles, looking for reasons why its one pony show is a great solution for that problem; or they’ll stay with a Windows 7 powered tablet so they can exercise their minds with Microsoft Office in a tablet format, as if somehow that’s better than a desktop or netbook or laptop solution.

But for those who gasp, who get what Apple’s doing yet again with familiar but newly thought through technologies, they will be very anxious to change how they conduct their lives on a day to day basis, for the better.

I was having lunch last Friday with the guys at Connecting Point, a Melbourne Apple reseller with a large customer roll within the educational sector, from primary (elementary) through to college (university). It also makes sales to individuals, and I have referred a number of switchers to them over the last year or so.

I was booked to see Avatar for the second time at the iMax cinema not far from the Connecting Point Friday lunch get together, last week including an Apple engineer, so dropped in to discuss my preparation for Macworld, and of course rumours over the tablet. I jokingly offered that joining Steve Jobs on stage would be none other than Rupert Murdoch, whose parent company News Corp. has multiple media interests ranging from Fox Studios, through to the Wall Street Journal, and publishing houses such as HarperCollins.

Rupert, known in his Aussie homeland and especially the UK as “the dirty digger” for his union busting activities, has been outspoken about how users must eventually pay for quality journalism, even though critics of his publications such as the New York Post and the Fox cable network might question the meaning of “quality” in this context.

But Murdoch now owns the Wall Street Journal which in recent years has obtained accurate leaks of forthcoming Apple products, so we can assume that News Corp. and Apple may well have reached a deal, even if Murdoch and Jobs’ politics diverge considerably. Both are huge business risk takers and surround themselves with highly competent and trusted senior executives. Both share a love and passion for how their respective products and services are world-changers, and so there is a business synergy between the two. Whether they would share a stage together to make a compelling announcement is up for grabs, but I fully expect a News Corp (or one of subsidiaries) rep. to be up on stage at some point on January 27. If it is Murdoch or a senior News Corp. exec., it will cause other publishers to sit up and really pay attention to what Apple’s doing in the publishing world. I should also note the long term connection between Murdoch and Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, from the Saudi Royal family, who has major media interests in the Middle East and who is also a long time significant Apple shareholder.

Who else then? (Assuming Steve himself does the heavy lifting for most of the keynote. I wonder if he will show the Amazon Kindle, as he did with the “usual suspects” smartphones in 2007’s iPhone launch, and make a comparison between it, its target market and what the tablet will do?)

No doubt, Phil Schiller will play some role as Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing on stage, demonstrating some Knowledge Navigator-type of function of the tablet. We’ve already seen Jobs and Schiller do something like this when showing new competencies of iWork 09, as well as a three-way conversation when Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007. I don’t expect Phil to do a demo on his own as he has done in the past with desktop Macs (do you remember Photoshop bakeoffs comparing Macs to Dells in previous Macworld keynotes?). If the tablet includes a webcam (perhaps using the screen itself as the camera, based on patents going back several years), then perhaps we will see a video conference with Phil take place.

Scott Forstall, Senior VP of iPhone development will get the stage to himself to demonstrate the next iPhone software, version 4.0, especially if this is also what powers the tablet. If it doesn’t, then Bertrand Serlet, Senior VP of Software Engineering may do the duties. At an outside chance, they may share some time on stage demonstrating how iPhone 4.0 can allow OS X apps like iWork/iLife to be modded to work on the tablet and sync with your Macbook or iMac. And of course speak of the roadmap for iPhone 4.0 developers and when they can expect to get their new software underway.

I don’t predict we will see Jonathan Ive live on stage, but he will be featured in a lengthy promotional video discussing in his passionate way the design philosophy of the tablet, plus the engineering challenges Apple spent years overcoming, which will leave its competitors dumbfounded in their efforts to match the Apple solutions Ive and his design team have developed. In the same video, I would expect to see interviews with other Apple senior engineers, well known within the company but without the fame the others mentioned so far have garnered over the years.

Naturally the same video will also include providers of third party services discussing the impact the tablet will have on their business and how Apple offered them unique solutions no one else had the foresight to conceive. And we’ll say video of famous faces being “amazed” at what the tablet can perform.

Up on stage again, I am fully expecting a New York Times senior staffer or family owner to meet and greet Steve, then discuss how the NYT sees the tablet as the right step forward for its pay-per-download subscription model, something it tried and failed with previously for its elite content, such as Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman’s columns.

From there, it will be time for the select few app. developers to show their wares, including how their current apps can be resized, but also how they’ve developed new apps especially to take advantage of the tablet’s special features. I’d include here comic developers for whom the tablet seems an ideal platform to reach new audiences.

Also expect one or two major gaming production studios to present, then some highly specialised domains to show how they intend to use the tablet. Something medical is a certainty, whether it be a hospital staffer showing new imaging software, Johnson and Johnson once more showing blood pressure or glucose measuring addons, or a less well known but highly innovative specialist company showing how the tablet has a place in the hospital setting, say in radiology.

Who else?

Clearly, those who will team with Apple to place the tablet into its own niche, and own it. Perhaps it will be a 3G cellphone CEO (but which one?), a major recording industry partner, or a rep. from Disney who will demo the downloading on demand of its products using a new version of iTunes, which Jobs himself will give a more full featured demo for when showing how the tablet integrates with other domestic appliances, including AppleTV and perhaps other set top devices.

And then there’s one more thing… I can’t even speculate on this, and frankly don’t want to. Like most others who follow Apple closely, I enjoy being delighted by surprises even after I spend time tracking Apple’s history which allows for the guesswork I’ve made in today’s post.

Like most predictions about Apple, there will be many who will see the tablet as a weak solution to a non-problem, just as many predicted after the iPod’s release in 2001 that it was a brick going nowhere, or that Apple would fail with its iPhone because that technological domain was already mature. What these soothsayers focussed on was the hardware, not the ecosystem that is Apple’s ownership of the entire widget, starting with its ability to harness its software prowess.

With the tablet, Apple will enter into new fields of publishing with new partners, where once again the hardware is a mere conduit to content which is either too expensive or hard to access (I’m thinking here of specialised journals and literature), as well as new twists on familiar domains such as music and video, which a much larger screen with new user interface will leave us entranced. As Jeff Goldblum famously said in the first advertisement for the titanium Powerbook G4 in 2001, “you’re gonna so want one”.

Over the weekend, I noticed almost a dozen application updates waiting for me in the iTunes App store for my iPhone 3G.

Two of those were from Dragon, firstly its Dragon Search App (below):

and also for its Dictate App. (below):

The two key improvement cited for both were: Support for the iPod Touch, and Enhanced user interface.

Let’s connect some dots. Imagining the the Apple tablet runs a version of the iPod OS (4.0 or a modified version), what’s to say that Dragon’s highly rated and free apps can’t be scaled for use in a tablet form factor. So along with a revolutionary user interface (I am listening to Steve Jobs in my head using the same words he employed at the iPhone release three years ago), might there be an optional voice-controlled dictation and search function from Dragon?

And extend it a little further, and have Dragon’s software also control operating the tablet (“Open Mail; new entry…”) something I can already do with MacSpeech Dictate for my Macbook Pro, along with a bluetooth headset which does double time linked to MacSpeech, and my iPhone currently (but not simultaneously). Macspeech is based on Dragon’s Naturally Speaking engine, well established in the Windows world. I’ve been using it with the Plantronics Bluetooth headset and it’s very accurate out of the box.

The question would be whether a built-in microphone would be up to the job, or if you’d have to don a headset to perform all the functions. But if the iPhone’s built-in microphone can do the job well enough (the Dragon iPhone/iPod software gets very high ratings) then perhaps that problem has already been solved.

Also remember that Apple has a dedicated speech recognition and synthesis research lab which has had input into Macs for a decade as well as the iPhone since its release, and you have a few more dots to connect.

It doesn’t have t be necessarily an either/or case for the tablet. Why not have both forms of input, touch and voice) as you can now for any Mac. Speech recognition will have huge benefits for certain professions, such as the health sciences, for those who cannot use keyboards or complicated finger-based controls, the commercial aviation industry who could bring up all their Jeppeson maps, and of course students from late elementary school through to graduate school (where texts and lectures will already be carried on the tablet).

Keeps getting more interesting, isn’t it…?

You know those often quoted statistics that Windows powers 90% of the world’s computers, or that 30,000,000 Powerpoints are given each day?

Do you ever wonder where these numbers come from?

Me too. The latter appears to come from Microsoft itself. Given my own made up statistic that 95% of them disobey most evidence-based rules for conveying engaging memorable messages, I have a lot of work ahead of me to offer up alternatives!

But what of the percentage of computers figures?

It depends on which computers and who’s using them.

It’s perhaps an apocryphal story of the Microsoft spokeswoman addressing a group of professional moviemakers touting certain wares. Allegedly she said in passing, “Of course, Windows operates on 95% of computers”. To which one wag replied, “Not in this room, lady”.

What then should we do with the figures we see quoted the last few Steve Jobs keynotes that 50% of Apple store purchasers of Macs are switchers, presumably from Windows. Not new computer users, nor Apple users updating, but switchers.

What will be the impact of an Apple tablet on potential switchers, I wonder?

If an Apple tablet is a glorified Kindle, the answer is nothing.

But what if Apple has developed a new device, one much more attuned to the needs of a public who is not concerned with operating systems, Tuesday patches, malware, spyware, trojans and viruses? What if the vast number of general public users just want to work with email, surf the net, chat and social network, watch movies and listen to music?

Leave it to the vast bulk of that purported 95% to run Windows on a desktop machine: airlines, banks, enterprise, universities and various research institutes. But what of Mom and Pop, their kids, the self-employed, SMEs?

What if the tablet was actually more than a reader but a worker? An iWorker, able to use a form of the iWork productivity suite now available for Macs? I’ve hinted at this in other blog entries, but a recent New York Times report seems to suggest something really is going in with iWork and the tablet:

Source: The New York Times, January 8, 2007 “A Deluge of Devices for Reading and Surfing” by Brad Stone and Nick Bilton,

Let’s also imagine that’s it’s a device that runs iPhone 4.0, to take advantage of some of the 120,000 apps. Apple has in its iTunes Store. Some of those will be reader apps, but I’m betting Steve Jobs will do to publishing what he’s done with music and movies: allow his hardware and software to be portals for purchasing. I don’t buy the idea that all publications will have their own apps. And I’m betting that with Pages we’ll all be able to engage in self-publishing, and I am breathless with what will happen with Apple’s presentation software, Keynote.

If it turns out this way, we’ll have a device which will surprise and delight Windows users who will no longer have to fear opening their email, wonder if they have the latest drivers, or wonder which tech support system to ring – the hardware make, the graphics chip maker, Microsoft, the application creator, like Adobe, or the printer manufacturer.

What will happen to the world of computing when the operating system is of no great consequence?

We no longer call it computing, that’s what.

We no longer think of buying a PC.

Computers will be those large mainframes spitting out airline timetables and tickets, crunching large databases, just like it was before the personal computer came along. Talk about back to the future!

The rest of us will be making the transfer from laptops and desktops, learning a new way of interacting with our information, and wondering how we ever were so short-sighted as to think personal computing was all about the operating system.

Now that Steve Ballmer has undressed the HP “back to the future” tablet PC at CES last night, supposedly calling it a “slate” type device in an attempt to steal Apple’s forthcoming thunder, we can take a break from Apple tablet killer prognostications and review a little history. (PC World called the HP tablet “underwhelming”; The respected Tom’s hardware rated Ballmer’s keynote a “complete fizzle”.)

I strongly recall Steve Jobs showing an Indiana Jones “Raiders of the Lost Ark” film clip a few years ago in a keynote showing a new iPod which disappointed the punditry because it did not feature video. This was the October 26, 2004 “special music event” which saw the release of the U2 iPod, as well as the colour iPodPhoto. The clip itself was an Indiana Jones movie and featured Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones) and John Rhys-Davies (Sallah) looking at each other in close-up. Steve Jobs used it to say why Apple was introducing a photo-based iPod and not a video-based iPod as many had been hoping for… and had already been released in a rather clunky form-factor by Apple’s competitors.

The lines from Indiana Jones are (from IMDB.com):

[the old man reveals writing on the back of the medallion, which states that part of the staff must be removed]
Indiana: Balloq’s medallion only had writing on one side? You sure about that?
Sallah: Positive!
Indiana: Balloq’s staff is too long.
Indiana, Sallah: They’re digging in the wrong place!

By this, Jobs publicly offered that the world was not ready for a video-based iPod because taking and sharing photos was what the world wanted, and there was no suitable content for the iPod video. Not all agreed with him. What we later learnt was the subtext to this was that Apple was not yet ready to release such an iPod because the right deals with media producers (Hollywood film producers, as well as television series makers) hadn’t been concluded. Unlike Apple’s competitors who provided the means to (slowly) rip your own media onto a portable player (sourced from DVDs and VCR recordings – this was 2004, remember), Apple’s way was to do deals with the industries who made and controlled the distribution of quality video content. Your viewing of video on the iPod would be high quality commercial content done legally, not YouTube quality backyard wrestling, cats getting stuck in tissues boxes, or illegally ripped content.

Then  year later, deals in place and iTunes updated, the 5G video-enabled iPod was released.

Fast-forward a couple of years to Macworld 2008 for Jobs’ next misdirecting statement that clues us in, his famous “People don’t read books anymore” when discussing the release of the Amazon Kindle. Here’s how the New York Times’ Randall Stross wrote about it, January 27, 2008:

The Stross article went on to dismantle some of Jobs’ comments, but in a few weeks time we will once more discover how misdirecting Steve can be. Why? Because we are probably reading and writing more than ever before, if we include email and web-based work. In other words, there’s reading and then there’s reading. And Steve knows this.

What you will hear in the next few weeks, while those who had hoped for the Holy Grail of tablets to emerge from CES bear their disappointment, will be much “Apple didn’t invent it” invective. As if that should dismiss any entitlements Apple might have to develop something revolutionary.  As Jobs showed with the iPhone introduction three years ago, you introduce a new Apple product by taking the usual suspects lauded to be the best, fillet them by showing their weaknesses, and then not just close the gap, but leap passed it – even with your first attempt. And rather than put everything you’ve got into the initial product, bring it to market when it’s ready to do its job but not before. In the iPhone’s case, it started off fairly knobbled compared to the current 3GS version. But back then, AT&T certainly didn’t have the 3G bandwidth Jobs knew would be necessary to realise the iPhone’s full potential with the mobile Safari browser, and Apple was still to put in place its road map for independent developers of applications, now downloaded in the billions, and perhaps apart from its UI, the iPhone’s key advantage.

The same process has been applied, and will continue to be with the tablet. When detractors see it, many will feel underwhelmed by it given that it now rivals Moses’ tablets brought down from Mt. Sinai (as you can see below, originally containing 15 commandments on three tablets, but Moses was a bit of a klutz…) in comparison to the Jesus’ phone (odd public descriptions given Jobs’ Buddhist leanings… I imagine Britt Hume doesn’t buy Apple products).

So when Jobs speaks about “nobody reads books”, don’t confuse it with “reading”, because this is one thing the tablet will excel at it. Not just the hardware to aid your reading, but the source and content deals he has already stitched up, which we will see demonstrated and discussed by various media representatives on stage. If anything, the tablet will likely increase reading rates around the world by making it fun, with multimedia, instant access, and value-added. Encyclopaedic works will come alive, updated on a regular (no doubt subscription) basis in a way Microsoft’s Encarta tried but failed to do, ultimately thwarted by Google. More egg splattered.

Just imagine a child is reading a book on his tablet, comes across a word he doesn’t understand, and then through a series of clicks or swipes on the word, causes a balloon to pop up on screen. There, either a video recording of a person or perhaps just the words appear, giving the word’s meaning, origin, synonyms and pronunciation. (I use he because boys have more reading difficulties than girls). Reading becomes fun again for kids and their ability to spell enhanced. If the child grows tired, who’s to say another couple of swipes and the book is read to them. Just think of what occurred to Garageband at its last update when world-famous musicians and their tutorials were added to the application. Who’s to say if Apple has not done deals with the likes of Audible.com or other audiobook publishers, or even updated its speech synthesis capabilities to be more “natural” and less robotic, as with the iPod Shuffle 3rd gen.

I know that for some I may seem to be jumping late onto the bandwagon of cheering for a tablet, but you’d be very wrong. Let me refer you to a blog entry I wrote five years ago in December 2004. First some screen shots so you can see it for yourself, and a link here for the full article.

As it turns out, the name “iScribe” is used by a physician eprescription service for PDAs. And because of his dissing of reading books, I can’t see John Gruber’s suggestion Apple resurrects the iBook nomenclature coming true. Let’s wait and see.