The reason we’re so enthused about Apple’s rumoured tablet computer is because its proposed mobility suits our lifestyle. Simply put, our MacBook Pro is too big to comfortably cart across the country often, and our iPhone doesn’t offer key functionality that we need in our road-warrior lifestyle. While there’s already some middle ground in the likes of a smaller MacBook, or even moreso in the overpriced MacBook Air, the iTablet proposes less power in a smaller package. The key with the iTablet will be in how Apple balances trade-offs, because their goal will be to ensure that the iTablet feature pendulum doesn’t swing too far in the direction of the iPhone, nor to the MacBook. This is consistent with the concern, mirrored by John Gruber, that the iTablet simply won’t offer enough over the iPhone to justify the price.

It’s eyebrow-raising that “too big” and “too expensive” were the major knocks against the Newton, and here we are facing the arrival of the mythical Tablet, which, according to the Wall Street Journal, has a big 10-inch diagonal screen and will cost around $1,000. But I’d argue that the Newton wasn’t too big, too expensive, period — I’d say it was too big and too expensive given what it offered.

For the iTablet not to succumb to the Newton’s fate, it has to set itself apart from the iPhone. This is even more important when one considers that the iTablet will most likely run on the same version of OS X that the iPhone and iPod Touch do. There will need to be some key differences in OS load-out, however, and these differences become quite clear when we’re on the road with only our iPhone, and consider what we can’t do well.

Three things the iTablet needs.

1. A readable screen size: The iPhone is small for a reason, and while certainly capable of browsing the web, the reality is that non-mobile pages are still inconvenient to browse at length. There’s a reason that mobile web pages are often preferred on the iPhone, and why iPhone apps designed to replace web interfaces are designed with a different interface in mind. This issue has already addressed, of course, because the iTablet’s screen is expected to be 10″ long diagonally. Arguably, this means that few users will need to zoom in on full-size web pages on the iTablet’s screen to read the respective content. Would a 12″ screen be better at this? Sure, but 10″ should be manageable, while anything smaller offers questionable benefits.

2. User-defined multi-tasking: When Backgrounder came out for jailbroken iPhones, it changed the way we did business. It didn’t play as important a role in our use of the iPhone before we picked up a 3GS, but now it’s an invaluable tool for us. We can run Pandora in the car while getting directions from Navigon, or we can jump back over to the iPod app to switch podcasts without having to restart Navigon (it still doesn’t handle podcasts properly). We can leave a game to check on e-mail, and jump right back in with nary a delay. The funny thing is, when we’re using Backgrounder, we rarely do it with more than a couple apps at a time. This is revealing: while people would love native support for third-party apps to have multitasking capabilities like the core Apple apps do, most people don’t really need to keep many apps open in the first place. So even if the iTablet has a much slower processor than what we’re used to in a MacBook, it shouldn’t matter too much. As of right now, the iPhone 3GS already meets our requirements for horsepower as far as multitasking is concerned, so a slightly more powerful processor would be sufficient for most users.

What Apple may want to consider, if they haven’t done so already, is letting users define a limited number of applications to run in the background. Say, a user can launch a given app, and via some gesture, send that program into a multitasking state. Maybe a small bar at one side of the screen has three empty boxes, and when a program is told to run in the background, its icon is sent to occupy one of these three boxes. That way, users can see which apps are running in the background, and with another gesture, stop the background process for a given app, whereupon its icon is removed from one of the three multitasking boxes.

Since we’re bloggers, we’ll use a typical blogging workflow as a perfect example for this. We launch Byline, our RSS reader. We drag its title bar to an empty multitasking box. We return to the springboard and launch a photo-editing app, and also drag its title bar to an unoccupied multitasking box. Finally, we do the same for the WordPress app. We can now jump back-and-forth between these applications by simply clicking on one of the multitasking boxes for the application we want to switch to. This allows us to easily copy content from Byline into WordPress, mock up graphics to do same, and voila, no needing to launch applications again and again just to switch between them. When we’re done with an app, we press and hold its icon in the respective multitasking box, and the icon explodes in a cloud of virtual dust as the application closes. This type of multitasking would make the iTablet a much more efficient work-buddy than the iPhone is today.

3. Decent text input: Dan Moren wrote a great piece collecting various text input methods that the iTablet could use. Regardless of which method Apple goes with, we’ve said for some time that text input is the iPhone’s greatest weakness. This is where the iTablet can really set itself apart from the iPhone, because most travelers will want some easy form of text input, and ideally one that doesn’t drop a giant virtual keyboard across half of one’s screen. Netbooks may have cramped keyboards, but at least they stand out of the way of the already-small display. A 10″ screen may be of a sufficient size for viewing full-screen content, but if half that screen is used as a keyboard, that 10″ will seem unreasonably small.

We figure that a bluetooth keyboard approach is the most logical, though definitely expect Apple to have something up their sleeve as far as a unique input method is concerned. Without this, the iTablet doesn’t seem like it would offer enough, especially when one can buy a Macbook for around the same price.

Three things the iTablet doesn’t need.

1. A cellular data connection: The iPhone has 3G data for a reason: it’s a phone. In a world where every telecom is on LTE, and it’s ubiquitous across the country, then it makes sense to slam LTE-capable hardware into the iTablet. In the meantime, there’s already the iPhone, which has the capability to tether its cellular data connection to any nearby computer. (AT&T just has to turn the feature on.)

There’s also the issue of Apple supporting CDMA if they decide to work with Verizon. CDMA doesn’t let one use data and voice at the same time, which would be an issue for consistent functionality if Apple released a CDMA iPhone on Verizon, but this is hardly an issue for the iTablet (since it wouldn’t have voice service anyway). Instead, the issue is one of customer satisfaction: if the iTablet is linked to Verizon, current iPhone customers who are tied to AT&T will be annoyed at having to get a second data subscription. Even if the iTablet were capable of both CDMA and GSM, so it could work under any of the major cellular services, one must wonder if this would be a solid business move. More likely, Apple would leverage the iTablet as yet another Apple gadget to compliment one’s life with. If the iTablet doesn’t sport cellular data, then users will still need to get an iPhone to enable tethered data access on the iTablet. It’s a win for Apple, and with so many iPhones out there already, one wonders who would seriously complain if the iTablet required an iPhone for data. Verizon iPhone hold-outs shouldn’t be too displeased either, assuming that the iPhone will eventually head to Verizon in 2011. In our opinion, the iTablet should be carrier neutral, insofar that it doesn’t support any cellular data subscription natively, and instead piggy-backs whatever the user’s iPhone is on.

2. GPS: Look, the iTablet is too big to sit in one’s windshield, and it’s too big to cart around while hiking in the back-country. Sure, one can argue that the hardware costs are negligible at this point, but so is the benefit to having GPS in the iTablet outside of location-based apps. Again, Apple doesn’t want the iTablet to replace the iPhone. There’s no reason Apple couldn’t integrate sharing of GPS data to a computer tethered to an iPhone, and that sounds like a much more reasonable business solution than throwing GPS into every device that’s not a desktop. After all, most use cases for the iTablet will be indoors, anyway, and that means not having a GPS signal in the first place. (Besides, tethered to an iPhone’s data connection, the iTablet could use cell-phone triangulation to roughly determine location regardless of GPS availability.)

3. Ports: With the iTablet using the AppStore, there’s no need for an optical drive because we wouldn’t be installing anything from CD or DVD. Apple wants people to use iTunes, and since most mainstream media can be acquired there, there’s no reason to let people rip optical media for playing on the iTablet, either. Maybe Apple will allow wireless sharing of a drive from another Apple computer (just as the MacBook Air can do), just to rip media in iTunes, but the feature isn’t really necessary. There’s also no reason to attach USB devices other than an iPod/iPhone, so while we may see a USB port for this reason alone, there’s nothing else we would expect to see connecting to the iTablet other than a magsafe power cord. Of course, we could just as easily see Apple finally integrating wireless synchronization of iTunes over wi-fi, so we can easily envision the iTablet without a single USB port also. Assuming Apple still requires the iTablet to tether to a computer running legacy iTunes, the question of a USB port is clear.

Initially, we proposed that the iTablet should have a mini display port, but with the realization that the device would be built around the mobile version of OS X, this seems less likely, since apps will be built around a certain resolution. Even with resolution independence built into apps, all attaching a large monitor would do is scale the existing graphics up to a larger size, not allow one to actually display more content. Perhaps there would be some benefit to this if text could be scaled down on a per-app basis when a larger monitor is connected, but we just don’t see many people doing something like this, even if we would.

In the end, chances are good that the iTablet will not have a single port to its name other than a power connection, be that a magsafe connector or a typical iPod interface if the iTablet is designed to synchronize with legacy iTunes.

Three things that would be nice to have.

1. No need to tether to a desktop: The iPhone isn’t a stand-alone product, even though many users probably use it as such. However, for the iPhone to truly shine, it needs to be tethered to a computer with a full-fledged OS, if only for the iPhone to interface with a full iTunes library. Sure, the iPhone can be used to purchase movies and music, but its limited storage means that older content needs to reside somewhere and the cloud isn’t quite there yet. Never mind that the iPhone will even complain when certain downloads fail, telling the user to try again via iTunes.

The iTablet, hopefully, will stand on its own: it should serve as a device that iPhones can tether to, and not become yet another Apple gadget that needs to be synchronized with a computer running a full-fledged version of iTunes. That would likely call for a magsafe power connector, versus the typical iPod connector a tethered device would have.

Of course, as a stand-alone media device, one would expect the iTablet to have plenty of disk space, so we’d expect to see a fairly large SSD drive. The MacBook Air sports a 128GB SSD HD, and we’d expect to see at least that much storage capacity in the iTablet, so it can hold most user’s complete multimedia libraries.

2. Front-facing camera: The idea of a device with a 10″ screen being burdened with a rear-facing camera is just silly. The iTablet won’t have a camera in the same sense as the iPhone, but we can definitely see how it might sport an iSight to use iChat with. In fact, with better text-input features than the iPhone, the iTablet will most likely sport iChat for quick, real-time communication. The ability to enable video-chats, however, would be nothing short of gangbusters.

3. Greater cloud connectivity: If the iTablet had everything already mentioned, it would already be a pretty spectacular device. But with greater cloud integration, thanks in part to a more evolved Mobile Me service, the iTablet could leverage features like Back to my Mac to grab files remotely, perhaps even to add such files to the iTablet’s own iTunes library (such as grabbing ripped mp3s remotely to alleviate the lack of an optical drive). With rumours that iTunes may well come to the cloud in the near future (as well as iWork), there’s some hope that Mobile Me will become a true competitor to the various free cloud-based services, and the iTablet is the perfect platform to showcase such cloud evolution.

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By now, the rumour-wagon has settled on the idea that Apple’s purported tablet device, to be unveiled on the 27th, will run a mobile version of OS X (possibly the same OS as iPhone 4.0). The logical follow-up is that this tablet will also acquire its applications from iTunes, just like the iPhone does with the existing AppStore. In fact, with resolution-independence for iPhone apps being recent among Apple’s advice to developers, it follows that iPhone apps will likely support Apple’s upcoming tablet as a host. In other words, we can likely expect the AppStore to serve up both iPhone and iTablet apps in the near future.

The logic behind distributing applications in this manner for the iTablet makes sense, particularly for Apple’s bottom line. Under regular OS X, Apple doesn’t get a 30% cut of every application sold, nor can Apple control what gets sold, and how these independent applications function. With iPhone apps, Apple effectively makes free money, with the only associated cost tied to a staff of horrible reviewers, who may as well be high-school interns. Why not capitalize on the AppStore’s success by pushing this model into a market for the “general computer user,” which the iTablet will no doubt target?

For many end users, this makes sense. The AppStore is a one-stop-shop for all one’s application needs. Grandma and Grandpa don’t need to make a trip to the local Apple Store (if there even is one) to get new software. Nor do they need to find obscure indy titles by following Apple-minded blogs, or trolling Google for searches like “image editing program for mac”. No, all they need to do is run the AppStore program on their newly-minted Apple device and start browsing titles.

For the rest of us, the power users, the AppStore has less merit. We generally know where to find the software we want, or at the very least, know how to find it. And we’ve all invested time and money into the third-party programs we know and love. And that’s why we’re a bit perturbed at rumours suggesting that the iTablet won’t be running on Intel, because we want the iTablet to replace our general computing computer, but under the traditional application distribution model, not the new one.

If the iTablet isn’t running on Intel, many of our old favorites just won’t work. Kiss goodbye programs like Crossover, for example, which are slowly becoming a staple for the aging gamer in us. Heck, forget about emulating Windows with Parallels or VMWare, unless you want to stick with a MacBook for basic portable computing needs. In general, forget about all the shareware, downloaded applications, widgets, and scripts we’ve been using on OS X over the years. The iTablet cares not for these investments, because the iTablet is here to clear the slate (pun intended).

Yes, the iTablet’s AppStore will be easier to manage than the current way of acquiring applications on OS X. We can delete applications without needing apps like AppZapper to make sure that no residual mess was left behind. But there are other problems, such as iTunes not backing up user data for deleted apps (only apps currently on an Apple device), and the matter of redundancy. Do we need to replace all our OS X applications to acquire iTablet-specific applications now, assuming we’re really going to use the iTablet as our primary computing device? Will third-party developers be able to port their old OS X apps into the AppStore, and somehow give old license holders an easy way to transition customers over for free?

Maybe in the long term, it doesn’t matter. If the rumours are true, Apple is transitioning a good part of their audience (and potential audience) to a cleaner, simpler, computing experience, like ChromeOS and Litl. And they can do that without building an OS from scratch, because OS X even in its mobile form is still OS X, albeit with greater user and developer restrictions. Maybe when this platform has become more ubiquitous, no one will care that we dumped hundreds of dollars worth of software because of what the AppStore is effectively making a new platform. But in the meantime, in the transitional period that could last for at least a year, you know we’ll be bitching about not being able to run legacy OS X apps on our fancy new Apple devices.

Of course, with the AppStore’s quick growth-rate, assuming the iTablet is a success, and assuming the device will do things like support multi-tasking for downloaded apps, bluetooth keyboards, and other “must-have” features for daily mobile computer users, perhaps the AppStore’s benefits will outshine its flaws. Here’s hoping.

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While we brought the Joo Joo up in passing, Rob Enderle proclaimed that the former CrunchPad could crush the market for tablet computing, thereby souring Apple’s entrance into the market altogether. The only problem with his assertion is that the Apple tablet isn’t the same beast as the Joo Joo, and to say that the latter will quell consumer desire for the iTablet is like saying that Motorola’s Razr savaged the Apple iPhone.

Enderle is really comparing apples to oranges (no pun intended); all of these non-Apple products are extremely limited: the Kindle is first and foremost an eBook reader, the Razr is just a cellphone, and the Joo Joo is a web-surfing tool. For those like Enderle who still don’t get it, the Joo Joo is a one-trick pony. It’s not a media monster running iTunes, it isn’t a keyboard-less computer with the capacity to run OS X applications, and it certainly doesn’t have the potential packing of the print industry to push forward with digital distribution of magazines and newspapers.

Most consumers probably haven’t even heard of the Joo Joo and its developer, Fusion Garage. The Joo Joo will cost $500, and for what’s probably just twice that, users will be able to own an Apple-polished product that does significantly more. So even if news of the Joo Joo does trickle down to the average computer user, we’re not so sure anyone’s going to care, especially once Apple announces their own tablet (which will be an actual computer and not just a web-browser).

But what can we expect from a tech analyst with such stunning gems as this:

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We’ve ruminated at length about the rumoured Apple tablet computer, from the iPhone “dock” that is our Apple Annex, to the Macbook sibling that is our iTablet Excelsior. And with recent clues shoved down our digital throat across the blogosphere suggesting that an Apple tablet will indeed be announced sometime next year, we find ourselves once again justifying its impending existence.

The truth’s in the Air.

It began with the MacBook Air and may indeed end with it. Almost two years ago, we complained that the MacBook Air was overpriced for a poorly performing machine with so little to offer other than a reduced physical footprint. To be fair, that same complaint holds even truer today, with even the basic 13″ MacBook Pro beating the MacBook Air out on all specs to include price, with the Air merely coming in at 1.5 lbs lighter. How many real-world applications is that 1.5 lbs going to make a real difference for?

But the Air, as we stated back in January, 2008, is a great proof-of-concept. And that proof-of-concept has gotten slight buffs during its two generational updates. One could almost say that the Air is Apple’s notebook AppleTV, in the sense that it’s more of a hobby to set the future stage than to sell based purely on its present merits. That’s not to say that the Air isn’t decent; we’re even considering picking up a used Air if the price is right, just so we have a very portable, no-frills writing device that runs OS X (we’ve seen first-gen models go for what amounts to the price of a netbook hackintosh). But if money is indeed a consideration, the Air today is a poor purchase when the 13″ MacBook Pro offers so much more for less money.

Back to the Air as a proof-of-concept, the makings of an Apple tablet were all thrown in front of us in 2007. The iPhone had the touch technology, and the Air had an ultra-portable form factor. Apple explored SSD hard drives with the Air, and in a sense, teased the niche market for expensive-but-polished notebooks. The unibody design was touted as an end to user-replaceable batteries, offering solid battery life that trickled into the MacBook Pro lineup. And with all that, Apple proved that there was a market for the Air, and one that could likely grow with cheaper hardware costs.

So what’s left? Take the Air, throw away the keyboard, and tablet nirvana is just around the corner. While we wouldn’t expect Apple to revive the Newton or Air names for a future tablet, one has to admit that the latter name is catchy and far more apt for a tablet than for what the Air is today.

Apple Tablet as the new king of media.

Looking at iTunes LP and iTunes Extra content, we see a pretty exciting, open technology for developers to exploit. These technologies add even more reason to go all-digital, as consumers won’t have to feel like they’re missing out on bonus content if they don’t buy a CD with art and lyrics on the pull-out jewel case pamphlet, or the extra content on DVD menus. The best thing about iTunes Extra, though, is that it’s flexible enough to be used with other media, like print. That is to say, books, newspapers, and magazines, in digital format, could have a degree of interaction that typical e-publications don’t. Instead of simply reading a PDF or ePub document, consumers will be able to interact with their digital downloads in a way we expect one to interact with web sites, only in this case, an online connection would only be leveraged sporadically.

For example, newspapers could have polls. When a user submits their response to the poll, the information is transmitted the next time the Tablet has an internet connection. Thereafter, the newspaper poll will show results to date, without the user having to manually reload the poll data. Local weather information could be dynamically generated upon purchase, while old issues of the publication would have static records based on the actual weather histories. Users could enable/disable audible readings of articles, and magazines could include video clips of product reviews, better leverage advertising, and generally include more media that would otherwise have been cut in a print magazine because of limited space. And books could leverage interactive media in another way: imagine reading through Lord of the Rings, and having an easy-to-access map of Middle-earth, where the Fellowship’s location is marked, and corresponds to where you are in the book’s reading. With enough foresight, one could even cross-reference terms from Lord of the Rings to Tolkien’s other works, assuming they too were purchased. In other words, digital publications could link to one another in a sort of quasi-wiki method.

Ultimately, these are things that will add value to a digital download, thereby making them more attractive for consumers. Considering Apple’s success with music, and to a more limited degree television and film, it would not be surprising if Apple took on the e-publishing mission with a zest yet unseen by the eBook industry. And why shouldn’t Apple carve out this rather important niche, especially since it won’t be competing head-on with today’s eBooks: the type of interaction we’re talking about isn’t suitable for an e-ink display. Apple will want colour (lots of colour!), and the quick, reactive display that one would expect to see on the iPhone or, in this case, an Apple tablet. Sure, the battery life won’t be as good as an eBook reader, but the experience will be better.

There have already been plenty of rumours suggesting that Apple has met with print-industry big-wigs, and other rumours indicating that print-industry execs are meeting with one another to address their future digital distribution plans. (Supposedly, Apple has even offered a 30/70 split to publishing houses as financial incentive.) It should be obvious to anyone that standardizing this distribution, to a firm degree, will be beneficial to all companies involved. And with Apple leading the charge, would it really surprise anyone if iTunes was rebranded as something more like “iMedia?”

The Apple Tablet as a MacBook.

With the type of interactive content we’re talking about, Apple won’t release a dedicated device. Anyone with iTunes will be able to download the latest music, movies, and magazines, and be able to sync them across all their iTunes-capable devices. What better way to showcase the multimedia prowess of the music/movie/magazine conglomeration flipping through virtual pages of the latest New York Times bestseller with an actual flick of one’s finger, using similar gestures to control music and movie playback? The processing power we’re talking about, particularly for the multimedia elements, will be greater than what most eBook readers have today.

Apple is about totality of experience. That’s where the iPhone trumps every other smartphone on the market, and why Apple was able to beat out competitors in 2007 when the iPhone, to much initial criticism, was unleashed upon the masses. Apple’s only going to duplicate this effort with a tablet: a perfect machine to showcase its multimedia initiative, but still capable of tackling most average computing needs. So yes, the tablet will support a wireless keyboard/mouse, and run the regular version of OS X. Its specs will likely be similar to that of the MacBook, or maybe even the 13″ MacBook Pro. But the market for a tablet is clearly different than the market for these more traditional laptops, so it won’t cannibalize sales of other Apple products any more than the Mac Mini cannibalizes sales of the iMac. Users who need a traditional notebook experience for class or work will still get a MacBook: it’s the desktop baseline for getting work done with mobility in mind. But those who can spare not having a physical keyboard will love the tablet, because it offers extra mobility at the expense of easy desktop integration. Some tablet owners may cart around a wireless keyboard in their tote bags, but they will likely be the exception. Everyone else will treat their tablets like an eReader that can do so much more; the tablet will be the perfect, portable entertainment tool aimed at those who consume information rather than games. It won’t be a one-trick pony like the CrunchPad Joo Joo, because as Steve Jobs said, an Apple tablet will be expected to do more than simply serve as a web-reading tool for toilet-surfers.

The assumed $1,000 price-point seems entirely realistic at this point, especially when one realizes that the tablet will be little more than a MacBook Air whose keyboard was replaced with a capacitive touchscreen. That price doesn’t make us gawk at all. In fact, we’re ready to jump at a tablet purchase under these conditions, and we wouldn’t be surprised if the device is ready in time for CES 2010.Similar Posts:

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Electronic Arts (EA) is already preparing the Command & Conquer (C&C) franchise for the future vehicle for software proliferation: digital distribution. Kotaku, meanwhile, says that some fans are skeptical:

News of the transition was sending fears of a Facebook-ized, watered-down C&C among some series fans.

And yet C&C always was watered down, offering little more than eye-candy to recent sequels. The good news is that EA CEO John Riccitiello hopes to change that, and bring more innovation to the real-time strategy (RTS) genre.

“…I have a shared vision that the RTS category is due for fundamental innovation and not just cooler graphics,” Riccitiello said. “We’ve gotten to the point where you can see the particles around individual grenade explosions inside rooms where windows fall apart. That was never what made RTS good. That was just sort of eye candy on top of a very traditional game mechanic. From when Red Alert and Starcraft sort of defined the genre, it hasn’t moved.”

While Riccitiello’s take on RTS games mirrors our own, his seniority is at question when he uses Red Alert and Starcraft as examples of genre-defining games. In reality, predecessors Command & Conquer (yes, the original), Warcraft, and Warcraft II, solidified the genre that Dune II built. And really, nothing fundamental has changed since then, either. And that portends danger for developers not willing to let go of the tried-and-true method of simple throwing a new unit or two at a player each level, while making them rebuild from scratch on a new map. The repetitive play is what kills the genre in one game alone, let alone when looking at new RTS games.

“Some of what Facebook does, in terms of letting you collectively experience things, have not been stitched together by the game industry in terms of lessons learned there. You start applying that thinking to a C&C franchise you get something pretty special.”

This is where Riccitiello’s price as CEO may be worth it, because at least Riccitiello is looking at some aspects of what make Facebook games, and MMOGs, so alluring. If RTS games are meant to illustrate a greater struggle, then the thousands of players participating in battlefield combat should be able to assist one another, participate in local battles, and change the tide of war one small step at a time. In many ways, this mirrors the idea of Warhammer Online’s Realm vs. Realm PvP scenario, but at a less granular level.

If there’s a clear disadvantage for one player to effectively handle a large army, compared to many players handling less units at a more focused level, then new aspects in RTS titles emerge: buildings alliances, strategies, and resource flows become important. And ultimately, the complexity of individual units can grow, because with less units, players have the ability to use more unit abilities in order to create battlefield synergy, whereas in purely single-player games, players must first be concerned with amassing large armies and rushing the enemy head-on.

Adopting certain key aspects of social and multiplayer games can be a good thing for the RTS genre, as long as it’s done right and with the intent to grow the genre “up,” rather than “out.” That is to say, adopting the wrong aspects of social games will result in a watered-down RTS experience that may be more accessible to non-gamers, but at the expense of the RTS faithful. Maintaining the complexity of strategy and risk-taking, however, and adding on top of this formula a perpetual battlefront that all players share, will only satiate RTS gamers more.

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People love to complain, and we think half of it is due to laziness. Or incompetence. And with the iPhone, it’s no different. Take MMS for example: thousands claimed it was silly for the iPhone not to support it, but we disagreed. MMS is an outdated technology for which there are plenty of modern-day solutions, ranging from e-mail to Twitter. To rely on yet another protocol for sharing multimedia, when more reliable solutions exist, is nonsense. With rock-solid Twitter integration thanks to the dozens of Twitter apps on the AppStore, we barely find a need for SMS anymore, let alone it’s bigger cousin. Never mind the fact that e-mail works just as well for sharing multimedia.

But then there’s Flash, arguments for which are even more ridiculous. Who needs Flash on their iPhone? Yes, some sites aren’t non-Flash friendly, and therefore can’t be browsed via Mobile Safari, but that’s less Apple’s fault, and more the fault of web developers who decide to use Flash instead of other, more accepted (and open) technologies. It’s not like Flash was always viewable from every browser anyway, so why do people argue that the iPhone should suddenly adopt Flash as a sort of multimedia standard? Even dismissing arguments about how Flash is burdensome on one’s CPU and battery, there remains the obvious distaste for a third-party plugin that’s not friendly to industry-wide standards.

What Flash is, is a luxury. A luxury you get to have if you’re on a system not constrained by smaller processors and batteries. A luxury you get when you don’t care about a common user interface for your apps, because you’re not using a heavily-integrated phone-computer. And that luxury is not a right just because a bunch of lazy developers refuse to use more modern technologies to reproduce the output of a commercial Adobe product.

What people should be complaining about is not that the iPhone doesn’t support Flash, but that some sites are developed in Flash in the first place.
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When the iPhone came out, we were one of the few who didn’t parade around the idea that it was the cell-phone Messiah. Heck, the iPhone didn’t do much that our Danger Sidekick didn’t, though the user experience was admittedly cleaner. But with iPhone OS 2.0 and the realization of an open AppStore (with some issues, admittedly), the iPhone user experience is as varied as the thousands of applications available. That’s why we weren’t so much taken aback by Meg Hourihan’s comment about whether or not she would purchase an iPhone 3GS: upgrading the iPhone was akin to upgrading her computer. John Gruber was quick to confirm this idea:

A decade ago, my first PowerBook was a secondary machine to the desktop anchored at my desk. Now, my main machine is my MacBook Pro, but it feels a bit like an anchor now. My mobile secondary computer is my iPhone.

And now that we have an iPhone 3GS, we too acknowledge the shift in computing gadgetry: on the very day we activated our 3GS, our MacBook Pro’s screen refused to turn back on after we set the 3GS up, and rebooted after the most recent Safari 4 patch. It turns out that the logic board needed to be replaced, since there was a known issue with the NVidia graphics card in our 17″ version of the MacBook Pro. While the repairs were done at an Apple Store an hour away, it still took a couple days to get the computer back, and in that time, we relied almost entirely on the iPhone for our internet-related tasks after work. And we weren’t very disappointed with the experience. In fact, in many ways, reliance on the 3GS versus the MacBook Pro was a relief: the device was always on us or nearby.

Now we’re hardly saying that the 3GS is an appropriate stand-in for a full-fledged computer. We still maintain that the iPhone is a poor device for inputting of most meaningful text, which is why we use the iPhone as a reader more than we rely on it to respond to people outside Twitter and SMS. But for this former purpose, the 3GS shines, because it’s snappy in most every sense of the word, and the experience of using it on the road (via 3G) is pretty much the same as using it at home on wi-fi. And that consistency makes the iPhone shine. For many, with greater storage (to hold all one’s songs, movies, and photos) and a bluetooth keyboard, the iPhone could theoretically become a replacement for the average home computer user almost entirely.

So changed were we by our forced use of the 3GS for nearly a week, we decided to offer our fixed MacBook Pro on craigslist. Not to rid ourselves of the anchor for our home computer use, but because we now find the device to be overkill for what we need to get done at home, and we see little reason not to downgrade to a smaller anchor now. Indeed, Apple’s “low-end” lineup is now ever-more attractive to us, and for the limited computer needs we have at home, we can finally agree that a 17″ monitor isn’t much of a necessity now that we’re not tied to an online game that benefits from it. Thanks in great part to AppStore apps, and the rise of mobile web pages tailored to the iPhone’s display, there’s an easy case to be made for iPhone’s replacing netbooks and many common-use notebooks/desktops. Again, the only obvious items holding the iPhone back from becoming a true computer replacement is its poor input mechanic and limited storage space, but the former can easily be remedied with technology that Apple appears to have green-lighted with better Bluetooth gadget operability.

We’re still holding out for a mid-way solution between the iPhone and MacBook, and we’re hoping that the iTablet fits the bill. But in the meantime, we’re only seeing use of our 3GS go up, while our MacBook is getting lonelier by the day.Similar Posts:

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Despite Apple’s sordid foray into the video gaming market with the ill-fated Pippin, TUAW’s Mike Schramm believes that Apple is willing to give console gaming another go. His speculation is based in large part on a piece by Erik Sherman at BNET, in which Sherman notes various patents Apple filed, and various individuals Apple hired, as evidence of Apple’s gaming console initiative.

No TV console aspirations.

We’ll address Schramm first, by noting that an escapade into console-gaming-land would be a horribly poor move for Apple. Apple’s success with the iPod, and later the iPhone, was due to them being able to put a decently-priced but amazingly polished device into consumer’s hands. Before the iPod, mp3 players weren’t particularly notable aside from the fact that they existed at all. Apple pretty much defined the portable mp3 market, and arguably, created the mainstream movement towards legal mp3 downloads. With the iPhone, Apple entered a market densely packed with crappy phones, where even the best sported comparably poor user interfaces and little real online functionality. With the AppStore, Apple blew the doors open on downloadable content, and once again redefined a market, now being emulated by contenders.

The console market is nothing like the portable music or cell phone markets were before Apple got involved. The console market consist of only three key players, all of whom do a great job at building systems, and all of whom have significant industry backing in the form of third-party titles. Plus, all have an indy developer component, and significant mindshare among consumers.

That’s not to say that Apple couldn’t be successful by entering the console wars, but their timing would be way off. Releasing a console before circa 2013, when Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony will reveal their latest offerings, would be dooming an Apple console to irrelevance in only four years time. Furthermore, Apple would fight an uphill battle, akin to what Microsoft dealt with when they unveiled the original XBox. Only, Apple’s experience with the mainstream gaming market (Microsoft had years of experience dealing with PC gaming), is virtually null prior to the proliferation of iPhone games. Simply put, the console marketplace is too volatile a place for Apple to push itself into – the competition is too fierce, so why take an unnecessary risk? Apple is better suited to define a market with much less competition, and the handheld gaming market is a prime target.

The accidental success.

We’re not so sure that Apple expected to be successful with iPhone gaming. Surely, Apple expected to find games developed for the iPhone, but titles from big-name publishers using big-name IP? Maybe Apple even built the iPhone hardware to be capable of running games with decent graphics and framerates, but the very lack of input options makes us question Apple’s expectations that the iPhone might become a veritable Gameboy and PSP competitor. But here we are: leveraging the AppStore’s framework, the iPhone is able to market pretty amazing games via a convenient, cutting-edge distribution model, all for a much cheaper price than games released for the Gameboy or PSP. Like the proliferation of the Wii, iPhone gaming is build on a solid foundation of more casual titles, but as time goes on, we’re now seeing more and more “mature” titles requiring more of a user’s focus. It’s one thing for Apple to have given Mac gaming a mere head-nod in the past, it’s another for Apple to dismiss a clearly growing phenomenon. So, Apple will continue embracing iPhone gaming, and that’s at the heart of Sherman’s observations.

The acquisition of Bob Dreblin, Raka Koduri, Mark Papermaster, and Richard Teversham, might not even indicate Apple assembling a “dream team” for the iPhone gaming market, but let’s assume this to be true. Dreblin’s contribution to the Gamecube CPU may be most telling: the Gamecube was underpowered compared to offerings from Microsoft and Sony, but the thing was admittedly compact. If anything, the rest of the team would play into embedded gaming just as easily as they would in traditional console gaming, not to mention Apple’s acquisition of PA Semi and their investment in PowerVR. If Apple’s going to be serious about iPhone gaming, they’ll want to develop hardware specific for that purpose, especially since this kind of specialized hardware will still be able to power the thousands of non-gaming iPhone applications. By controlling the hardware supply chain specifically, Apple ensures that the competition won’t be building similar products, and furthermore, secures its hardware from additional vulnerabilities.

Sherman makes some good observations about Apple’s patent filings. If anything, it should be pretty clear that Apple is looking to link gaming and outside media. Much as iTunes can suggest music based on one’s existing music library, application 20080076495 proposes similar functionality, only rather than just making recommendations, games could identify appropriate music to play based on a user’s preference. For example, a scene in a game calling for fast-paced, action-packed combat, may query a user’s music library for metal or hard rock music, and based on the user’s ratings, will play a top song in that category. In other words, games will be minimally tailored to suit the user’s tastes based on other media they own. The patent application, at absolute minimum, forms an extension to the iTunes store, in that games may be recommended based on songs a user owns: lots of metal songs may mean a user prefers more action-oriented games, for instance.

The other patent applications Sherman identifies give further insight into Apple’s direction with iPhone games, but it should be pretty clear by now that Apple is looking at solidifying the iPhone game user-base. Arguably, Apple is already ahead of the game with their application distribution model, as Nintendo and Sony are now moving ahead with their own online stores. The difference is that the iPhone is a more flexible system, is nearly always connected to the internet, and meets an application price-point easily suited for growth. By the time the AppStore starts including games costing $20 or higher, the handheld gaming market will be a shitstorm of competition, because Apple will have become a major contender well before that, assuming the next iPhone version further advances a long-term gaming plan (and the 3GS appears to herald this). At that time, Nintendo and Sony better have stepped up their game, because unlike with the traditional console market, the handheld market is far more malleable, especially when the iPhone’s chief gaming success is drawing spontaneous buyers into a web of easily-accessible, easily-downloadable content.

So for those longing for an Apple console, look no further than your iPhone. While it’s already successfully integrated the iPod and cell phone, it’s now looking to devour your friendly neighborhood Gameboy, too.Similar Posts:

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A day doesn’t go by when we log into Facebook and don’t get frustrated with its user-interface. Arguably, what drove us from MySpace into Facebook’s arms is the same thing that makes us use Twitter instead of Facebook’s status update. MG Siegler at TechCrunch put the issue simply:

The number one reason I started using Facebook rather than MySpace several years ago is that it was so much neater, cleaner — yes, simpler. But with an explosion in growth, came an explosion in features. And, in turn, an explosion in complexity.

Today, navigating Facebook is an exercise in navigating an ever-growing sea of spam. Spam, not in the sense of third-party solicitation, but spam from the ridiculous amount of games, what-x-are-you questionnaires, and virtual gifts that constantly bombard one’s Facebook inbox. Sure, the solution to our gripe is to simply stop using Facebook, but that’s about as productive as removing all one’s friends who send the aforementioned spam in the first place. In a world with competing social networking solutions, it’s nigh impossible to get everyone on the same page. In much the same way as it’s difficult to pull people away from much-played MMOGs because of the investments they’ve made, it’s difficult to pull someone away from a social networking site that has all their friends on it. There’s a reason that so many Facebook users still have MySpace accounts even though they rarely log in anymore: not all their friends have jumped ship just yet. Still, a slow exodus can (and will) occur under the right conditions, and growing complexity and clutter is one such state that social networking sites need to avoid.

At its heart, Facebook has always been a method of communication. It trumps e-mail because it’s not one-to-one communication, but open for similarly-networked people to see. Twitter is the same thing on a less-restricted level, but the key difference between the two networks is that Twitter is ultimately simple, and third-party services are built to support the Twitter framework. Facebook, on the other hand, has become complex because third-parties must integrate their services into Facebook. In other words, no matter how full-featured third-party Twitter applications become, Twitter itself is still a simple beast. Facebook, meanwhile, becomes ever-more bloated as third-parties build their wares into it. Ultimately, Twitter-based services are opt-in, whereas Facebook applications are, well, spammy.

Facebook ought take note of Twitter’s example, because its core functionality is becoming buried in drivel. More and more, what’s competing for our attention once we’re logged into Facebook isn’t the long-lost communication with our distant friends, but mindless “mafia” games that make World of Warcraft look like a scholarly pursuit. The problem isn’t just that Facebook makes these pursuits available to everyone from within the core framework (resulting in players soliciting friends to join), but that there’s no pre-emptive way to out out; users have to decide, on a case-by-case basis, if they want to participate in a Facebook activity/application, rather than have the system set up to auto-deny, say, gaming requests.

Certainly, Facebook and its contemporaries have a place in today’s online culture, because ultimately they’re built to foster closer communities than applications like Twitter. Unfortunately, the big players in this space haven’t figured out how to properly streamline their services yet, leaving much-desired polish in these types of applications for the future. The question then becomes whether Facebook or sites similar to it will apply the right level of polish soon, or of they’ll be beaten to it by a developer who leverages the Twitter API in such a way that Twitter users can set up image galleries, extended profiles, etc. In other words, will Twitter functionality grow to the point of enveloping other core Facebook features, or will Facebook be able to maintain its niche long-term?

While Twitter doesn’t foster the types of communities Facebook does now, that doesn’t mean it can’t. With the right third-party mindset, there’s a lot Twitter can do without losing its core user-base. Facebook, on the other hand, is not in the same boat.
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When questioning the legal implications of open wi-fi network usage, Computer Technology Review (CTR) posted a fair summary of the issue last month. CTR noted that relevant laws in this area aren’t really that relevant at all, since they predate wi-fi usage and were established instead to combat blackhats from gaining unauthorized access to computer systems for the likely purpose of malevolent action. Today, the issue is muddied because not all wi-fi networks are intended to be secure.

A person might not password protect their Wi-Fi network because they believe in open Internet access and they welcome others using their network. Other people might not password protect their Wi-Fi network because they forgot to do so or lack the technical skill. These people may not want others to use their Wi-Fi networks. Due to the mixed views people have in regards to open Wi-Fi access, it is impossible for someone to distinguish which open Wi-Fi connections are for the benefit of society and which are open merely due to a person’s failure to install protections.

In many cities, it is not uncommon to find open wi-fi networks for free public use, often with names not necessarily indicative of this purpose. Similarly, these same cities are home to networks that appear open, but are heavily restricted. The SSID of a given wireless network is simply not a good indicator of the network’s purpose, because SSIDs can be arbitrarily named, and can intentionally be made deceptive. Quite simply, knowing that sharing a broadband connection is legal, and that some wireless networks are open with the intent to be shared publicly, roaming computer users have no inherent ability to determine which networks are intended to be private. While this may be seen as a negative trait to those arguing against the legality of open wi-fi usage by the public, it’s a merit of the wi-fi framework: why should wi-fi equipment require the broadcasting of a “private” versus “public” flag when there are already numerous options for network administrators to prevent unauthorized usage. For one, not only can wi-fi operators password protect their networks to prevent public use, but they can also prevent a given network’s SSID from broadcasting at all. And then there’s other network obfuscation techniques such as changing one’s wireless network frequency and/or channel. In other words, the 802.11x framework already contains numerous mechanisms for denying access to the average computer nomad.

Legally, it’s folly to prosecute access of an open wi-fi network. If the accessing agent continues to engage in malevolent behavior once on the network, there are plenty of laws on the books to punish the individual in question. And that’s precisely why there’s been little headway in making simple wi-fi access illegal: it’s a grey area that favors the roaming computer user, not the network administrator. We simply don’t need additional laws curtailing wi-fi access because the social context of access, and the administrative options of wireless routers, already alleviate these concerns where existing computer crime laws are not applicable.

People who are supportive of laws criminalizing access of open Wi-Fi networks have compared accessing an open Wi-Fi network to walking into a person’s home just because the door was unlocked. However, the act of walking into a person’s home uninvited is commonly known to be a crime, and while it may be similar to a person hacking into another’s computer network through a firewall, it is not similar to merely accessing a Wi-Fi signal outside of someone’s home or business. Open Wi-Fi connections are more like open radio signals or even music being played inside a business or a home that can be heard outside. The radio signal and/or music has come to you, you have not actively pursued access to it without authorization.

Perhaps the crux of the matter is really about effort taken by the network owner in preventing unwanted use. Most internet service providers do not include wireless hardware with their equipment offerings. DSL and cable companies provide a modem requiring an ethernet connection. This means that end-users must specifically opt into using wireless equipment, usually by purchasing a wireless router. As soon as thisis done, the burden of securing the wireless network is on the broadband subscriber. We can argue that such routers should, perhaps, default to a setting in which one’s SSID is not broadcast, or with a password pre-set. However, since every router comes with a manual describing its settings, to claim ignorance that one simply didn’t know that a random person could gain access to one’s network without making the appropriate changes, is folly. After all, the very nature of wi-fi is explosive – radio frequencies emitted from routers are generally designed to be sent in all directions, even through walls. While wi-fi blocking paints (lead and otherwise) are available, drastic measures like these need not even be taken: a simple virtual toggle, explained in a user’s router manual, does the trick just fine. If you don’t want your neighbors watching your TV through your window, then close your curtains. The price of living in a populated area means taking additional steps to preserve your privacy.

That said, there’s still an ethical factor to this equation. If we acknowledge that the real burden is on the network owner, because he is the one responsible for the use of his hardware, we can still question the morality of hogging a router’s bandwidth. After all, just because it’s legal for someone to access a random, open wireless network, does not necessarily make it ethical to burden that network with bitorrent traffic. After all, if the network is indeed expected to be utilized by the public, is it fair for one user to significantly impact the performance of the network at the expense of other users, to include the owner himself?

In a perfect world, every network operator who wanted their network to remain private would not broadcast their SSIDs, enable password protection, and enable filtering of connections by known MAC addresses. Similarly, all networks intended for public use would be named after some variation of “Public Wireless 001″. Since the world’s not perfect, however, it’s up to everyone who runs a wireless network at home to learn how their equipment functions, and configure their networks appropriately. Similarly, we nomads of the digital age need to be aware that we’re not alone, and minimize our bandwidth footprint when network-squatting. At least until there really is a ubiquitous wireless shield around the globe.

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