The One Thing Apple's Tablet Will Do That Nobody's Talking About
Monday, January 11, 2010 at 10:43AM If you are reading this post, you probably think Apple is releasing a tablet computer soon. I do too. But what that looks like, what it can do, and how Apple will position it are all anybody's guess. Historically (think iPhone), Steve Jobs has taken such circumstances as an opportunity to blow our frickin' minds.
Oh, and feel free to read up from the bottom if you're in a hurry ;-)
But What's It For?
Leo Laporte, on MacBreak Weekly #174, said: "We all not only expect but demand an Aha moment out of this cause otherwise it makes no sense!". And "If anybody can make a UI that makes you go woah, it's Apple".
He's right - Apple's new product lines are game-changers. There's always a surprise. There was a lot of talk about the iPhone, and the touch screen was on the table, but nobody predicted that would allow it to have a full-featured web browser. When they showed us that New York Times page on mobile Safari, everybody in the room had that aha moment. And it has changed our world.
So now we guess at the next fancy UI trick, from Minority Report-style gestures to eye and facial tracking to speech recognition. But there's some missing link, the "aha moment", which I don't think anyone has hit on yet.
Life, With Tablet
Imagine this. You are sitting in your living room, listening to media streamed from your computer on your stereo, and controlling the whole thing from your tablet. You have physical metaphors on the screen for the things you are doing. We've replaced that oh-so screen-real-estate-friendly volume control strip on the iPhone with a knob to turn or a full-sized fader to throw.
Okay, so here you are throwing faders and sorting your media catalog with multi-touch, and everything is grand. But now you have some stuff to do at the computer, and you wander off to the other room. Once you get there, you put your tablet on the desk, let it go to sleep, and start using your mouse and keyboard! Now, don't you feel like you've just moved back about 5 years into the past?
I sure would. So how can my fancy-shmancy tablet fix this?
Tablet, Meet iMac
Well, let's say that my computer is one of Apple's newer iMacs, which can do double duty as both a computer and a big, beautiful display for another machine. So, let's plug in our tablet and see what happens.
Oh, that's nice - I've got a sweet-ass control surface and a big, beautiful display! My movies, newspapers, and magazines look great on that iMac screen.
Hmmm... what if I don't want to use my tablet on the big screen, but the iMac itself? I mean, the tablet is great cause it's portable, media friendly, and probably pretty when you need to edit a Google Docs document on the fly. But isn't most of the content on my iMac anyway? Along with drastically more processing power and overall capabilities? Why would I want to plug in my tablet if I could just use the computer?
Because of that darned mouse and keyboard, that's why! Now let's take a look at how the tablet could revolutionize the use of my desktop.
Tablet As Touchpad?
As the Wikipedia DisplayPort page says, in the section entitled "Advantages over DVI", :
Auxiliary channel can be used for low bandwidth data such as touch-panel data.
Ahhh... this is all starting to come together now.
Okay, so I plug my tablet into the Mini DisplayPort connector on my iMac and it becomes a control surface for my iMac. It can replace both mouse and keyboard, replace just the mouse, or simply be a third control device. It can also be oriented either in portrait or in landscape.
Some people swear by the Wacom Pen and Touch tablet - it's an inexpensive way to get a "sidecar" touch interface on your Mac today. I haven't used it myself, but it has some appeal to me. And Apple, with the release of the Magic Mouse, might just be conditioning us to use touch not on the screen but on the desk itself.
But that use case isn't really what I'm after. Now we get to the fun stuff.
No, Tablet In Control!
Some or all of the screen is dedicated to widgets that control the currently-running application on my iMac. So if I bring up DVD player I have a beautiful control widget rich with physical metaphors.
Perhaps I can put some of my Dashboard widgets there? So now when I bring up the dashboard there's a calculator sitting there on my desk. Now maybe somebody will create a Dashboard unit converter that's a slick as ConvertBot on the iPhone.
If I am a sound guy, I can bring up Logic or Garage Band and now I have a full-featured ten inch mixer on top of my desk.
If I am a visual artist, I can use the surface with a capacitive stylus. Not only will I have the usual pen interface, but I can zoom in on the tablet and actually see what I'm editing up close and personal.
If I'm a 3D animation guy. Not only can I zoom in on the tablet and manipulate things up close, but I can do it in all three dimensions using multi-touch gestures. Rotating, scaling, and the like can all be done quickly with one hand while the other hand uses a stylus as needed.
When the iPhone first came out, rumors flew for about a year about Apple someday releasing a full-sized touch desktop computer. But I don't actually want one of those unless it's on a wall, hooked into my voice-controlled home automation system. A full-sized touch screen sitting close enough to reach with my arm just sounds like a recipe for exhausted levator scapulae muscles. And that's a recipe for a whole generation of people with major neck and shoulder problems! Bad news.
What I do want is this magical control surface of which I speak. Giving us physical metaphors to our computer's operations like this would change the world, yet again. And I hope beyond all reason that Apple will deliver it this year. Is that just wishful thinking? Sigh...