Jan 27, 2010 Posted by Herko on Jan 27, 2010 in All things Web, Personal notes | 3 comments

My predictions for the Apple Tablet

It’s only hours away, and thou­sands of peo­ple have talked and pub­lished about it already, but here’s my take on today’s event.

Apple has a nice track record for shak­ing up entire indus­tries by intro­duc­ing new devices. It changed the way we buy and con­sume music with the iPod (arguably not the best music player in the field, and not the first either), it changed the mobile phone indus­try with the intro­duc­tion of the iPhone (same here, prob­a­bly not the best smart­phone out there, nor the first). The core of the suc­cess of these devices wasn’t the device itself, but the way it made access­ing and using con­tent eas­ier and more enjoy­able. I think we will see a rep­e­ti­tion of this strat­egy later today.

My pre­dic­tion: the Apple Tablet will shake the media pub­lish­ing indus­try to its roots. And that is what the device will be aimed at: con­sum­ing rich con­tent.

Just look at this con­cept movie Time Inc. made last year, and see how this affects the way you con­sume your favorite mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers. Heck, just based on that con­cept movie alone I’d be will­ing to pay for sub­scrip­tions for rich media content.

Now, if Time Inc. makes the con­tent of it’s flag­ship pub­li­ca­tions avail­able to be con­sumed as shown on a device like that, and oth­ers (like McGraw Hill, The NYT, Wash­ing­ton Post) fol­low it’s exam­ple, now that would make a device inter­est­ing to use.

Sure, I have a Mac­Book and an Iphone, so why should I want such a device? The answer is in it’s main strength: access­ing rich con­tent. And why would pub­lish­ers enrich their con­tent, basi­cally can­ni­bal­iz­ing on their paper pub­li­ca­tions? Because in-app pur­chases and con­tent sub­scrip­tions for this kind of rich media is the future. You need a Mac­Book to effec­tively edit and cre­ate con­tent, and an iPhone to access it from your pocket. But to get the max­i­mum (and opti­mized) rich expe­ri­ence, you’ll need the Mac Tablet.

Now on the iPhone you can get apps for watch­ing missed episodes of TV shows, news chan­nels, news­pa­per arti­cles, etc. This device will be the plat­form to access the con­tent I want, when I want, how I want. It’ll be a new rev­o­lu­tion, as Time Inc. and McGraw-Hill and the NYT are just the beginning.

What if Amazon.com comes with an app for the Mac Tablet that does exactly what the Kin­dle does, and more? If this opens up the Ama­zon Store to a larger audi­ence, with the ease of use we’ve come to expect from Apple’s user inter­face (as opposed to the Kindle’s UI), this will drive sales for Ama­zon, mak­ing the Kin­dle less impor­tant for them. But that’s what this rev­o­lu­tion is all about: con­tent con­tent content.

And because this is an Apple device, it’ll look great, and it’ll be ultra-usable. But it’s not about the device itself, but about the plat­form it will rep­re­sent: a new era for media publishing.

So what is this pre­dic­tion worth? Absolutely noth­ing. I have no inside infor­ma­tion, don’t read all the blogs all the time or just came back from the future. But to me, it makes sense. It fits Apple’s pre­vi­ous strate­gies to intro­duce a device with the great ways to use it for some­thing spe­cial, not about the specs of the device itself. But this’ll stand or fall with the con­tent pub­lish­ers. But as you can see from mr. McGraw, they’re as excited as I am.

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3 Responses to “My predictions for the Apple Tablet”

1. herko says:

   27 January 2010 at 14:31

   New blog post: My pre­dic­tions for the Apple Tablet http://www.herkocoomans.net/2010/01/my-predictions-for-the-apple-tablet/

   This com­ment was orig­i­nally posted on Twit­ter
2. Herko says:

   27 January 2010 at 14:39

   Heh, after I typed and posted all the above, I see this arti­cle from the NYTimes, basi­cally con­firm­ing my sus­pi­cions: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/technology/26apple.html
3. dc crowley says:

   27 January 2010 at 14:52

   2 more facts:
   1/. Lots of peo­ple who should know bet­ter will be jump­ing up and down like lit­tle boys. They may even wet them­selves from all the excite­ment.
   2/. The hype will drive the cyn­ics nuts In fact it already is I can’t stand it any more.
   3/. I can’t count
   4/. Maybe con­tent will make cash on this! I was amazed that it worked for apps with the iPhone, I can be wrong sometimes.

   I love what jason cala­ca­nis is doing on twit­ter today… pre­tend­ing he already has one. bril­liant see @jason

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