comic sans is fail

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Personally, my main concern would be how well the tablet surface works for design purposes- because the possibilities here are awesome. Ability to truly calibrate touch sensitivity for line quality. Intuitive graphic design (painting for one). A program to make handwriting fonts effortless. But actually, I might take that last one back because I hate comic sans and I would probably hate the subsequent comic sins more.

But in conclusion, I’d totally get one.

And in regards to netbooks… is it just me, or are a majority of them pink?

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First, I would bet both my kidneys that Apple has a 95% completed prototype for their tablet device. It is too late in the netbooks game and there’s been too much chatter for this to be untrue. The machine is probably beautiful, because Apple’s been p0wning the intersection of industrial design plus consumer electronics for the past decade.

However, even though I think the MacTab is tangible, there is no way it will be introduced to the market until at least three of the following things happen.

A) Someone else releases a minor hit tablet or netbook, probably for the business segment.

Apple is great at building high-performing, elegant technology. But it’s not the specs that get the product sold – it’s the user experience. Ever since Jobs came back, Apple has been the master of “first following” to deliver the best possible (and best-selling) consumer functionality and UI, AFTER a new technology has gained some traction. I feel like the usual formula is “new platform is introduced > other company makes a lot of money tweaking said tech for a lucrative but boring customer segment > Apple figures out a way to convert into fun objects that make expensive nerdery seem accessible and yet terribly sexy…”

For example, Rio and Samsung were much bigger in the MP3 player market until Apple was like, “Uh, we looked at what you have, and here’s how you can make it 10,000x better. You’re telling people to pay $179 in 2001 dollars for a machine that only holds 48 songs? Weak sauce.”

Or more recently – Palm, Nokia, etc. were all in the smartphone game wayyy before Apple. RIM found the key market by tapping into business users. But even though it’s status-symbolic to shell out for a pocket computer and act all business-y and connected, it is so much more awesome to use that pocket computer for entertainment… I remember a couple of years ago before the iPhone was introduced and the only people our age with smartphones were my douchier friends (and ex-girlfriend) who got Blackberries for their investment banking jobs. They (and their buttoned-up managers) were all OBSESSED with the shitty Brickbreaker game that came with it and derived great happiness from the itty bit of joy it added to their long, bleak days.

So, the iPhone brand team was all like, “OMG, so many people will totally rationalize this $$$$ purchase of our device by telling themselves that it’s so useful and serious and adult to have e-mail everywhere and the occasional ability to read emergency spreadsheet revisions in an airport. But really, they will buy our device because it can check facebook and load pictures of cuteoverload kittens from bed and play Ferrari racing games.

Tablets are definitely being picked up across business now – one of the big things we’re working on at my current client is deploying tablets for their sales force. For better or worse, it’s looking *very* effective with the target audience (doctors) in our pilots. Apple has something up its sleeve to give the tablet a much cooler use than portable drug pitches though…

B) Steve Jobs launches their killer value prop, probably based in the monetized cloud model.

I would love to talk with you about “the Cloud” sometime, since my firm is ostensibly a big player and sometimes they pay me to make up words about it. In any case, the bottom line for Apple is that a couple of these clouds rain money, and they’re called iTunes & the App Store. The iPod and iPhone would be niche products, respectively, without these platforms.

Over the past five years Apple has effectively transformed itself to become one of the most lucrative media distributors ever. It is all about taking content created by other people (bands or software developers) and funneling it through a kickass delivery system to paying customers. There are three products Apple sells, all of which generate revenue streams – 1) content, with payouts split between artist/creator and Apple 2) channel, which is distributed as free software but “buys” Apple a locked-in audience, and 3) device, which of course gets the tasty lump-sum discretionary expenditures.

The trick is finding the right content to make the Apple channel and device really worth it for a customer. With tablets, there’s been a lot of chatter about books/print since the Kindle has done pretty decently and Condé Nast is dying. However, even though there’s an OK personal use market and large potential business market in portable document readers, I am pessimistic about our collective attention span and the general trend of reading.

My bet is that the content monster is VIDEO. AppleTV hasn’t broken out of its niche, but in the meantime Netflix has on-demand as part of its subscription benefits and Hulu will probably start charging soon for shows. With YouTube, etc, the market is being primed so that people think of video as a medium that can and should be portable. Meanwhile, if there’s one thing that is totally disappointing on my iPhone but that doesn’t really need to be consumed via laptop, it’s my TV shows. Catching up with 30 Rock on the subway! NFL highlights on demand during lunch! It would be totally beautiful.

C) Some massive things happen in wireless bandwidth technology, or at least AT&T gets cut and Verizon steps in.

This major caveat for video has not been solved since the data is just so damn big – YouTube is still losing Google millions, last I heard. Beyond the server side, your point about the expensive data plan is salient. AT&T’s infrastructure already creaks under the weight of Manhattanites in Central Park texting each other on the first day of spring, so it would fall apart completely if a bunch of those people were trying to download the Victoria’s Secret fashion show while waiting for their laundry (inside shoutout to you and Chaps in case y’all ever read this).

Word on the street is that Verizon was offered the iPhone contract first and the CEO passed because it would be a “niche product that would only move 10,000 units.” If Droid doesn’t meet expectations for regaining subscriber market share, they might be very conscious about not making the same mistake twice.

Meanwhile, if the government ever finds any magical (non-inflated) money to reinvest in human capital and infrastructure like the stimulus should have, a grandaddy “5G” wireless network would be one natural sinker for the money. It would be awesome, but I think this is a long shot though given our public finances and the time it would take to get through the bureaucracy. Philly tried to make itself completely wireless when I was in school there, and very sadly, that endeavor crashed and burned.

D) A competitive meteor strikes and MacBook and/or iPhone sales tank, or Apple finds the right group of suppliers to make this thing for under $200.

Even if these killer items were already in place to drop the MacTab, there’s just no business reason whatsoever for Apple to release it now. It would cut into their sales of laptops for sure and iPhones quite possibly, which would be pretty dumb.

Apple would have to respond to the threat if a competitor product (Droid? Windows 7? netbook? maybe even the Kindle?) struck a huge hit and stole Apple market share. Alternatively, Apple has been proactive about device conversion before. Even though the Zune failed to dent the iPod, Apple threw the iPhone out there after it figured out the perfect combination of cheap Asian supplies. Ostensibly, Apple has a 50% profit margin on the cost of components in an iPhone, which is effin’ crazy for the consumer electronics market.

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