Jobs Finally "Happy" With Unannounced Apple Tablet

All the whispers of an Apple tablet PC seem to be culminating in a flurry of rumors suggesting we may see one as soon as next month. Sources inside Apple are saying that Jobs is finally "happy" with the device after being involved in every detail of bringing it into the light of day. As a side result of these rumors, it seems that Apple stockholders are also getting a bit of Christmas cheer with a significant bump in stock price.

Comments

Jobs is happy with it?

[mattcsn]

It came out last summer that Jobs was intimately involved with every detail of bringing the tablet to market. It seems that the device has finally gotten Jobs's seal of approval: when asked if the tablet rumors were true, a senior Apple executive gave The New York Times a rather coy reply. "I can't really say anything," he said, "but, let's just say Steve is extremely happy with the new tablet."

Translation: the only button is a power button, it has a battery-sucking colour screen as opposed to an e-ink display, it requires itunes on a mac or PC to use, the only Apple-approved way to run programs is via an app store, it has a non-user-replaceable battery, and it will cost upwards of $1000.

Re:Jobs is happy with it?

[je ne sais quoi]

..and it already has legions of people already exclaiming that this is the best device yet, despite the fact that nobody has seen as much as a drawing yet.

Actually, I haven't read anyone who actually liked apple products say anything of the sort. All I've read in this thread so far are people who are complaining about imagined features they have pulled out of their asses, as you've pointed out, nobody has seen anything yet.

If Apple's past design decisions are any guide, the only thing I feel confident saying is that Apple has likely spent a tremendous amount of time and money designing the interface and it will likely be fairly intuitive and easy to use, but it's far from certain. It could just be an ipod touch, but bigger. This will certainly have some interesting applications, especially if they use a display that can be read in direct sunlight. I believe it likely that for applications they will follow their (mind-blowingly) successful app store but who knows. This is Apple we're talking about, they aren't the leader in innovation in the PC market for nothing and it's hard to imagine Jobs getting excited over an overblown ipod touch, but he has tried to sell us polished turds before so who knows.

Re:Jobs is happy with it?

[Shikaku]

You hear that sound? It's the sound of a million Apple fanboys orgasming and suddenly being silent.

Re:Jobs is happy with it?

[fermion]

The button fetish of the PC user is something that needs to be studied. It is like the cup holder fetish of the SUV buyer. I am sure both are symptoms of a previously unpublished metal issue in humans.

Re:Jobs is happy with it?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Translation: the only button is a power button, it has a battery-sucking colour screen as opposed to an e-ink display, it requires itunes on a mac or PC to use, the only Apple-approved way to run programs is via an app store, it has a non-user-replaceable battery, and it will cost upwards of $1000.

The scary part? Despite all that, it'll probably still embarrass all of the other companies that have tablet products.

Re:Jobs is happy with it?

[peragrin]

making it look nice is 90% of the battle. most consumer devices are far from user friendly. you want to know why the iphone is a smashing success? it has an interface that is designed for the screen that it is displaying on. the ipod? the simple interface is very easy to use and learn.

while other companies duplicate the hardware side, they always fail to design an interface that is simple to use. Or they resort to skinning an interface that isn't simple to use. (every version of win mobile) Palm pre, and chromeOS are both unique. Chrome more than likely won't have proper multi touch support even though it should be easy to install. Palm Pre is suffering the same fate the iphone did when it was first released. no native apps, all web apps.

Re:Jobs is happy with it?

[mariox19]

Apple tends to take other peoples' ideas and make them look nice.

With all due respect, I'm not even sure how to characterize that statement -- "oversimplification" itself seems to be an oversimplification.

If anything, what the iPhone, iPod, and even Mac OS itself demonstrates is that it is a long way from some skunkworks lab at a buttoned-up company to designing and implementing a game-changing product. How is it that even after Apple comes out with its products that its competitors' ripoff copies often look so second-rate by comparison?

But, you go ahead and believe what you want.

Re:Jobs is happy with it?

[Tablizer]

making it look nice is 90% of the battle. most consumer devices are far from user friendly.

You can say that again. We bought a Panasonic house phone set, and the UI sucks eggs. For example, there's a "speaker" button to turn on speaker-phone mode. However, the same button doesn't turn it off. (It's not broken because there are multiple handsets). I never figured out how to turn off speaker mode (the manual was lost). It's as if they don't do any real UI testing. They bang out a design and as soon as it merely works they ship it. And don't even get me started about Windows.

Apple is one of the few companies that really gives UI's any thought. This is because doing such is expensive compared to hardware and raw programming. Hardware design and manufacturing can be shipped to some 3rd-world nation where they pay like $1/hr. However, you can only work on and test the UI *in* the target market, where you have to pay people many times more. Thus, it's far more expensive. The result is gadgets with a jillion features, but crappy UI integration.

Apple will likely grow because they are the only company with a reputation for caring and I don't see anybody else trying to shift into the same niche. At best, they wait and then copy Apple.
 

Re:Jobs is happy with it?

[iluvcapra]

Because judgements about looks are an entirely subjective matter. Personally, I think the white plastic on MacBooks looks cheaper than even most netbooks, and that while the MBPs look nice, Sony's high-end Vaios look far better, though neither hold a candle to a good Thinkpad.

I think a lot of designers for Sony and Lenovo are just engineers/technical draftsmen that have a hard-on for Ralph McQuarrie illustrations and quasi-military design, so when they do a case it has lots of 60-degree angles, accented seams and reveals, and lots of non-functional detail and relief work -- the idea is to make the laptop feel like it's in place on the Millenium Falcon. Most of the designers at Apple are people that are actual professional consumer product designers, they don't know a nut from a bolt, but have spent their entire education on gettings hard-ons for 1960's-era German coffee makers and learning the difference between Zigzag Moderne and true Art Deco.

So yeah, taste. But just looking at my mom's Dell versus my MacBook, I can't help noticing how "busy" the Dell is, and how really none of it is really designed to make the thing more "useful," aside from making it stand-out on a showroom shelf.

Wow

[ShooterNeo]

Here's what I want a high quality, fast and truly usable tablet for : medical care. It should be possible to walk into a patient's room carrying a clipboard sized device that resembled a giant iphone. You should be able to call up medical records, imagery, and the rest with no detectable latency. (because the tablet should use push downloading : each tablet is assigned to a particular doctor or nurse. The table would cache all medical records for each patient assigned to that doctor or nurse, and if a new report comes out for one of those patients, the tablet should automatically download it over the hospital's wireless network)

It should use a glass topped display, like the iphone, so that you could use caustic chemicals to sterilize the surface. The medical industry has enough money that if this product cost $1500 it would barely be noticed as an expense. (especially if it could boost efficiency)

Apple has as good a chance to make this happen as anyone. Medical users would be running custom software for this tablet, so there's no need for it to be windows compatible. While displaying large 2D images like X-rays will require some CPU horsepower, it's still entirely possible for a low power CPU to do the job. And apple's superior user interfaces and integration with hardware mean that it will be cheaper and easier to train doctors and nurses to use this device.

The biggest technical problems I foresee are back end problems, problems with the EMR software, and battery life.(hospital IT departments tend to fuck things up. If they bought a bunch of apple tablets, they probably wouldn't build and maintain the back end servers and wireless AP correctly)

Also, such a tablet will probably be quite fragile, and fairly heavy.

Remember, YOU (the typical slashdotter running Linux with a windows box for games on desktop machines) are not the intended users for this tablet. YOU probably sit at a desk all day. You have enough technical expertise that tinkering is fun for you, and you don't mind the idea of a tablet on kludgey, cheap hardware that is running open source software.

Re:Senior Apple Executive to announce resignation?

[gyrogeerloose]

Will the executive anonymously quoted in the article be leaving soon [...]?

Let's just say he's singing soprano now.

Steve J.

Re:Tablet Prediction:

[93 Escort Wagon]

Of course -- "most" people buy the iPhone because its sexy, not because it's usable... so what do I know...

Well, for one thing you apparently don't know why people really buy an iPhone - the success of the apps store indicates that usability matters a lot to people. I'd also argue that the same design principles that make the iPhone "sexy" are also what's made it such a useful little gadget.

I've got an iPod Touch rather than an iPhone, but the same argument applies. Having one well-designed device that serves as my hyperfocal distance calculator, my "on the go" email checker, play-games-on-the-train machine, and even (in a pinch) allows me to run a vnc session over ssh is a plus in my book. Having tried other poorly-thought-out solutions (*cough* windows mobile *cough*) (*cough* multiple Linux desktop environments *cough*), I'd say it's pretty obvious design significantly affects usability.

But don't let reason get in the way of your narrative.

Apple ___ to revolutionise consumer electronics

[David Gerard]

Apple is reportedly close to launching its long-rumored ____. It could be Apple's latest billion-dollar jackpot.

Analyst speculation says the ___ will be launched in September and be in the shops by Christmas. A new mention of the ___ crops up on Twitter around every eight minutes.

The ___ is rumoured to be any size and scale between the iPod Shuffle and the Macintosh IIfx. Some have described the ___ as a "___-killer." Analyst speculation suggests the ___ will use a fantastic new interface. "It will be a whole new paradigm," said Apple blogger Leander Kahney.

Expectations flared when technology research analysts noted that Taiwanese suppliers had received orders from an unknown buyer for a particular obscure component to be filled by the end of the year. "The only possible conclusion is that Apple will launch a ___ by early next year," said Kahney. "They've been working on the ___ for the past six years. People expect it to be the ultimate Apple surprise. This thing will knock people's socks off."

Apple has refused to comment on the ___ speculation. But Tim Cook, its chief operating officer, recently hinted that the company was working on something "very innovative." Steve Jobs is thought to have been personally involved in the development of the ___ over the past two years.

Daniel Eran Dilger noted on roughlydrafted.com that the ___ would need to be fueled on pain, angst, the destruction of the ecology, the torture of kittens and the tears of widows and orphans, but put together a devastatingly convincing and very lengthy explanation as to why Apple's actions were the only humanly acceptable option for the consumer, the technology industry and the future of humanity, and that Jobs' Nobel Peace Prize was ridiculously overdue. And that all problems were clearly Microsoft's fault.

Re:And the price...

[Tumbleweed]

Yes, I can do that, but my point is that you have to position yourself in a certain way to use it properly.

The same holds true for a book. Or a cellphone. Or your dick. Hopefully you can figure all these out.