Rab Boyce's Site

Ok, the much awaiting announcement finally happened. The big surprise to me is the mixed reaction in the tech community. There seems to be a large contingent who are saying 'it's just a big iphone touch'. And tell me what is wrong with that exactly?

I love my iphone, and my iphone touch. They do their jobs very well ( well, apart from answer calls ). The availability of the app store, the amazing UI, the great browsing experience. If only it was bigger....

..and now it is. A bigger , faster, ipod touch..? what on earth is not to like? Surely it fits the niche of a sofa/coffee/table device much better than a netbook or an iphone/ipod ever could..

Sure..it doesn't have a whizzy new gesture based interface, it doesn't have a camera, and it doesn't make phone calls..but then why should it do any of those things?

for me..if its an excellent browsing experience, can display PDFs and ebooks well, and play the odd movie or two..i'm sold.

I also think the availability of the app store makes it a killer device. Im sure there will be some amazing apps in due course.

Downsides? no multi tasking ( to be confirmed )...and while I understand Apple's reasoning for that..no IM in the background would seem like a bit of a downer in 2010.

A 4:3 aspect ratio? This initially seemed bizarre, as surely most movies are 16:9? but an article on macworld makes a good case for a 4:3 ratio. It isn't primarily a movie playing device...its a web browsing/book reading device, and a 4:3 ratio makes more sense.

So, The big question is how many are you going to buy?

:)

As everyone else is widly speculating about an Apple Tablet I thought I'd write down some of my desires/predictions for such a device.

Firstly I see this as a media consumer device, not a media producer device. What do I mean by that? well, I can see it being used to read books, watch movies, listen to music, browse the web, perhaps even play the odd game. However, I can't see it replacing a macbook ( or macbook pro ) or PC as a means for creating these things. The odd email or blog post maybe....

Ok, its a given it would be an awesome web tablet ( think bigger iphone )

So what are the features I would like to see?

A low power PDF reader mode

Apple have some of the best PDF rendering out there, so PDF makes sense as the default book format. PDF would allow for full-colour, decent formatting, and the ability to read technical books and magazines in the format the publisher intended. That would be cool. But what would be really cool would be a low power 'reader' mode, whereby the other features of the tablet would be less available to improve battery life. Ideally this would be an instant switch from reader to multimedia device mode.

HDMI out.

HDMI out to play HD content on an HDTV. more of a pipe dream really..but imagine a dock for the tablet that allows it to be a replacement for the apple TV...but you can take it with you...finish that movie on the train, on holiday, at the inlaws etc. If the Zune HD can do it...

Airtunes client support

Ability to act as a media extender and itunes speaker target ( possibly combined with the HDMI dock ) much like the airport express.

MobileMe support

Probably a given, but the ability to browse my documents/media on mobileme, or on my airport extreme connected disk would be great.

Flash Support

Unlike the iphone...things thing needs flash support, obviously.

Well, lets see what the product announcement, does or doesn't bring..