Why Apple’s Tablet Should be a Bigger iPhone
Thursday, October 1st, 2009The ideal form-factors for computing and mobile devices come down to the environment they’re used in. If you’re sitting at the same desk in an office most days, a desktop is the way to go. If you sit at multiple desks or coffee-shop tables, a notebook is the thing. If you don’t sit, but either walk around or lay on the couch, you need a tablet.
There’s a gap in the available platforms between notebooks and smart phones, where a notebook is cumbersome, and most mobile devices are too small. Netbooks are edging into this gap, but a multi-touch tablet would be a better fit.
The applications you’re likely correlate to the environment. If you’re a graphic designer, you probably need to work at a desk with a full-blown application. If you’re sketching some ideas, you might relax somewhere with a tablet.
I view the iPhone OS/UI as a happy accident. Given the small screen real estate, the iPhone OS has to have a simplified and sharply-focussed UI. This clean UI makes the Touch a pleasure to use. Not only does it offer direct manipulation though multi-touch, but it’s sheer simplicity makes it very transparent.
Compare the experience of the iPhone’s YouTube application to the experience of YouTube in a web browser. On the web, YouTube is cluttered with all manner of suggestions and up-sell. On the iPhone, it’s wonderfully simple. The differences between Mail on OSX vs. Mail on the iPhone are similar.
The iPod Touch is most of the way there. It just needs to be bigger, making it more useful for reading and viewing media. More real-estate would also allow some real work product. The iPhone/Touch are really about consuming content. A bigger device would open the possibility of its use in creative and productive output.
I’ve laid-out the two product design issues that make the “bigger iPhone” the right approach for Apple: finding the usage gap between the iPhone and the notebook, and the general superiority of the iPhone OS for that usage.
Beyond those product issues, the failure of Windows tablets to crawl out of their niche (doctors’ offices) shows that putting a personal computer OS in a tablet package isn’t going to sell in any significant proportion to notebooks.