#FF00AA

Here comes that time of the year when Apple pundits, big and small and wannabe, have to man up and put their credibility on the line, writing up their definitive specialist’s opinion on the matter of what Steve is and isn’t going to announce in his upcoming keynote. (Thankfully, nobody expects any credibility from those types anyway, so there’s nothing to lose.)

What’s going to be announced? is the question we ask about four times a year, but this time may well be the keynote of all keynotes: it’s not about a refresh of the Mac lineup, or new functionality in iTunes, but it is (or isn’t?) about the infamous Apple tablet. Even the days before the original iPhone announcement weren’t as frantic: we already knew smartphones then, we knew why they ought to be important, and we thought we knew what we were gonna get (which, to a certain extent, we did). With the tablet, though, Apple doesn’t just present a “breakthrough device” (to quote the horrible expression Jobs used that time): they get to invent a brand new market altogether, and sell us a concept that nobody has managed to make work yet.

 

But is there gonna be a tablet?

Yes. It’s that simple. As far as I’m concerned, once an Apple rumor has been written up in the Wall Street Journal, you can consider that it’s been officially confirmed. Besides, given how convinced everyone is and has been for a month, if Apple wasn’t actually going to launch a tablet, you can be sure they would leak that to the WSJ; that thing has been hoped for and awaited and expected before but, at this point, no matter what else Steve Jobs could announce on next Wednesday, stock prices would tank unacceptably if he didn’t show the unicorn.

 

What’s it gonna be called?

Even if you believe that Jobs seriously considered launching a “MacMan” when he came back to Apple (I have trouble with that idea), it’s hard to believe he could now announce the “iPad.” Apple’s product lineup can be somewhat confusing to dyslexics, what with the endless combinations of all of three different prefixes and suffixes, but they still can’t be launching a revolutionary, expensive (more on those points later) product with a name that sounds so similar to their cheapest offerings — when iPod models themselves have unmistakable last names to distinguish them.

I really wonder if they could drop the “i” now; it would have made much more sense to do that before the iPhone, when they were launching a brand-new platform, completely separate from the Mac. No matter how different it is, or isn’t, from the iPhone, the tablet will necessarily coast on its success — at least as far as marketing goes — so it would be a weird choice to abandon the legacy at this very point. But iTablet sounds bad and pedestrian, iGuide is stupid, and iSlate is only passable.

I’m vaguely warming up to the idea that, all things considered, iBook could be just the best possible name. It has a nice heritage of its own; Apple has conspicuously declined to use it after the switch to Intel, even that time when it made for incomprehensible distinctions between 13-inch aluminum MacBook and 13-inch plastic MacBook; and “book” obviously fits the form factor and some of the functionality.

On the other hand, if you disregard my point about the relationship with iPhone, “Apple Canvas” sounds pretty good, is a perfect match for that ugly graphic on the invitation, and evokes a lot of nice ideas to associate with the device. But I’d be surprised if the visual turned out be so on-the-nose.

 

What’s it gonna look like?

Well, that’s another simple one: there’s no way it can look like anything but a bigger iPhone. Apple’s design is coherent that way and, more importantly, it’s all about having the simplest possible shape and surface for a given function.

 

What’s the concept?

If you’d asked me six months ago, I would have said that an oversized iPhone, with slight adjustments to the interface, the obligatory bump in performance, and a good way to read books and magazines (that’s a given; you don’t think they invented the iTunes LP interactive format just for the Apple TV, do you?), all that predictable stuff, would be perfectly fine. And, sure, such a thing could still get decent sales today.

But Microsoft introduleaked the Courier in September, and that redefined all my expectations regarding anything tablet-shaped: first, it needs a completely reinvented interface, that has nothing to do with either a smartphone’s or a computer’s; second, it needs a stylus.

Yes, a stylus.

The thing is, a smartphone that requires a stylus to click on tiny buttons is an unusable mess, we all agree. But a 10-inch touch-screen notepad that doesn’t give you the option of switching to a stylus when you need a little more precision would be an insane waste of space and technology. That’s what makes the Courier so cool: when you need to write or draw, you take the stylus; for anything else, you use your fingers.

Fortunately, I think Apple, and Jobs, are clever enough to realize that, and not take “the stylus sucks” as a dogma that every single of their products must follow. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean I’m sure they do, and for all his genius Jobs isn’t exactly impervious to hubris.

When Steve Ballmer didn’t introduce the Courier officially at CES earlier this month, the tablet market definitively became Apple’s game to lose — I suspect Microsoft got scared of innovating (they’re not very used to doing it, are they?), and decided to wait a few months and align their offering to whatever Apple will show. Now, if Apple’s tablet is anything like the Courier (i.e., specific interface, and touch+stylus), Microsoft will never manage to regain a foothold in this space; if the tablet is just an supersized iPhone, though, announcing the Courier later in the spring could make a real splash. (Or later in the year, or whatever — time wouldn’t be much of an issue anymore.)

(Yes, I’m assuming that the Courier is entirely real, and that Microsoft must have leaked it intentionally in order to see how the public responded — or, even if they didn’t and just really, really suck at keeping things secret, I still think it’s real. Because it’s all technologically feasible, and the interface is far too well-designed to be the dream of just a lonely geek with too much time on his hands. On the other hand, there’s the very real possibility that a Microsoft employee or contractor leaked the videos because the project had been all-but-canned and he was upset. But I’ll overlook that as it would be far too depressing.)

 

What will the hardware be like?

There’s no reason to doubt the oft-repeated rumors of a 10-inch screen. If you noticed, I didn’t cite the dual screen as an advantage of the Courier: I have no idea of the economical and technological advantages of dual 7-inch versus single 10-inch, but it’s a moot point when it comes to Apple, as the thing needs to play movies spectacularly.

Sure, there’s that recent pico-projector rumor, and it sounds really cool, but I’ll file this one in the department of those unrealistic ideas that always tag along the serious rumors prior to any Apple announcement: it’s just too soon. Besides, the embedded projector makes sense on a MacBook, so you can have a bigger external screen, but a lot less on any touch-based device (tablet or phone) since you won’t be able to control the external screen the way you do the internal screen, by touching it — basically, you wouldn’t be able to do much of anything more than just watching movies. So it’s not quite worth the cost for now.

I can’t see much reason for the tablet to have a hard drive (unless it’s running regular Mac OS) rather than flash memory. And, well, I’ve always had a thing against portable devices with hard drives, so there. A choice between 32GB and 64GB would make sense; 16 could probably work but, I don’t know, it just sounds wrong for a 10-inch tablet… that is never going to be cheap anyway.

The front-facing camera seems logical, just like it’s present on every MacBook and iMac. The iPhone doesn’t have one because it’s designed to be used primarily on 3G, and sees wifi as a bonus; a ten-inch tablet is the kind of thing that seems much more appropriate for sedentary use, with wifi, where nobody will complain that you’re skyping in high definition. (Not to mention that people don’t naturally hold their phones in a position that’s very conducive to video conferencing, whereas with the tablet they will.)

So, no, I don’t expect 3G to be included — at least not in all models. The tablet will already be a hard-enough sell at the price; it would be unreasonable to bind its purchase to a compulsory cell plan. (Besides, the primary target has to be iPhone users, and those have tethering — or they’re supposed to get it someday.) On the other hand, cell plan means subsidy means a more acceptable price. But I just checked, and it seems that an iPod touch costs exactly the same price as an equivalent iPhone with subsidy, so Apple isn’t exactly going that way (even though that makes it look like someone’s getting ripped off there). Which means you could imagine models with and without 3G, at the same price point for the same specs. Which would look weird, for launch prices. Hmm.

I can’t see the tablet being launched with two different screen sizes, however. First, because it would be confusing, muddying the lineup (look at how gradually the different iPods were introduced, and how there’s still only one iPhone really, three years in); second, because a good touch-based interface has to be designed with screen size in mind, and I’m fairly certain you can’t make something that’s just as usable on a 7-inch tablet as it does on a 10-inch. (Of course I have no doubt that they experimented internally on many different sizes, though, and that’s where the rumor came from.)

Now that the Palm Pre is finally shipping with the induction-charging cover by default (or is it just the Pre Plus), I’m thinking that kind of thing would be perfect for the tablet (well, it would be perfect for the iPhone, too, but in that case there’s the issue of making the device thicker): this thing is obviously not going to use e-paper, and the battery will be as small and light as Apple can make it, so it’s going to need to be charged a lot; and it’s a somewhat natural reflex to plug your iPhone to the wall when you go to bed, but it doesn’t work as well for a device that’s more likely to live on the coffee table and/or in your backpack. Whereas an induction charger (of course, the charger itself would be optional, like it still is with the Pre Plus) means you only need to decide where your tablet will rest most of the time, and make sure you set it down there once in a while. Otherwise you’ll end up unplugging the tablet every time you pick it up and plugging it back every time you’re done, and that’s more than a little inelegant.

You know what I’m most curious, and unsure, about? Whether the tablet is going to have some sort of embedded stand so that you can more comfortably watch videos. It definitely needs something like that, and you know that it’s not going to be a stupid bit of cheap plastic on a lousy hinge. If the tablet does have a way to stand on its own, it’s got to be the little detail that will blow everybody’s mind. (Like the original MacBook Air’s retractable ports. Only those were somewhat stupid. Okay, totally wrong example.)

Ah, and I forgot that recent rumor that the back cover is gonna be touch-sensitive as well, and you’ll be able to gesture on it, or type, or god knows why. Do I really need to explain how absurd that is? It was an interesting concept to dream about when we imagined the iPhone, but it ended up being pretty stupid already; now, multiply that by the fact you’ll spend most of the time with the tablet propped on your lap, desk, or pillow.

 

How much will it cost?

All I care to know is I’m not gonna be able to afford it for quite a while.

 

What else will Apple present?

iPhone Whatchamacallit: The next hardware iteration will probably be slightly more powerful and stuff but, most importantly, I expect a higher-resolution screen, à la Droid and Nexus One. That thing about App Store developers being asked to make sure their apps work fine on a larger screen? Nothing to do with the tablet, but simply the new iPhone’s screen — Apple, of all manufacturers, can’t afford to lag behind on that aspect of the phone. Existing apps will look the same as they did; new and updated apps will display crisper text and icons.
Also, I think it’s time for the iPhone to offer an induction charger. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s not as important as for the tablet, because of the way you use your phone and because you need to connect it to your computer anyway if you want to sync your stuff… but, with the existing MobileMe sync, and a possible online iTunes library coming, it would be a very nice functionality. And Palm already offers it, so that has to count for something.

iPhone OS 4.0: Even though I don’t want the tablet to use the iPhone’s interface (and I objectively don’t think it will), it makes sense that they would share a technological platform more closely than the iPhone and the Mac do, so I can quite believe that OS 4.0’s release to developers would have been delayed because Apple was afraid they might discover hints in the API of what’s to come.
As for what the OS update will bring, I don’t know. Multitasking would be nice, of course, now that Android phones are getting to be serious contenders, but I wonder how (or if) an old iPhone 3G could handle juggling between several applications that were designed to take advantage of all available resources — it’s not so simple to suddenly turn on multitasking when your third-party developers have gotten quite used to being sole owners of the CPU and RAM.
Other than that, I can see Apple outsourcing maps and search to Microsoft instead of Google, only as a temporary measure until their own services are ready; and I really, really wish the Springboard interface was finally scrapped altogether, but I don’t hold my hopes so high.

Other hardware? Well, it would be about time to have a wider range of the new Cinema Displays — especially if the tablet can connect to an external screen. (By the way, if there’s anything designed to turn the tablet into a full-fledged desktop computer, it’s certainly not going to be an iMac-like case that you slide the tablet into: it would be more than a little stupid to have a state-of-the-art 10-inch touch-screen and just hide it — especially the touch part. I’m sure that’s just an idea they patented because they thought of it, not because they intended to use it.) And that’s pretty much it.

As for what will be new about iTunes, I’m thinking that the cloud-based version of iTunes, which should probably be accompanied by some sort of a subscription model, is too big news to be announced at the same time as the tablet; besides, they only just bought lala.com, so give them a little time to get it right: they could well be working on that for the iPod keynote after the summer.