Over the last several months, it's become quite clear that Apple is ready to bridge the mobile computing gap, with plans to develop a device that fits somewhere between the iPhone and the MacBook. A recent Wall Street Journal article said that during his medical leave, CEO Steve Jobs has been working on that midsized mobile device, bigger than an iPhone but smaller than a MacBook.
And this week, BusinessWeek reported Apple is developing a "media pad" that would let users watch videos on a larger screen than an iPod Touch or Amazon Kindle, but on a device that's more portable than laptops and lacks a keyboard.
The personal computer industry has long tried to make such a device a reality, but apart from some early success for the Kindle, no one has managed to convince the public that the attempts released to date - such as the Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) - are worth buying. Instead, PC companies looking for increased mobility are finding ways to shrink the laptop PC as opposed to finding a new way to use computers.
As far back as 2000, Microsoft founder Bill Gates was evangelising Tablet PCs, but a combination of price and uninspired software doomed that category to niche status. Intel and Microsoft then turned the hype machine to the UMPC (later rebranded MID, or Mobile Internet Device), which several years later aren't exactly flying off store shelves.
More recently, PC companies have embraced netbooks, small inexpensive mini-notebook computers that are designed for basic web surfing and email. Netbooks, however, are further depressing the PC industry's gross margins and attempt to cram a full-fledged notebook user interface into a small package, and it doesn't seem that Apple is all that crazy about this category.
But Apple has developed a few unique ideas for mobile computing over the past two years that have resonated with designers, developers and users; namely, the iPhone OS and the App Store. So, is the timing finally right for the teeny computer?
BusinessWeek reported that the Apple tablet would be about the size of the Amazon Kindle, but with a screen that covers a greater portion of the surface. The Kindle is 7.5-inches long, but the screen is just six inches; by comparison, the iPhone sports a 3.5-inch display, while the smallest MacBook uses a 13.3-inch display.
Previous attempts at making keyboardless devices with seven-inch or eight-inch screens - such as UMPCs and MIDs - haven't captured the public's imagination. Microsoft and Intel had high hopes for the concept in 2006, which was also known as Project Origami inside Microsoft. Samsung made perhaps the best-received UMPC, but that wasn't saying much, and interest in the category quickly faded after the launch of the iPhone.The main issue with UMPCs was a lack of compelling software. They were designed to run Windows XP, which itself wasn't designed to run on a device with such a small screen and limited methods of input.
Intel tried to shift MIDs to Linux but its partners have yet to gain any traction. And neither attempt was able to galvanise third-party developers into creating applications designed specifically for a mobile platform.
Apple's iPhone OS, however, was designed for a small-screen mobile environment. Installing the iPhone OS 3.0 on the tablet would allow Apple to preserve the user interface from the iPhone and iPod Touch and keep the device simple: a more complicated (and power-hungry) operating system isn't needed for a computer like this.
This would also allow Apple to take advantage of the App Store, giving the device thousands of applications at its disposal right from launch. One potential problem with that approach is that developers will have to rewrite their iPhone applications to adapt to the larger-size screen on this new device, said Craig Hockenberry of Iconfactory, creators of Twitterrific.
Hockenberry, who is very confident that Apple has such a device in the works, doesn't think this will be a huge obstacle, but developers will have to gauge whether the extra development effort is worth their time. One thing Apple could do is set aside a separate section of the App Store for tablet-optimised applications, while finding a way to run older iPhone applications in some sort of compatibility mode.
The tablet could also be the first Apple product to surface with a chip designed by PA Semi, which Apple didn't buy on a lark. A custom chip could solve two problems for Apple - the need to keep software compatibility with the ARM-based chips used to run the iPhone, while delivering more performance for HD video playback or more robust games that competitors might not be able to immediately match.
This is the last frontier of the promised convergence between computers and communication devices: the midsized device. That shift has already happened to the smartphone but it seems very reasonable that, for many people, smartphone screens are too small for serious computing.
If Apple is indeed working on such a product, it will have to get the implementation right to avoid duplicating the failures of so many other mobile computing aspirants. But by having awakened the public to the promise of basic mobile computing, Apple could be best positioned to capitalise on the need for something more.
