The OLPC Tablet: They could probably sell a lot of these in the developed world. Kids in the US need this every bit as much as kids abroad do.
The OLPC Tablet: They could probably sell a lot of these in the developed world. Kids in the US need this every bit as much as kids abroad do.
I’ll be frank… I really don’t think media companies charging for content is the way to go. Let’s look at why:
One of the things that made iTunes and other music download services great is that they allowed people to purchase an individual song as opposed to an entire record. People don’t mind paying for something they value, but they don’t like paying for other stuff they don’t value. Up until that point, consumers had to “take the good with the bad” and so many either begrudgingly bought the album just for a single song, while others passed on the album even though they wanted a song on it.
Another thing that made iTunes a success was that Steve Jobs (correctly) estimated that the hassle factor of illegally downloading a song was more expensive then a song priced at $0.99. And he was right. The iTunes model has proven definitively that most people are willing to pay a small amount of money for something of value, even when free versions exist, if the paid version is more convenient/fun to own. With news content, the free version is the norm not the exception, and the convenience/fun factor is missing from the ownership experience. As such, it’s unlikely that people would be willing to pay for content since it’s likely available for free elsewhere without much hassle.
In order to change this reality, the news companies are going to have to develop differentiated content. CBS’ 60 Minutes is a good example of this idea as their content and investigative journalism style is unique among news sources. The more that news companies can differentiate themselves in similar fashion, the more they’ll have the ability to charge for content. Barring that, I predict that most paid models will not ultimately succeed.
The dude showing this is a little cheesy (make that really cheesy), but the hybrid design is pretty cool. The guy mentions that you can browse through your CD’s… CD’s!!! who has a CD these days? All told, this is a good first product, but you’d like to see them improve the tablet user interface and sell both components independently so you could upgrade it modularly as needed.
Apple would never build something like this because it’s not elegant enough of a solution; however, the design has some advantages such as making it possible to get a true tablet experience along with a regular notebook experience.
John Siracusa of Ars Technica has written a compelling post on why the hype over the tablet is overblown with regard to its technical capabilities, and why we aren’t likely to be blown away on that front.
The biggest reason John is right is that many of the futuristic ideas being written about ignore the wisdom of versioning strategy. Sure, some of them will make it into the product eventually, but they likely won’t (and should not) be in version 1.0
When developing the iPhone, Apple had a lot of the ideas that didn’t make it into the initial version. If they had wanted to, Apple probably could have released the iPhone with the App store from the beginning. But just because you can do something technologically doesn’t mean you should. The market needs to be ready to understand and assign value that technical achievement in order for it to succeed (in order for people to buy). Even if Apple had the technical capacity to release the app store then, it wouldn’t have made sense strategically because the market was not yet ready for it, and needed time to absorb the rest of the iPhone capabilities first. So Apple waited until the following year, and by then the market understood iPhone 1.0 and was ready for the 2.0 version
With most technology products, it takes a while for the market to absorb the new ideas and functionality. If a manufacturer includes too much stuff in a new version, the market tends to get confused. Confusion over what a product is supposed to do (its value proposition) is the leading reason that people choose not to buy: they don’t get why they should want or need it.
Apple is masterful at making sure that its audience—consumers and the consumer media—gets it. By that I mean that these constituencies are able to digest and understand why they should want or need the product. In the case of the tablet, while some of the ideas being put forth are certainly interesting, they might simply be too much too soon. The market first needs to absorb version 1.0 of the tablet before it can be ready to absorb versions 2.0 and 3.0.
Best line from the article, “There is the very real possibility that this could be Jobs’ last major new product launch… Does anyone really think Jobs is going to go out betting on a niche product? No.”
I agree with John Gruber’s post… “I think The Tablet is nothing short of Apple’s reconception of personal computing.”
We’ll see…
There have certainly been some hardware accessories for the iPhone, but most have come in the form of cases, a few of which have extra batteries or a credit card reader. The problem with hardware accessories for iPhone is most get in the way of what most people use the phone for primarily: talking. After all, it is called iPhone.
The tablet will be different. Since its not intended to be a device you talk on (though I suspect people will hook it up to VOIP apps like Skype and use a bluetooth headset to do just that), the annoyance factor of adding a hardware accessory will be lower. People won’t be trying to stuff the device in a pocket or purse and it likely won’t be going all the places your phone goes (which for most people is everywhere they go).
This opens up a nearly infinite world of possibilities and I suspect we’ll see all sorts of hardware accessories you would never have imagined. Whereas the iPhone was marked by the success of the App store, I suspect the tablet will be marked by the success of hardware accessories (and apps too of course).
Some possibilities include:
There has been much debate on the question of “why does anyone need a bigger iPhone?”
Many have opined that the tablet will just be a bigger iPhone and in that view they find it hard to justify why they would need such a device. Apple has obviously considered all this too. Steve Jobs is rumored to have twice killed the tablet project for this reason, along the way asking “what use does this have other then browsing the internet while you’re on the shitter?” (paraphrased).
I think the strategy Apple is pursuing is a lot bolder then simply a bigger iPhone. I think they’re looking at all the devices we currently have in our homes, cars, offices and other places we spend time and asking themselves which of those hardware products can be replaced or made more effective by pairing it with a device like the tablet.
Examples of such hardware include:
I think the vision here is that the tablet could work with or replace a lot of this stuff.
When you really think about it, there are a lot of gadgets and gizmos lying around most people’s houses, cars, and workplaces, and most of those feature bad software that offers poor user experiences.
The biggest lesson the iPhone taught us was that demand exists for a lot of very diverse applications to fill specific niches, few of which are large enough on their own to justify a dedicated device. The brilliance on Apple’s part was building a device and a development ecosystem that allowed those diverse applications to be constructed by others and to come together on one platform that we all carry in our pocket. This led to a shared development cost, an insanely rapid development of niche applications and a far better user experience for those applications. The results of this strategy have been overwhelming.
I predict that Apple’s tablet strategy will follow this model. It will rely on creating a hardware device that has a few specific uses that Apple will define and then Apple is going to rely on the developer community to produce applications that fit the varied uses that people will think up.
For Apple’s part, the leading application the company is likely to target in my opinion is magazine and book reading since this activity fits with the iTunes model extremely well and is a market desperately looking for innovation and new forms of monetization. I expect we’ll see some form of generic pricing of magazines (something like $1.99 per issue or $9.99 a year for 12 issues feels right). Publishers are going to begin shifting their production focus to the tablet in large numbers and as revenue begins to come in from that source, we’ll see news stand magazine prices increase steadily to make up for the decreased sales volume.
If this is indeed where the marketing focus is, you can be sure that Apple will have spent exhaustive amounts of time perfecting the user’s reading experience. It will be something totally new and will blow us away by its sheer elegance and simplicity.
