Area 709

So Apple introduced a new device today. It’s called the iPad, and it’s basically a touchscreen tablet, the size of a small laptop screen. It’ll have a GPS in it, an optional 3G radio (like a mobile phone, so it can connect to the internet wherever there’s mobile phone coverage), a decent processor, and basically function like a larger version of the iPhone, or a laptop without a real hardware keyboard.

Significantly, Apple is also introducing a bookstore that will sell books in electronic format. The New York Times, which I believe to be an excellent newspaper on the verge of the abyss in terms of its ongoing economic viability, has thrown its support behind a proper digital version of its paper publication for the iPad.

There’s a few reasons I think it’s an exceptionally interesting device. First, it can be a bridge between the old-school printed word, and the up-to-the-minute immediacy of digital publishing. It’s 727AM on a Thursday morning here in Melbourne as I write this, and the newspapers here won’t carry the announcement of this new device until tomorrow’s edition, as it was only unveiled a few hours ago. But say I want to read about it, and watch the video of it’s unveiling, and I don’t want to sit at my computer to do so. I can walk around with my Macbook, or read it on my iPhone, but neither are ideal. Even my 13” Macbook is huge, in terms of the room one is able to use in/on a bus, train, car, or toilet (just a few of my favourite reading spots) or even at a sidewalk café or hotel bar. The iPhone isn’t good for serious reading – the battery flattens, the screen won’t support ads and a readable amount of text at the same time (and we need the ads, unfortunately, as it drives the revenue model that makes the net go round, at least for now), and if you like to read/skim a large volume of text quickly, the iPhone just doesn't hvae the display for it. It's like building a ship in a bottle.

Related to this is the issue of accessibility. Take my father as an example. He's a smart man, and pretty plugged into technology, and we've agreed that there are a large number of iPhone apps that he'd have great fun with. If only, at nearly-70-years-old, he could read the screen comfortably. He cannot. The iPad gives him - and the millions of older men and women like him that want to read and communicate and compute on the go but find no joy in squinting at a tiny mobile phone screen - access to the zillions of super-cool apps in the app-store, in a format they can easily work with.

The other side of the equation for me is what this will do to reading, publishing, newspapers and online communication. It’s no secret that the newspaper industry is in serious trouble. The economics of printing a daily paper on paper, physically distributing it, and physically consuming it, no longer make sense. But the demand for information is certainly still there – and the value of real journalism and real journalists can still be realized, if there’s a proper conduit. Using the App Store / iTunes model, I would gladly pay $3/week for a New York Times subscription that gave me all the content I can read through the iPhone NYT app, but downloaded to the unit while I’m not using it so I don’t have to wait for every page to load, and laid out on screen in a manner physically analogous to printed broadsheet newspapers. (Ideally without having to re-fold the thing afterwards. I never was good at that.) Apple was the first company to present a viable alternative to piracy for music lovers with iTunes. It's not a stretch to say that it could well reinvigourate the newspaper and book printing industries, too - both in terms of revenue models and in terms of barriers to entry.  

Now imagine being able to properly browse blogs and online forums like Slashdot, Tranceaddict, Digg, and so on. If you’re a regular Digg reader and you’ve used Digg’s iPhone app, you know what I’m talking about in terms of what you’re missing. One of these with a 3G radio would be ideal for that kind of 95% reading, 5% typing activity. And given how good those little folding keyboards for the Palm devices got I’m sure a folding Bluetooth keyboard will be available from the usual suspects (Targus, Belkin et al) in short order.  (Yes I’m a portable computing junkie, I think I went through five or six palm pilots, finally throwing my Tungsten T3 in the trash when I left Canada a month ago.)

Anyone who wonders if there’s a market for these things at $499 need only look at the number of units already sold of a) Amazon’s Kindle, which is a tenth of the technology of the iPad; and b) what an unsubsidized (i.e. no contract) iPhone or iPod touch sells for and compare what you get.

Maybe I’m overly optimistic. But Apple has a pretty darn good track record with regards to getting things right – particularly over the past five years. I’m already imaging myself kicking back on my 60-min train-and-bus commute to work every day, reading real newspaper articles written by real journalists who are getting paid real money again, as their publications are seeing real uptick in subscription numbers for the first time since Watergate.