Three issues with all the Apple tablet predictions
Besides the obvious – that I will want one – I have a few thoughts about the tablet Apple will supposedly unveil tomorrow. There are three areas which I think deserve some attention:
The Case
An enlarged iPhone-like tablet seems troubling. The case and screen of the iPhone seem unlikely to scale well to three or four times their current size, the end result of which would be a device which seems somewhat brittle. iPhone screens seems to crack like a pile of dry leaves, so increasing the surface area by two orders of magnitude seems a recipe for continual breakage.
The Weight
Again, simply scaling the iPhone up larger isn’t going to work – especially if the display uses the same optical glass and the case materials are similar. Assuming that the intent is to provide a device which, at least in some instances, can be held like a paperback book or magazine, the device has to be lighter per square inch than the iPhone – and significantly so.
It’s simply a matter of ergonomics: while you cradle an iPhone in your palm with your fingers and palm wrapped around the four edges, the weight of the device is distributed through your wrist and into your forearm. With a magazine-sized tablet, you can’t wrap your hands around it that way – you have to pinch the device with four fingers on the back, and your thumb on the front. While this is easy enough to do for extended periods with a magazine weighing less than an ounce, just try it with a tablet weighing a pound or more. Which brings us to the third quandry:
The Input “Device”
There are a number of intriguing possibilities, but one thing is nearly certain: your hands are involved. Voice control is clever, but pointless: in the best case scenario, complete and instant voice recognition still leaves you with a low-bandwidth control channel which can’t be used very well in public. (Most people can only say one thing at a time.) And some sort of facial recognition system is very futuristic sounding, but baffling: exactly what facial gesture does one make to “check email” or “empty the trash” or “redo last filter”?
And for anyone who wants to suggest some sort of eye-tracking technology, let me put that one to rest: even the best systems (my company owns one) require calibration each time you sit down in front of it, and the triangulation assumes that the screen itself remains fairly stationary.
OK, so you’re hands are involved. There are a couple of issues:
If you’re holding the tablet in landscape mode, with one hand on either side, then the UI controls need to be arrayed up and down each side. Ditto in portrait mode:
That’s all well and good, but while you’re holding the tablet with both hands, what are you using to control the applications?
The other possibility is that you hold it with one hand, and interact with the other. There are problems with this, too: single-handed interaction with a multi-touch display limits the kinds of applications you can have, and each tap with your free hand increases the fatigue on the other hand holding the device up.
So what about putting the device on a surface? Well, this frees up your hands, which is great: fully interactive display, multi-touch, virtual keyboard – all of these things become feasible and reasonable. But there’s another problem – with the device on a flat surface, you’d have to be hovering above it directly in order to have a good, clean view of the screen. At an angle (even assuming you don’t lose brightness and contrast) the perspective is going to make interacting with any application rather frustrating.
So, what’s the solution?
One possibility is the integration of a laser-based projected keyboard, and an integrated stand for propping the screen up on a surface. The former is already widely available, and the latter could be accomplished with with a built-in “wing” that worked much like the flap on the back of a picture frame backing, or as an optional wrap-around case.
It will be interesting to see what solution Apple chooses.
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