iSlate – calm before the storm

So, we were going through all newly released apps in last days and we couldn’t find anything interesting (mostly apps about attractive persons of female gender + many apps made by app generators like app maker, etc). So let’s take a look at situation in area of Apple tablet that is rumoured to be called “iSlate”.

Actually whole Apple community, and whole computer industry is holding its collective breath and waiting for Apple to launch iSlate on January 27th, 2010. Here is summary of latest rumours about iSlate and iPhone:

• next update of iPhone OS (probably 4.0) is postponed by Apple on purpose because it has the same API partially that iSlate has, so releasing it early would reveal things about iSlate and Apple does not want to reveal anything before the launch date
• Valleywag rag-blog announced bounty for people who can deliver proof of existence of iSlate and interestingly Apple lawyers contacted them informing that this bounty is illegal and by the way indirectly confirming that iSlate is real
• there are some wild rumours about next iPhone, including: it’s coming in April, not July; it has touch-sensitive back (similarly like Magic Mouse for Mac); it has front-facing video camera… but we reckon that reality will be more down-to-earth: next iPhone will come in July and will only have 2 improvements: higher resolution display and 5 megapixel camera
• first estimation of piracy among iPhone apps was made by WSJ and they say that developers lost $450 million due to piracy – that is possible due to iPhone jailbreaking (that’s why we are against it)
• it is speculated that iSlate will have some fancy technologies that will elevate it above existing mobile devices with touchscreen, but these speculations are so wild that we simply cannot believe them – including tactile feedback on-screen (not by vibration of the whole device, but through some dynamic protrusions or so), new weird multi-touch gestures

Conclusion: even though Apple has not sent any invitation to the iSlate launch event yet, the whole industry is waiting for January 27th, 2010 – as if new revolutionary devices that will change everything – would be unveiled. We think that reality will be more down-to-Earth and Apple will just unveil big iPhone-like device with 10-inch big screen. Since Windows 7 already has native support for multitouch and several slate-like notebooks and convertible Tablet PCs are already available, the power of Apple’s iSlate will lie most likely not so much in hardware but in software and services: new app store for iSlate, ability to watch movies with iTunes extras, backward compatibility with iPhone apps (all 140,000 apps will run out-of-the-box), new gaming experience and finally Apple’s deals regarding eBooks and magazines.

It is worth noting that it was iPhone that brought smartphones to the mainstream and succeeded where others failed, Apple managed to elevated smartphone device from the small circles of geeks to big masses. Similar situation might be with Apple tablet: Tablet PCs had no big success (merely 1% or less of notebooks are Tablet PCs) and even despite native support for multitouch in Windows 7 still sales of touchscreen-equipped PCs are not big, but Apple tablet aka iSlate might offer something new, some new way of interaction or some new interactive content, something that will indeed change computing for ever.

One is for sure: if on January 27th, 2010 nothing will happen and Apple will not announce anything, whole computer industry would be disappointed. The hype and buzz about iSlate has been huge…

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