BenCrowder.net

Today is Monday, which means only two more days till Apple announces the tablet. Seriously, I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it and have to restrain myself from jumping up and down in my cubicle. Come Wednesday at 11:00, I’ll be glued to Engadget or MacRumorsLive watching the liveblog feed and tweeting up a storm.

Whence the excitement? This is going to revolutionize the personal computing world. It’s going to turn things on their head. It’s going to change everything.

I don’t know how, but there’s electricity in the air and my bones are telling me that this is way, way bigger than the iPhone. Steve Jobs has apparently said, “This will be the most important thing I’ve ever done.” It’s Steve’s magnum opus, even more so than the iPhone or the iPod or iTunes or the original Mac. That’s saying a lot. And he’s extremely happy with it, which is also saying a lot.

Man oh man, this is better than Christmas. (Don’t tell my wife I said that. ;)) And yes, I’m saving up to buy one. (Oh, I’m also expecting iPhone OS 4.0 to be announced on Wednesday, with new multitouch gestures, some new way of organizing apps, and a new lock screen. That’s exciting too, but the tablet is the big kahuna.)

Since half the fun is in wild guessing, here, dear reader, are my speculations. I’m prepared to be wrong, but I’m also prepared to be blown away by whatever it is Apple has come up with. Blind faith? No. Apple’s recent track record gives me confidence. (Even in spite of the Apple TV.) Seriously, people, this is going to be big. Huge. This is a turning point in technology history.

Without further ado, then, here are the new Apple tablet specs…as in speculations. ;)

• Canvas. If it’s not called Canvas, then I have no idea what it’ll be called, but there’s no way it’ll be the iSlate or iPad or iTablet. Apple has better taste than that. (Granted, they do have a product line filled with iThings and MacThings, but I think this will be revolutionary enough to warrant its own new naming scheme.)
• Either a 7″ or 10″ screen. 10″ sounds more likely from what I’ve been reading on the interwebs, and it’s still small enough to carry around easily (though not in your pocket, of course). I don’t think it’ll be a phone, at least not the kind we’re used to.
• New multitouch gestures. No idea what these will be like but I’m excited to find out. I’m betting they’ll be using the fingerprint technique they patented, though.
• A brilliant new input method. I think it’ll be new but simple and, in retrospect, completely obvious. I’m not counting on a full virtual keyboard (typing on one while holding the tablet with your other hand would be a pain), definitely not on a slide-out physical keyboard or a stylus. Maybe they’ll have a small virtual keyboard slide out of the side of the screen like the OS X dock. Probably not. It’ll probably have something to do with those multitouch gestures.
• Amazing battery life. This might be solar-powered (Apple has already patented the idea) or something else, but for a tablet to really become ubiquitous, the battery life has to be a lot better than anything we’ve seen before. They might not be quite there yet, but I’d bet that within five to ten years we’ll have infinite battery life. No more charging — your phone and computer will always have power. Mmm.
• New OS. By which I mean something that isn’t OS X and isn’t iPhone OS but has a shared core. It’ll probably be more similar to iPhone OS than to OS X. It has to be if they’re going to reinvent computing for the masses. (It’ll sandbox things so users don’t have to worry about where files are saved, for example.) It’s not just going to be a Mac tablet. It’s going to be something new.
• Both 3G and wifi. In 2010, constant access to the Internet is a must. Since free wifi isn’t ubiquitous yet, I’m betting Apple’s worked a deal with Verizon (as has been rumored for a year or two now). No plan necessary, just like the Kindle.
• $1000 price tag. While I wish it would be cheaper ($300–400), it’ll probably start out expensive. (I’m betting part of this will be the packaged 3G plan price. More expensive in the short term but far more cost-effective in the long.) But to become ubiquitous, and for normal people to justify buying one if they already have a computer and already have a phone, it almost has to be cheaper. We’ll see.
• Books. With the larger screen, books can be beautiful. I can’t wait. And Apple has apparently been in talks with HarperCollins, so they’re obviously thinking about books on some level. I see this going one of two ways — either they come up with a specialized ebook file format (hopefully based on EPUB) and sell books directly on the iTunes Store just like music, or they go the App Store route and let publishers package up the books themselves and sell them as apps that happen to be book readers (as is currently the case on the iPhone). I’m hoping for the former, because I think that would do a lot more good for the ebook world (giving more weight to the EPUB standard and hopefully making it the MP3 of books), but I’m betting on the latter. I’m wondering if iTunes LP is also connected to this somehow…
• New section of App Store. They’re not just going to scale iPhone apps up to tablet size. Microsoft would do that, but Apple won’t, because Apple has good taste. No, tablet apps will have to be written specifically for the tablet. There might be a lot of shared functionality (so it won’t be that hard to port apps over), but you won’t be able to just press a button and have your app work on the tablet.

Are they going to use the new haptic feedback technology? Probably not, but dang, it would be cool.

Speaking of cool, I do expect some cool, glamorous new technology in the tablet, but the more exciting thing (for me, anyway) will be the re-envisioning of how we use computers. The iPhone paved the first part of the road, making a pocket computing device that normal people can easily use. The tablet is the next big step.

Will it be as powerful as, say, a Mac? No. But it doesn’t have to be. The tablet isn’t going to be aimed at those of us who live and breathe computers (though we’ll use it, too), and it’s not going to do everything that a full-blown computer can do, but it’s going to do the things that matter, and it’s going to do them in a simple, easy, enjoyable way that normal people can understand. It’s going to make using a computer as easy as using a toaster.

That’s why the tablet is going to change the world.