Gruber has two things utterly, totally and magnificently correct in his essay on the potential Apple Tablet and associated OS.
If you’re supposed to watch video on it, how do you prop it up? Holding it in your hands? Flat on a table seems like the wrong angle entirely; but a fold-out “arm” to prop it up, à la a picture frame, seems clumsy and inelegant.
I’d go further and change the first words to say If you’re supposed to use it.
How can I sit in Costa with a spicy meatball panini and medium latte and prop the tablet up so I can read the online version of whichever electronic magazine or newspaper I’ve chosen that particular morning? The iPhone works for me because I can use it despite this limitation. It’s small enough to prop up against something and light enough to hold for extended periods of time, but not too long mind. A tablet will require a stand of some description.
But that’s not really all that important I’m sure Apple will have some reason why I’m wrong and Steve ‘hypno-toad’ Jobs will convince me that it’s my problem not theirs, it was this next bit that really had me:
The same Asperger-y critics who dismissed the iPhone will focus on all that The Tablet doesn’t do
Totally spot on.
Not just about potential Apple products either. The XYZ thing lacks ABC so it’s doomed to failure. Where failure is defined by the inability to become the dominant company in a particular marketplace because having more than 50% market share is ‘winner‘. Or, that a product can’t possibly succeed in as it lack a key feature that ‘target audience’ demands.
I mean, those non replaceable batteries in the iPhone just destroyed any chance of it becoming popular.
