AIEEEE! It is said the tablet cometh!
Gizmodo rounds up the latest evidence on whether Apple is actually developing a “tablet” and digs up a pretty compelling case that not only is it underway, but Apple is actively seeking to get print ported over to the device:
Two people related to the NYTimes have separately told me that in June, paper was approached by Apple to talk about putting the paper on a “new device.” The R&D labs have long worked on versions of the paper meant to be navigated without a keyboard or mouse, showing up on Windows tablets and on multiple formats using Adobe Air. The NYTimes, of course, also publishes via their iPhone application. Jobs has, during past keynotes, called the NYTimes the “best newspaper in the world.”
Apple is also talking to textbook publishers, it is said, with a look to moving expensive textbooks to a more portable form. Gizmodo concludes:
Some I’ve talked to believe the initial content will be mere translations of text to tablet form. But while the idea of print on the Tablet is enticing, it’s nothing the Kindle or any E-Ink device couldn’t do. The eventual goal is to have publishers create hybridized content that draws from audio, video and interactive graphics in books, magazines and newspapers, where paper layouts would be static. And with release dates for Microsoft’s Courier set to be quite far away and Kindle stuck with relatively static E-Ink, it appears that Apple is moving towards a pole position in distribution of this next-generation print content. First, it’ll get its feet wet with more basic repurposing of the stuff found on dead trees today.
Obviously, comics and stuff are going to fit in there…somewhere.
10/1/09 at 12:04 pm
[…] [Via Heidi and Gizmodo] Posted in Technology […]
10/1/09 at 1:45 pm
Personally? I can’t WAIT.
10/1/09 at 2:14 pm
I’d be more worried for print in general (and not just comics) in light of the announcement of Microsoft’s fold-out book-format tablet currently going by the name of Courier (it was featured on Attack of the Show within the past week.)
I know, I know, Mac user are going to recoil in horror at the word Microsoft even though virtually every “strength” of the Mac is based on the fact that it has a small audience.[1] But the PC Vs. Mac argument is really beside the point. Microsoft is developing a book-like fold-out tablet to simulate print reading.
That’s IMO a necessary factor that tablets require in order for comics to work in the medium. Two pages juxtaposed against each other — reading two pages at a time — cuts the page-turning by half and therefore reduces the tediousness by half. Not to mention that book-format tablets will allow comics to do double-page spreads without the added tediousness of turning the tablet on its side to read it and then turn it back to read the rest of the pages.
The two-part principle: all comics pages have to be displayed at the same size and tablets are too narrow in portrait width/landscape height to display any comics other than manga, mini-comics, newspaper comic strips and single-panel editorial cartoons in the landscape format of single-screen tablets.
If/when Amazon or Apple do their own book-format tablets, that’s when reading via the tablets will take off. Single-screen tablets will probably be most useful in professional situations (like how they’re used on CSI: Horatio for writing information down at the scene of the given incident)
– Rob
[1] Most demonstrably, in the fact that Mac isn’t so much impervious to viruses as hackers are disinterested in hacking Mac because its market penetration is so small.)
10/1/09 at 2:31 pm
People have been reacting to Gizmodo’s story by going to their own anonymous sources in the tech industry and getting quotes. One such person is Time’s Josh Quittner, whose sources pooh-poohed the Gizmodo story:
Over at the Huffington Post, Fake Steve, of the www.fakesteve.net site, isn’t sure what technology is real, and what’s not, but he says the real story isn’t about technology, it’s about hybridized content:
Note that the Apple tablet story has certified journalists reporting on rumors, and contradictory rumors (unverified facts) at that. That’s how stories develop in some industries, with influential figures stating things anonymously because they want to create buzz, or, perhaps, because they want to create an atmosphere in which “dead trees” publishers will feel more pressure to approach technology companies to make content available, lest they fall to the rear of the pack. Stampedes are bloody.
SRS
10/2/09 at 6:50 am
And there is Alan Moore, in cartoon form, predicting the end.
10/2/09 at 9:03 am
[…] While we wait for someone to confirm Apple’s entry into the ebook device market, let’s look at some of the great stuff you guys have done this week… […]
10/2/09 at 9:27 am
“The eventual goal is to have publishers create hybridized content that draws from audio, video and interactive graphics in books, magazines and newspapers.”
So a web site, then.
10/2/09 at 12:19 pm
Publishers, aware of the threat that an iTunes distribution model could pose to their revenues, are discussing an industry-run storefront for the purchase of issues: