Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
If they go the big iPod touch route, they won't be setting any benchmarks; since the touch has weak hardware compared to smartphones. Apple needs to go the mini iPad route.
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Steve Jobs said that Apple would never make a smaller iPad. Putting the new iTablet into the "Touch" family would preserve his wishes and re-energize a soon to be irrelevant product line. This could provide Apple a smoother upgrade path for non-iPhone users into the IOS.
In 2000 I had a Handspring Visor with the Eye module and cell phone module. It only took the cell phone industry 8 more years to catch up. Why? Because the tech and Ma Bell world had its collective head stuck in a paradigm.
I read an interview once with the designer of the original Palm Pilot which was the PDA grandfather of our smartphone culture. In it he described the design process. He carried mocked up prototypes around for weeks at a time until he came up with a form factor that fit in a shirt pocket. He talked about the design paradigm of Newspapers, Notebooks and Notepads. They chose to go after the pocket sized Notepad user because they generally tended to be the Doers, Thinkers and decision makers of the day.
They deliberately did not go after DayRunners and Franklin Planners because their product appeared to accentuate them. When Handspring introduced the Visor with its plug in module that allowed us to add functionality to a Palm device he users began to adapt, modify or abandon those pen and paper products to the new technology. Look around a meeting today, how many Franklin Planners do you see?
The 1st gen Kindle Fire allowed the target users to get their hands on an affordable, useable device to experiment with and beta test the next generation of tablets. The Nexus 7 looks amazing. Just like they were in the Amazon KF2 design meetings. Apple will have about 90 days to come up with some mind blowing features.