How the Apple Tablet can really succeed

Giv­en that Apple isn’t really pay­ing atten­tion to my mus­ings, I’m rather free to go on about things I *think* they can do to make their products, and make them better.

I’ve been fol­low­ing Apple’s tab­let designs since the New­ton Mes­sage pad. An inter­est­ing device, yet not very practical.

I’m com­pletely smit­ten by my iPod Touch. It does what I expect it to, and will likely do things I can­’t even con­ceive of yet due to the devel­op­ment pro­gram and App Store marketplace.

But that brings us to the next big thing, the Myth­ic­al Apple Tablet.

On the Future Shop Techb­log, I wax poet­ic about the 6 Things I want to see in an Apple Tab­let, so I won’t repeat them here, just go read that post and come back — I’ll wait 🙂

Ok, now the main things I think Apple can do to make the Tab­let a staple of every house­hold is to:

• Keep the price down
• Don’t tie it to one mobile data provider
• Open devel­op­ment up — make this suck­er Jail­broken from the outset

Let’s take these one at a time, start­ing with price.
The Tab­let is likely going to be com­pet­ing in the space cur­rently occu­pied by net­books and laptops.  Cur­rently, net­books are the entry-level unit for cas­u­al com­put­ing, but if the Tab­let is priced com­pet­it­ively, they can own that space from day one. Sure, you can­’t run PC apps on it, but wait, maybe you can. Giv­en improved horsepower, why would­n’t a PC emu­lat­or be avail­able shortly.

Buh bye netbooks.

Mobile data providers
Con­tracts suck, espe­cially in Canada. Mobile brows­ing via cel-data con­tracts are con­veni­ent, but expens­ive. Wi-Fi hot­spots are more pre­val­ent these days, but not ubi­quit­ous. So Wi-Fi will be in, but so will cel­lu­lar. Which means there will be an arrange­ment with a pro­vider, of course. It’s simply too prof­it­able for Apple to not con­sider this type of arrangement.

But if they did ‘unlock’ all the Tab­lets, that would really change the land­scape for the data pro­viders. There would be the oppor­tun­ity for real com­pet­i­tion, because you know that these devices will be data pigs, read­ing magazines, daily news­pa­pers, album art, movies etc.

If I had the abil­ity to choose the plan that best fit my needs, you can bet I’d not have bought an iPod Touch but an iPhone back when I made that decision. But we’re in Canada, and things don’t really work that way.

Open Devel­op­ment
Well, this won’t hap­pen either, but it would be nice if it did. The homebrew devel­op­ment com­munity is cre­at­ive and motiv­ated — that’s how the iPhone got Jail­broken in the first place. Apps for Jail­broken iPhones are quite cre­at­ive and really push the edge of mobile tech…but they also expose the device to worms, vir­uses and pri­vacy breaches. Not good if you’re brand is built on a rock-sol­id ‘appli­ance’ like user exper­i­ence. So this really won’t happen.

Ok, well that’s them then, the three things I think Apple could do that would really make the Tab­let suc­ceed. I’m think­ing the last two won’t hap­pen, but if they could some­how keep the price down, say at the level of a good-qual­ity net­book, that alone would make strides in get­ting the Tab­let into house­holds, giv­en the Tab­let has all the rest of the awe­some Apple good­ness behind it. We’ll find out on Wednesday.

What say you?