By: Charles Stack
Next Wednesday, still basking in the glow of Monday’s blowout earnings release, Steve Jobs will present Apple’s new category-defining tablet device. It will be a 10″ multi-touch color screen with keyboard, gesture, handwriting, and voice recognition based on the new iPhone OS 4.0 software. The surface will also serve as an optional interface to Apple desktops and notebooks. This will allow users to use it in place of a touchpad, mouse, or Wacom tablet.
The support for multi-touch gestures will be the most innovative feature. In addition to scrolls, swipes, wipes, deletes, zooms, and spins handwriting recognition will utilize a gesture that mimics holding an invisible pencil. We will need to start thinking of the tablet surface as an instrument to be played with all ten fingers. ‘Dancing Phalanges’ Multi-touch opens up new opportunities for music, games, map navigation, data manipulation, and much more. Add some tactile feedback and my head spins with new possibilities.
Publishers of books, movies and magazines will join Jobs on stage and extol the virtues of the new device, implying that it will save their industry. And then spend the next 2 years failing to jump the curve, while consumers enjoy ever more innovative forms of art, news, entertainment, and education from unknown underfunded startups that figure out the best new ways of exploiting the platform.
Apple stock will jump becoming the 2d most valuable company in the world.
