Ben's Place

The buzz around the Apple tablet has been building gradually last year. Rumors have run wild that Apple will introduce its much anticipated 10-inch touchscreen device, and next Wednesday, on January 27th, Cupertino-based computer maker Apple is likely to finally unveil its tablet device.

Here is a very rough outline of the mass market computing devices evolution. First there were desktop PCs, then came the Internet, followed by slimmer PCs shaped like small suitcases – the laptops, which became lighter and lighter over time. In parallel the mobile phone phenomena took place while people started to carry mobile phones with them at all times, making them virtually accessible anytime – anywhere. In the beginning of this century, mobile phones started to have Internet capabilities integrated into them. But the implementation of the phone makers, Nokia and others, got it all wrong for years. Screens were too small, appropriate operating systems were not open for developers, network access was extremely slow and expensive, and the wall-garden approach of the mobile operators dominated and prevented the mobile Internet from flourishing. It was at this stage that the Apple revolution occurred, where many others failed before. Apple connected the dots with the introduction of the iPhone (riding the wave of the iPod’s success), which was so much more than just a great technology.  It was the first time that a mass market mobile phone offered a very wide variety of applications and services connected to the Internet with a reasonable business model and a great user experience. The iPhone became the gold standard for Smartphones, and since then many others have been following.

Apple’s tablet is based on an existing concept, called a netbook which was not adopted by the masses yet. Like most Apple’s products, it would be a high-end one in its category. With a powerful community of applications and developers at hand, convenient touch pad technology, easy to carry and stylish properties, on top of its wondrous marketing capabilities, Apple now intends to reinvent this existing category, just like it did with the iPhone for Smartphones. Although netbooks are much cheaper than what Apple Tablet would cost, competition will emerge and prices will drop with time.

If you own an iPhone or other Smartphone, you are well aware by now, that you can do much with it, spending less time on your PC than ever before. You may check your email and calendar, read news, take pictures, play games, listen to music, access social networks and even watch videos – all done with a device that you carry on at all times, which also serves as your mobile phone. Apple’s Tablet doesn’t come to replace this concept, but to complement it. In a world where internet is so crucial to our daily interaction, such a device can take us one step further from the desktop PCs and laptops, and do even more without them. The Tablet could be the best device for surfing the web and far more suited for reading newspapers, books and blogs. Apple may represent a direct challenge to Amazon, which dominates the fast-growing e-book market with its Kindle product. Additionally, it may become the best solution for watching videos while on the go.

Even more, imagine that the Apple Tablet, whether in this version or next one will come with a new type of tactile, gesture-based keyboard, something a recent Apple patent supports and which is really missing in the iPhone today. Say you could type freely similar to a conventional keyboard, it would immediately become a great device for computing on the go, one that could be used as your primary computer if you wished.

Apple’s Tablet would not just serve the gadget lovers, it would introduce an important category into mobile computing. In just one week we would probably know the product details (like its name, specification and price). Tablet is likely to start shipping in Q2/10. Whether Tablet will make a revolution similar to the iPhone’s one, is yet to be seen. Stay iTuned!

Welcome to the future. I know that a decade ago you didn’t carry your mobile phone with you at all times. It has been very difficult times. Well, now you made it, the future is here, and it is happening as you read this post with that amazing computer you are using, a state of the art creation, which is based on tremendous amount of technologies and innovations. It would not have been that simple to plug-in the computer to the electricity socket has the infrastructure not been in place. There have been lots of inventions that preceded it of course. You are living the future, and you are so lucky to take part in this astonishing journey. This, is the time of our lives.

The following post is intended to provide a teaser to this astounding topic. Many fictional ideas of authors, philosophers and film makers already came into our daily lives, inherently. It seemed so unreal at their times, and yet today’s technology seems to keep pace with their dreams.

In fact, Technology and Advance have become the center of our lives. Whether we notice or not, we are consuming technology every day, immensely. It seems very natural to us, and we tend to take it for granted. The future, though, is also far ahead of us, and there are so many surprises that are waiting for us along the way. That’s right, in this lifetime. There are millions of scientists and engineers that are working on the next big things to come. Some of them, will become things that we just can’t live without. Just like we can’t think of life today without electricity, running water, cars, airplanes, microwave, aircon, TV and so on.

There are people who tend to adopt technologies very quickly; we sometimes refer to them as geeks or early adopters. They are usually super updated about lots of technologies and electronics out there. There are of course those who are extremely slow to adopt technologies; we sometimes refer to them as dinosaurs, slow adopters or "mom and dad", but they do so when it becomes main-stream, without paying attention to it, taking it for granted as we all sometimes do. If you think you are a “dinosaur”, compare yourself to someone your age 2000 years ago, or even a primitive tribe in Africa which is completely isolated from us, and see for yourself. If you really think you are a dinosaur, try going backwards a little further… well, try maybe 60 billion years back. Whether you are a geek, a dinosaur, passionate about new technologies or completely uninterested – you are addicted to Technology and Advance.

Here’s an example. People tend to say, “I use my mobile phone only for voice calls and sometimes for text. I don’t care about the other stuff”. Only for calls and text, I ponder?! Well, imagine you are a legion commander of the Roman army, and you need to convey a message to the Cesar that you’ll need reinforcements; otherwise you’ll lose the campaign. You really wish you could dial a 10 digit number to get to him… but there is no way you could do that. So you send your message via a Messenger. A real Messenger (it was so long ago, there wasn’t even ICQ…) You can’t even write your message on a piece of paper with a pen. It may then take your message 3 weeks to arrive and another 8 weeks for the reinforcements to get to the field. Living at that period, you’re not even aware of how complex things are. Today we take it for granted – transportation is easy, communication is simple. So, next time you text someone, keep this in mind

Take information as another example. It is accessible today almost for everyone, usually for free. You can find almost anything you wish on the Internet. If you want to know something, you don’t need to ask anyone, you just Google it. One, who used to be a knowledgeable person in the Roman times or even 200 years ago, would be considered quite unknowledgeable nowadays. Of course knowledge cannot replace understanding, no argue about that.

So how may the future look like?

It may range from concept that we will probably get to experience, such as personal automatic flying vehicles (like the one from "Back to the Future"), electronic wallet, complete voice recognition, electronic newspaper that changes dynamically as you turn the page, complete wireless home, and such (yes, also pink iPhone ladies).

But it may also evolve to some concepts that seem completely fictional to us today such as teleportation of oneself to another place instantly, reading minds and communicating through telepathy, having our memory backed-up if something happens (or actually reviving ourselves), choosing how your new born looks like and by-passing the pregnancy process, getting into a machine that scans our body and detects any health issues instantly, sensing a movie – true virtual reality (watching, hearing, smelling and touching) or even fly to another galaxy with our family as a “road trip”.

The progress in which technologies have evolved is not linear. Our grandchildren are going to question the way we lived. How could we live without so many things that will look so natural to them. Just like the legion commander would have asked had he been alive today. The pace in which new technologies are and will be introduced is just amazing, and it’s going to get faster than ever. Do you really think we will have to wash and iron manually? I don’t think so.

Watch the Youtube clip below to see what Louis CK thinks about it – everything’s amazing, nobody’s happy

So, are we really that advanced, or in fact, quite primitive? I guess the answer is both, just a matter of perspective, looking back or looking forward. At any rate, stay tuned…