Mexico Medical Student |

Steve,

I got the news today from the San Jose Expo about the video iPod. I think that’s awesome, I really do. I really don’t have any desire for most music videos, but the ability to at least take my own videos to show family/friends was the next logical step from the photo iPod. Using the ties Apple has with Disney to make ABC broadcast TV shows available immediately is totally the best, and I fully expect more to come. I also think it’s great that you made the iMac G5 what it should have been from the beginning: a truly capable multimedia hub for the family room, not the study room.

However, the lack of TV input, much less PVR capability leaves the iMac short of stellar. I mean, how many times are we going to see our photo collection? The video iPod was expected. Of course with you, we can never be sure, but it wasn’t the jaw-dropping, blindsided-by-a-2×4 kind of moment. Personally, I would have liked to see more text readable on the screen for the music file data; a 320×240 resolution might be great for a 2.5″ screen, but on a TV it certainly won’t win over those who want archive-quality video. I really, really hope that by Macworld 2006 in January or at any time before the Christmas holidays that you unveil the thing for which I’ve been waiting most anxiously: an Apple Tablet form-factor PowerBook. I don’t know what you would call it (please not “iTablet”), but I like “Mac Slate” or “PowerPad.”

The days of the Newton are long gone, I understand that. PDAs have been and continue to wane as “big” computing technology gets smaller. My overpriced Palm Tungsten T5 (supplanted all-too-quickly by the Palm Lifedrive and TX) is too small to be a decent note-taking computer with a wireless keyboard and woefully inadequate to jot notes. Even if I had my thin, portable 12″ PowerBook back, it’s difficult to transcribe diagrams on the board or overhead with a word processor. Moreover, I often have digital images from scans or from professors’ slides…it is a nightmare trying to use that as a template for labeling with Word. Dealing with the learning curve of Illustrator or Canvas to simple annotate what a professor is pointing at on a projector screen locally on my computer is not an option.

You know from your iPod sales and research that convergence is about lifestyle as much as convenience. How much more a part of the human lifestyle can a computer be than a book? A PowerBook, although nicely named, is anything but. Slap a Wacom tablet’s sensors onto a sheet of transparent acetate on top of an LCD panel, and you’re halfway there. You already have InkWell in MacOSX–do you really think such technology should be limited by the tiny few graphic designers who have tablets? Most of them don’t use it for writing anyway. Please don’t make me go buy a Windows Tablet PC. Please! I co-exist with Windows just fine, but a tablet computer would be such a personal, always-at-the-hip part of your everyday existence; to think I’d have to deal with a Windows XP environment so intimately, well, it’s not pleasant. I refuse to go down the dark path of Linux on my tablet. I’m in med school now; I don’t have a weekend to compile drivers to see if I can get bluetooth working or tweak /etc/X11/xorg.conf settings to see if my pen works like something more fine-grained than a twig. I love UNIX and always will, but I want things to work. That’s why I buy Mac; I always get the best of both worlds.

Except with a tablet. Just buy a company who makes tablets, slap your logo on them, and let it loose with Intel-based MacOSX–I don’t care what chip is inside. I care about the software that runs it and the interoperability with peripherals and networks. I care about the natural elegance of MacOS, the natural intuitiveness that I know would drive a Mac tablet interface. I think of using Microsoft Journal or OneNote to record my most personal sketches in the most primitive and personal way–with a pen–and I want to weep, not just because of how bad it would be with Windows, but how good it could be with a Mac.

Please consider this humble request. Your ever faithful disciple,
–ec