Unrealistic Expectations Will Affect Popular View Of Apple's Newest Tablet
March 3, 2012
As with any pending Apple reveal, the approaching iPad announcement has frothed up quite the speculative stir within our increasingly antsy tech community. Many a user is positively giddy with excitement, and -- whether ready to stand in line for the first time or hawk his second-gen tablet for a discounted third -- the Daft Punk promise of harder, better, faster, and stronger is, for most folks, almost too much to handle.
Of course, there are others who aren't quite so enthralled. Surprisingly, though, that number seems much larger than prior cycles would indicate, and such waning anticipation is an inevitable (and inevitably serious) hurdle for Apple going forward. Unfortunately, as a side effect of the Cupertino company's unprecedented string of recent successes, the problem is likely to be fundamentally insoluble. Apple simply cannot maintain the unrealistic pace of yearly revolution -- at least as far as that concept is currently (and incorrectly) defined.
To be certain, we've seen all manner of comments and analyses across the blogosphere these last few frantic months, and everything so far presented and expected about Apple's new tablet says it will, in fact, be a substantial upgrade from the awesome iPad 2. It's alleged to include a Retina display, a faster CPU, a beefier GPU, dramatically improved cameras, a bigger, longer-lasting battery, and the famed Siri digital assistant. There might even be a capacitive home button, more RAM, increased storage, and a wider range of cellular support (read "LTE") onboard. From every technical standpoint imaginable, the iPad 3 is going to be a completely new and massively better portable machine.
Still, it doesn't seem to be coming off that way.
Just like Apple burst our iPhone 5 bubble after announcing its 4S handset late last year, there's little question that -- outwardly, at least -- the iPad 3 will be something of a letdown for many potential upgraders. Faced with the sure reality of its off-the-charts specs, however, I've had some difficulty unravelling the puzzling "why" in all this. But persistence pays off, and my answer is sickeningly simple: People don't consider something new and different unless it looks new and different. You know, on the outside.
It all goes back to a piece I wrote more than two months ago:
We have now, perhaps more than anytime else since 2007, very little to look forward to in the personal applications of the mobile technology realm. Sure, there’ll be a few surprises here and there, but we won’t see another truly revolutionary piece of hardware for some long while. ... No, the next several years will likely mirror the late nineties and early aughts, where we saw great change in hardware substance but no change at all in hardware style. ... As I’ve written some several times before, pieces of kit like the iPhone and iPad are, ergonomically, fast approaching the very real point of diminishing returns. Nowhere are these physical limits more apparent than in the design jump from the first-gen iPad to the iPad 2. While the former was certainly slim enough, the latter is almost impossibly thin. Shaving anything more than a few millimeters of thickness off its aluminum housing would render the product too sharp, awkward, and uncomfortable to use. Imagine an iPad-sized iPod touch 5G, and you’ll see what I mean. Ouch!In the comments section of the above-cited article, reader Aula astutely condensed my longwinded verbosity and expertly broke down my overarching (but, I dare bet, not overreaching) message:
Design is limited by the fact that we have fingers and voice boxes.No new iPad will look or behave differently than any existing iPad, just as no new iPhone or iPod touch will deviate drastically from the form and feel we've already seen. But even as the iPhone 5 might feature a small screen boost to the fabled four inches, its bigger brother has no such room -- or reason -- to grow (or, for that matter, shrink). Those of you opting to skip the iPad 3 release on the grounds that it doesn't represent a true step forward will be sorely disappointed come models four and five and six and so on. The introduction of some radical external alteration to the iPad line is a lifetime away, and there will be no newsworthy physical redo until the paradigms of digital interaction change entirely. And, for as long as iOS remains a touch-based operating system, that's just not happening. Take a look at some of the concepts floating around the internet, and you'll see how change for the sake of change will never disrupt, outpace, or replace change for the sake of evolved interaction. Until some actual benefit is presented in such futuristic vision, the aesthetic realities of tablet computing in general -- and the iPad in particular -- will remain relatively fixed. Beyond the short-term promise of autostereoscopic (a.k.a. glasses-free) 3D, the newest trend du jour seems to be the transparent LCD. But, much like we've seen with the industry's various 3D solutions, it's readily apparent from Samsung's recent (first?) exercise in innovation that the practical applications of such tech have nothing to offer beyond eye-candy gimmickry. See for yourself: Just as 3D brings little more than the rare "ooh" and "ahh," there is no functional advantage to a see-through display. Plus, via its various apps, the iPad already features (or is perfectly equipped to feature) most of the "benefits" that transparent panels theoretically offer. As long as there's a rear-facing camera, this will always be the case. Even you, prestigious red dot award winner, are unconvincing. Everything you can do, iPad can do better. There are lots more examples online of this falsely important approach (like Thomas Laenner's garish mock-up), but they're all equally unnecessary on a basic hardware level. Fun and imaginative, sure, but not seriously compelling. This concept, on the other hand, is more interactively sound: Unfortunately, while most of its ideas are already achievable with modern components (albeit bezels are here to stay!), its blockbuster highlights -- holograms -- are so far in the consumer offing that they're little more than completely irrelevant in the here and now and tomorrow to come. Like Samsung's stretchable, foldable, free-powered slate, holograms are still very much a sci-fi dream. Yes, we'll probably have them eventually. No, it definitely won't be soon. Knowing this, how can Apple change our minds about what constitutes actual broad-stepping progress? The smartphone was a huge leap, a once-in-a-generation breakthrough like the home computer or color television. That Apple so quickly followed up its iPhone with the market-defining iPad was nothing short of a visionary('s) miracle. Lightning won't keep striking the mobile landscape; there are no more obvious arenas for outright revelation. Revolution, then, must come from refinement. Specs will continue their climbs to the top, and there will be no shortage of power-hungry apps to showcase the magic that Apple continues to create. We must simply get excited about different things now. Beauty is only skin deep, but revolution rarely is. Check under the hood, and you'll see with iPad 3 that, once again, it's a whole new ballgame. And as usual, it's going to be a blowout. [Lead image: David Mead via mobilityfeeds.com]
