The Future Tablet Market

I have done a lot of thinking over the weekend and while I am fairly perplexed by the news about Apple shunning all of the 3rd-party development efforts for their mobile devices (Adobe included) in the end, I think there should be room to celebrate innovation and present a reasonable and analytical view of any new innovations that arrive on the market.

For example, the iPad is a fast a beautiful device.  I am also certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that Apple will continue to invest in the platform device going forward.  At the moment, it doesn't multitask (you can't open multiple apps at one time) or at the accessible price point it doesn't seem to do much more than present media when you are away from a wifi connection. Sometime hopefully in 2010 the iPad will get the iPhone OS 4.0 update and be able to at least do the poor-mans multitasking (in the real world, multitasking means multiple apps running concurrently, not just multiple apps sitting mostly dormant in memory.)  Apples view of multitasking is more like multitasking as in DOS Terminate And Stay Resident (Remember TSRs?) applications as opposed to multitasking as in multithreaded Android OS. But there is room in this young and burgeoning industry of tablet devices for many perspectives, paradigms and approaches to be born and grow. In fact, I am glad to see that the majority of iPhone OS 4.0 innovations are Apple playing catch-up to the Google Android Phone OS which in innovating the pants off of everyone right now.  Competition is good for all of us!

Which brings me to my second point. Today Adobe launches Creative Suite 5.  We have been promised an amazing show of internet rich internet capabilities and rediculously efficient workflow improvements within the tools.  I, for one, will be investing.  The launch formally starts at 11am Eastern and I cannot wait to see the magic. I am especially interested in learning about all of the features added to PhotoShop.  Flash is something I have also invested in for a very long time and I can't wait to see that feature list as well (especially the coding UI enhancements within Flash.)

Which brings me to my final point. At the moment, Apple is making strategic decisions to simply not align with 3rd party vendors that provide code for their mobile platform.  This is a somewhat surprising move since there is such amazing variety when it comes to purchasable and open-source solutions for their desktop environment, OSX. If I can play naive for a moment, I am surprised that Apple is acting so completely and manifestly closed about 3rd party application development for mobile. Said another way, while they have always held their cards close on internal innovation, I have never seen a single company explicitly kill 3rd party innovation on their platform.  A lack of innovation kills faster than a lack of competition. Apple is basically saying, "Well, ah... if you can beat them... well... kill them/ quite them/ slander them." Allas, it nearly doesn't matter. The iPad and iPhone may have started, or at least re-birthed, a portable technology revolution for the masses, that ground swell is only the smaller waves that preceed the tsunami of innovation that is coming.

So, if you are desperate for a version #1 Apple tablet, then go buy an iPad. There will undoubtably be cool apps and fun to be had on the device. But if you can be a little more patient, later in 2010 you will see a number of new innovations that will make you want to make you turn the iPad into a dust collector next to your betamax and 8-track player.

Side note admittion: I bought a Kindle DX this last year.  And I love it.  And yes, it cost $500. So, if I hadn't purchased it already, would I be buying a $500 iPad right now? I have asked myself this question, and the answer goes like this.  I think, if it were a footrace between the Kindle DX and the iPad, I might have just purchased the iPad and downloaded the Kindle app for iPad. That seems like a reasonable decision.  But knowing what I know about the coming HP Slate and it's full version of Windows 7 with true multitasking and the fact that I millions of applications will run on the HP Slate multitouch device... I don't think I would be in such a rush as to not wait and compare the iPad with the HP Slate before dropping half a grand on what is basically a big iPod right now.