Rev Mentor

Beautiful job, Apple! Great teamwork. To get the whole iPad picture in minutes, just watch this video.

I believe it's time for the Runtime Revolution's development team to forget about Windows Mobile at least temporarily (if not altogether) and focus all their energy on getting its loyal customers a RevMobile that develops iPhone and iPad apps. Something tells me it would be worthwhile financially. But what do I know?

I've been told that it's a more difficult task to develop a version of Revolution for iPhone and iPad than developing it for Windows Mobile. I thought they had a genius on the Rev development team. Not a financial one, at any rate.

I had a dream

What about this: You have a tablet, which stores all your media like music, pictures, movies, contacts, personal documents… It has a touchscreen, wifi, bluetooth, fast SSD storage and a lot more. Everything you can dream of in a tablet, a nice “computer” you could use on the couch, in bed, on the toilet, in the kitchen. Let’s say it looks like this:

Exhibit A: The Tablet

Next, imagine an iMac sans the internal computer, just a screen with some extra storage, extra RAM, a stronger video card, maybe even an extra processor, and a docking bay for the tablet. Sounds familiar? Yes it does. Combine this “shell” with our tablet, and you get a fully functional desktop computer:

Exhibit B: The Desktop

Finally, to come back to our original source of inspiration, we have something that looks like the bottom part of a laptop. Built in you have a keyboard, a trackpad, some extra hardware and most importantly: A large second battery. If the battery life of the tablet would be something between 6 and 8 hours (in my opinion that’s the minimum), this peripheral would extend that to 12-16.

Exhibit C: The Laptop

This would be a perfect solution when you are traveling, when you need to take notes in a long meeting… All your files, with you all the time, and no need to keep multiple devices in sync.

Exhibit D: The Complete Package

But I’m not an idiot. I’m well aware Apple will never launch something that can slide or click into a peripheral. Too many loose parts that can break, too many separate “devices”. Like I said: a dream.

“Why would I buy a device like that?”

Maybe you love using a laptop, but would like something more powerful for when you’re in your office. Maybe you’re a die-hard fan of desktops, but you miss having all your files with you when on the road. The possibilities are endless, especially when you add the option to install third party applications (like on the iPhone).

If it’s not running Mac OS X, but something more like the iPhone OS, it could be the perfect computer for your parents or grandparents. Or for your kids. Imagine the possibilities when using this device at schools. It could be a notebook, a diary, multiple textbooks…

Don’t expect Apple to advertise the device as an electronic book reader though. Yes, it’ll be used as one a lot, but it’s not catchy enough to sell it under that name. Just like with the iPhone, the software independent developers are going to write for this device will reveal the true power of it. There’s a lot you can do with a 10” touchscreen device.

Conclusion

Nobody (not even the people who say they do) has any idea what Steve will pull out his sleeve on January 27th. Right now, it’s a big blur, but as soon as the keynote is over, it’ll be so clear, so logical, that we’ll all say “Now why didn’t I think of that?!” The only thing I know, is that I’ll take 2.

What's not to like? But it's so un-Apple. I'm still a laptop guy, but something like this could turn my head. I'd use an iMac with a tablet slot for watching TV and movies; my faux laptop with a slot loaded tablet for work; my solo tablet for reading or watching in bed.

Some great design concepts for an eReader are brought forth here. Worth a watch. I especially like the "heat up the content" method of showing contextually appropriate admin tools.

For an Apple Tablet to be a hit, it will have to be more than a big-screen iPhone. And the difference between a lithe, touch-based Mac and a giant, lame iPhone comes down to one crucial nerd-factor: memory management.

Memory management is boring to talk about. It's also boring to do. You're probably half-asleep just reading this sentence, but that's sort of the point; developers hate memory management. When they build iPhone apps, they have to control the iPhone's memory: what goes in, what gets stored, what comes out. When your program closes, your app is supposed to give back all that memory to the OS, so that it your computer can use it for other apps. If your program doesn't give back memory to the system, it's called a "leak." Leaky programs are bad; they make things crash. But it wasn't always this way.

Once upon a time, there was the oft-mocked Newton. Like the iPhone, it ran a real OS build on a robust, object-oriented language called NewtonScript. But the Newton did a major thing that the iPhone only wishes it could. It supported garbage collection, or automatic memory management, just like full-grown desktop Macs. What's the difference to you? More powerful apps.

The iPhone doesn't support garbage collection; it's not fast enough. So iPhone apps tend to "leak memory," or hang on to memory too long. Developers I've interviewed--even Apple Design Award winners--have mentioned to me that their iPhone apps are leaking memory almost constantly because they're too lazy to be really anal about manual memory management. But since most iPhone apps are relatively simple, it's not a big deal; you close the app and life goes on. (Eventually, the phone regains the leaked memory, in various ways.)

But this means iPhone apps can only get so complex before they require too much hand-tuning to be worth the time. IPhone developers have been hitting a wall: there's a lot more the device could do (at least, the 3GS, with its better hardware) but the OS is still too basic.

A tablet with faster hardware and a more potent version of OS X could run real garbage-collected apps, letting current iPhone developers imaginations run wild. The tablet app store would explode ten times as fast as the original app store; I've spoken to several developers about porting their apps to a larger format, and the consensus is that the process would be relatively painless. (The only question is about hardware-accelerated graphics; the tablet might run a different version of OpenGL-ES than the iPhone, because it will have a different graphics processor.) We'd have more than big-screen iPhone apps, though; because of garbage collection, we'd have apps on steroids.

Like other Apple products ahead of their time, the Newton was quietly axed because of low demand and scope creep. But Steve Jobs never forgets a good idea: witness the original iMac, the Apple TV, and the G4 Cube, all reminiscent of earlier failed models. Hell, the Cube even failed twice and came back to life as the Mac Mini. When the curtain lifts at Apple's January event, there may well be a Newton behind it.

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Topics: Innovation, apple, tablet, newton, mac, iphone, os x, Software, Development, Computer Technology, Science and Technology, Technology, Apple iPhone, Mobile Software

This is a big issue and worthy of consideration. I'm holding out for the Tablet, if it has decent memory management. Hopefully, Revolution won't take too long to get there, too.