Born Weird

Continuing a long, long history of such rumors, AppleInsider.com posted yet another “The tablet is coming! The tablet is coming!” article last Friday. Adding fuel to the fire, which has been burning for some time now, on Monday the Financial Times published a piece suggesting said tablet could be arriving (or at least announced) as soon as this fall (the AppleInsider piece only posited “early next year”).

But unless Apple’s been hiding some major new software development from us — always a possibility — I just don’t see it happening. Because right now Apple doesn’t offer an OS that’d be appropriate for a 10″ screen.

If there’s one thing the designers and engineers at Apple have understood since Steve Jobs retook the helm, it’s the importance of seamless integration between hardware and software. The beautiful marriage between the two is largely what enabled the iPod and iPhone to quickly emerge as leaders in fields where devices with similar features already existed. And their tight control over Mac hardware (Psystar be damned!) helps software engineers build an OS that is more stable and more intelligent than its competitors.

But neither Mac OS X nor the iPhone OS are well-suited to a 10″ touchscreen. I have an msiBook and I can tell you from first-hand experience that OS X was not built with a 10″ screen in mind. For one thing, important windows (such as system preferences) don’t fit on the screen. But more importantly, I don’t believe there are any UI libraries that would make it pleasant or engaging to use as a touchscreen. Apple’s not going to just slap their OS on a touchscreen device and say, “hey, you can now use your finger instead of a mouse pointer.”

The iPhone OS, while built from the ground up to work with (multi)touch, was also built from the ground up for a very specific screen size. Whatever pixel resolution the oft-rumored iTablet might sport, it’ll definitely be higher than the 480×320 the iPhone/Pod offer, causing it to break many of the carefully-crafted layouts Apple and third-party developers have designed specifically for the device. Also, I think many of the iPhone gestures wouldn’t translate well to a larger screen — how far would one have to flick their finger to “turn the page” on a 10″ screen?

And of course, the iPhone OS — not even the new 3.0 — doesn’t support running multiple applications at the same time, which I believe would represent a kiss of death to any tablet-like device. Users may be willing to settle for one-app-at-a-time on a handheld, but on something netbook-sized it’s another matter entirely.

Now, I’m willing to acknowledge that maybe Apple has been developing an entirely new OS (or at least GUI to the same basic underpinnings iPhone OS and Mac OS X share) specifically for the tablet. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Apple embarked on a major project without anyone knowing much. And with version 3 of the iPhone OS now in the wild, and the heavy lifting on Snow Leopard more or less complete, it may be “all systems go” on crafting the finishing touches on a brand-new interface to a brand-new device.

But right now there’s nothing to suggest Apple has an OS ready to run on a touchscreen tablet, which suggests to me a tablet offering isn’t imminent.