Halex on the go: mythical tablets and a systematic look at Apple [atualizado]

(This post is not productive: anyone who is out of time can ignore it. I just want to share some thoughts)

Cold! Nothing better than a little free time to lubricate the head gears with reading. Well, besides abusing one of the best apps for the iPod touch that exists, Stanza (I never hid my love for him!), I took the opportunity to reread “Steve Jobs’s head” (this one, made of paper). So you can get in the mood, you know? After all, the 27th is coming and, more than any fabulous gadget and bathed in tears of unicorns, I hope to see a keynote from showman Jobs back in full form.

But one thing has made my brain hurt: whenever someone makes a reference to “A Tablet for All to Govern” as being a portable Mac, I feel like there's something wrong with it. Why? Because of the image on the side! As soon as Apple returned in 1997, one of Jobs' first (and most controversial) attitudes was to wipe the product line for this table, shown in the introduction of the first iBook. I imagine that some Ma employees used to have it written on the palm of their hand, to use as glue.

Looking at Apple's current product line, I realized, with some astonishment, that almost everything that Ma sells today fits on a table like this. It now has a greater number of rows, it is true, but only an additional column. of that imaginary table that I intend to talk about now.

Taxonomy & Systematics

Wikipedia can help with this part.

Let's start at the beginning, right? As a good biologist who paid attention to Zoology and Botany classes (Prof. Helena & Paulo Cascon, Ana Ceclia, Arlete and Diva, a hug!), My impulse is to find characteristics and separate things into groups based on them.

Looking at the Mac “family”, for example, what I see are two “subfamilies”: laptops and desktops. In the iPod “family”, I need to highlight an important character: internet access. With that, we have prepared the ground for a new “family”, which I will call Mobile.

These "families" will be the lines of my table and, in all cases, there will be three levels that will represent "genders". Such levels are the basic, the medium and the top. However, when saying "basic", I do not mean "lower price" specifically, although this is usually linked. "Basic", for me, means "with the minimum to exist and function in the most practical way". Soon after comes the middle stratum, which is "middle". Not too much, not too little: it has more elements than the basic, but less practical. Finally, comes the top.

Right now, some people will disagree (as good systemists do) and speak of "professional", but I disagree: the "top" brings much more power, which is attractive for those who need tools for intense work, in fact. However, I want to embrace much more than the Mac “family”, the only one where that would apply. Thus, in my opinion, the “top” “is the maximum you give up on practicality in the name of gross strength and resources”.

Finally, within each "genre" you can find "species" that are not so much the scope here, but that vary essentially in dimensions / components (between Macs) and memory (between iPods and Mobiles).

Mac

With these three levels in mind, let's look at the desktop “subfamily” Macs, separating the “genders” based on processing power and size:

  • Mac mini: the basic model, obviously. Small, it consumes little energy, almost enough for you to put in your backpack and take with you wherever there is a keyboard, mouse and monitor.
  • iMac: undoubtedly opens up more possibilities, which elevates you to an average representative. It is (almost) impossible to think of portability, but it brings _much_ more power than its smaller brother.
  • Mac Pro: phenomenal cosmic powers! Inside a huge cabinet. It is large, complex and can certainly run Crysis at most via Boot Camp.

Now for the laptops, the “subfamily” of laptop Macs, taking into account their weight and processing power:

  • MacBook Air: light, thin and beautiful, this notebook has won many worshipers because it is the center of practicality without compromising on usability.
  • MacBook: this machine could not be more average, because it combines immense practicality with enough power to do a little bit of everything.
  • MacBook Pro: note that there are three very different “species” (13 ″, 15 ″ and 17 ″, each with their “subspecies”), something that complicates my task at first glance. Let's say that the 17 ″ MBP would be the ideal representative of this “gender”, while the 13 ″ MBP would be much closer to the previous “gender”.

iPod

Look at the three “genders”, how they are discrete, if we take into account the dimensions and the memory:

  • iPod shuffle: the size of an AA battery, this child has “practicality” written across its ninth surface, unfortunately limited to a maximum of 1,000 songs.
  • iPod nano: even though it is super practical and functional, the nano partly fails to load a complete library of videos (or music, depending on the user).
  • iPod classic: its capacity to load 160GB brings a very serious sine in the form of an HDD and measures not modest for today's standards you have to sacrifice the reliability of the solid state memory and the practicality of smaller dimensions.

Before they say I forgot about iPod touch, let's go to the next “family”.

Mobile

If this were a scientific work, this would be the time when I propose the opening of a new "family" in the "order" hardware belonging to the "Apple" class. See her initial “genres”, taking into account resources and cost:

  • iPod touch: games, applications of the most varied functions, internet connection via Wi-Fi, music and videos on a magnificent 3.5 ″ screen. All this in your pocket, needing to pay only once for the hardware.
  • iPhone 3G (S): add a camera, GPS, a larger housing and a monthly bill to the previous device. More functions in exchange for a little practicality and a little monetary investment.

Here I ask myself: who is the third member of this group?

New “genre”: the tablet

I do not believe that these ideas came from having (from this having, in psychotropic use!). At a steady pace, rumors about the tablet are turning from “Mac with touchscreen” to “super iPod touch”, and John Gruber, from Daring Fireball, brings an additional element to this line: as far as he knows, the tablet is not an evolution of the iPhone, but rather what the iPhone should have been to begin with, and it was not due to technological limitations three years ago. Or because we needed to be educated, who knows.

Because of this, I highly doubt that this mystical gadget is a kind of “official ModBook” or that it runs an operating system similar to Snow Leopard. I don't think there is such a space in the Mac “family”. There is, however, a place for a “top” genre in the Mobile “family”, ideal for those who think the iPhone offers little.

Below, check out how I see the Apple product matrix, arranged in an analogous way at the beginning of the post:

In my opinion, MacBooks (Air, Pro) will remain with us for quite a while, as well as iPhones and iPods touch. The tablet does not come to replace them, but to complement the product line and offer more functions (and less practicality) for those who need them. If you are satisfied with your iPhone / iPod touch, I believe that the tablet will be beaten: so that a big product, that you can't take in your pocket and that it will (probably) come with one more bill to pay at the end of the month ?

Many people choose the medium not because they cannot have the top, but simply because they do not need it, and I believe that this will be valid for those with their hearts in their hands, thinking that the tablet will obliterate the iPhones and iPods touch (or even all Macs) on the face of the Earth.

Of course, I may be wrong and end up with my face on the floor (maybe the tablet doesn't even exist!), On the 27th, but life: we write and then we have to take responsibility. However, even at the risk of posing as a fool (or just because of that), it is fun to travel in these conjectures and try to find out how Jobs is planning the next computational revolution, 1 in 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California.

Enjoy this post and venture out, also exposing your opinion: the comments are for that.

And that, as they say, is that.

Update (1/28)

Now that the iPad has been launched and is generating controversy, the only thing I would like to rectify in what I wrote above is the position of the tablet in the Mobile “family”: apparently, the current way in which it presents itself leaves the gap between the iPod touch and the iPhone 3GS, and not above them.

I imagine that this will change over time as new features are added to it. For now, that, as they say, is that.