Apple’s Next New Device – the NetPad!

Apple’s next new device will not be a netbook or tablet, but a sort of combination of the two, smaller than either, but just as functional. The NetPad, as I call it, will be 7.75″ by 4.5″ by 0.4″ with a 7.75″ diagonal 1280 by 720 screen at 190DPI, including multi touch, a stylus, WiFi, accepting a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Here are the details on this hypothetical device:

Name

I had a few names in mind. I liked: iPad – very descriptive, but too much like “iPod”. TouchPad – This is a good name, though it is close to “trackpad”. DynaPad – An homage to the DynaBook, which was used as a theoretical model back in the day. I think the name is tied up, and wouldn’t be accurate, and DynaPad may be too confusing a trademark.

NetPad – Indicates the device is smaller than a netbook though it has some of the same uses for it, and the “pad” indicates it is a flat unit as opposed to a clamshell. This is my guess for a name. I’ll go with it. What? It’s trademarked already? Hey don’t bug me, I’m on a roll! And did it stop Apple from using iPhone? Huh?

Form Factor

The NetPad is not a scaled down laptop so much as it is a scaled up iPod Touch. Smaller and thinner than any netbook, it is approximately the size of three iPod Touches side by side – about 7.75″ by 4.5″ by 0.4″. It’s pretty much the largest thing you can jam into a pants pocket, but it will fit nicely in a suit jacket pocket. Small enough to hold in one hand, yet big enough to do real word or image processing. While the case is somewhat rounded on the edges, it will sit solidly on a flat surface. A simple built in stand that folds flush can hold the device 30 or 70 degrees from the horizontal in landscape or portrait mode.

Screen

The front of the device is almost all screen, with a bezel of a quarter inch on the long sides, a little wider on the short sides, with a camera on one end and thin Home bar on the other. Other controls are on the sides.

In a break from Apple’s usual screen ratio, this one is 16:9, 1280 by 720 pixels at 190 pixels per inch. That makes the screen about 7.75″ diagonal, or about 6.75″ by 3.8″. This is denser than the Touch, which is 160 ppi. Basically, you have an 7.75″ diagonal, 720p HDTV display.

The surface has multi-touch sensing, but also handles a stylus. Apple’s Mac OS X “Ink” technology will be in the device, allowing you to use the stylus as a writing instrument, as well as a pointing device and substitute “finger” for flicking, swiping, and pinching. The stylus will be a simple rod similar to the stylus you can buy from third parties for the Touch. 

The device senses the stylus as though it was a very thin finger, and in fact can only distinguish it from a finger by deducing no human finger is that thin. The only advantage to a stylus is for the user, who can see much more precisely where they are touching. Thus, handwriting recognition is practical. You could in fact write with your finger on this device, but the simple fact that your finger is so fat makes it rather difficult to do – using a stylus is much simpler and natural. But in a pinch you could write (in big block letters, perhaps) with a finger. But if you only have your fingers, you may as well just use the roomy keyboard. The stylus is not just for writing, it also makes detailed drawing much easier, as well as precise selection. Since it can sense a stylus is being used, it can handle certain things differently, for example using a stylus to make a text selection might be possible. But this is all through software, not hardware.

Larger touch screens have a problem with the palms touching the screen. New software technology senses and discards large-surface touches such as those made with the palm or side of the hand, especially when using the stylus.

This will be an active organic LED display. This makes the screen much thinner, while being brighter and lower power. The thinner screen and larger screen area allows the device to be about as thin as a Touch while having much more internal volume for things like the battery. OLED is just about ready to go. Problems with lifetime and blue colors are addressed, and manufacturing is getting there. A practical mass produced 8″ screen is now possible and Apple is just the one to get there first.

Bluetooth

The Bluetooth in this device will implement more device profiles. In particular it will accept a keyboard and mouse. The keyboard will augment or replace the virtual keyboard, the mouse will operate similar to the stylus.

You will be able to get stereo audio out of the device, and have audio in. Bluetooth microphones, speakers, and headsets will work.

File transfers will also work, but only to a single Public Folder on the file system as described below.

Keyboard, Stylus, and Mouse

The on-screen keyboard will of course be much bigger than the one on the Touch, but still about 2/3 the size of the standard. It’s big enough to touch type while looking at it. There will be no physical feedback on the virtual keyboard. You can use the on screen keyboard, a Bluetooth keyboard, or both. Real touch typists will want to use a real Bluetooth keyboard.

Finger touches, stylus, and Bluetooth mouse are similar, but have differences. You can use one or all of these devices. You could do a pinch, for example, by holding down one finger on the screen and dragging the stylus as the second touch.

A mouse can hover and be an additional touch. It can also have a scroll wheel that could be interpreted as a drag or flick (to scroll, for example). I could see holding down both mouse buttons and dragging the mouse as the same as dragging two fingers, whatever that might mean. And on a Web view where JavaScript kicks in, tool tips could pop up as you hover over the page, and the second button could pop a contextual menu.

In other words, this device is fully functional as a multi touch device using just the fingers. However, you can now add some other devices to perform handwriting, precise drawing, touch typing on a physical keyboard, and so on.

WiFi

I see WiFi as the device’s only broadband radio connection to the outside world, g and n, at least at first. Of course, you could drag in all the 3G and 4G stuff if it fits into the form and power constraints of the device. But this is a data device, not a phone. Of course, if you are talking about things like Skype or iChat, those should work very well indeed, even with video, given the bandwidth.

Camera

The camera will be similar to that in the iPhone. It will take photos, and will record video at 320×240 30fps. The camera will be on the edge of the device, hinged so it can be facing either toward the person looking at the screen, or away, out the back of the device. Apple has a patent on this technique, and here is where they will use it.

Accelerometer, GPS

Yes. This unit will be able to sense its position, unlike the Touch and iPhone, which can not sense yaw or compass direction when not moving.

File System

This will be the same as the Touch, with one significant addition, that being a Public folder which can hold data transferred by other applications. The clipboard will also be here. 

Previous devices have not allowed an application to have file access outside of itself, for security reasons. In this device, hardware limits make it impossible to execute code in this folder. Each application will, within itself, only be able to write to a specific subfolder within itself, i.e. Documents. This is a slight change from the current scheme. If an application doesn’t agree to it by setting a software flag, it does not get access to the Public folder. Therefore, legacy applications do not have the new restriction and also do not get access to the Public folder. Code can not execute from the Documents folder either. In this way, applications can exchange data but not code, and code can’t be accidentally, purposely, or maliciously written to an application or executed.

Physical I/O

There will be the ubiquitous iPod connector, for charging, syncing, and so on.

There will be stereo audio, with a jack like the iPhone, which accepts a headphone or a combination headset. Built in microphone and stereo speakers. Speakers are tiny and fire out the front of the device when placed in landscape mode. Depending on how you orient the device, the stereo speaker sound emanates from near the top or bottom of the screen.

There will be video out. On an iPhone, you can get composite or component video out from the iPod application part of the phone. In this device, all applications will be able to output video. I don’t know about Displayport, but certainly component video, with the proper cable to the iPod connector.

Storage

I see a solid state drive interface, replaceable by the user, as the internal memory. No rotating storage. Maximum memory size depends on how rich you are.

Battery

Over half of the area within the case is battery. This gives the device long life – and substantial heft. But weight doesn’t bother me. This is not a shirt pocket device. The battery is removable and replaceable by the user.

CPU

The processor is an Apple branded ARM-like custom CPU designed specifically for this device. Completely compatible with all previous Touch and iPhone software, it runs at a higher speed using less power. The GPU is also custom and handles scaling and aliasing not just for the application code, but for screen compatibility modes in the system as discussed below.

Software

The device runs all iPhone and iPod Touch software as is, with no changes and no problems.

But there’s one more thing… and it has to do with the fact that this device has a larger screen, with a different number of pixels and a different overall aspect ratio.

All developers know that all devices running Cocoa Touch (the flavor of Mac OS X operating system the iPhone and iPod Touch use) have a 640 high by 320 wide pixel screen at 160 dots per inch. All the screens on all applications are designed for that, and the number of pixels for the status bar, keyboard, and other interface elements are documented and well known. However, developers also know the user can simply twist the device and bingo, the 640 high by 320 wide screen becomes a 320 high by 640 wide screen, and you might have to change the layout of everything to account for it. So, built into XCode, the Cocoa Touch development system, is a full and complete mechanism to make it pretty easy to automatically relocate the interface elements.

In other words, for developers, the system for handling various screen sizes is already there. But not all applications change the layout when the user rotates the device (or need to). And no one has given much thought to more than the two sizes of screen the devices currently offer. So, compatibility with the bigger screen size of the NetPad is a significant issue. Here is how I believe it may work:

Current software will run in a default mode that scales up the screen proportionally. Depending on how good/fast/powerhungry the graphics chips are, it will fill the screen proportionally, or simply double the size, centering the application on a 1280 by 640 screen. The application will still think the screen is 640 by 320.

This won’t look as bad as you might be thinking. Most things won’t be pixellated and blocky, because they are not bitmapped graphics, but vector based. All interface elements, text, illustrations, and most OpenGL 3D graphics are all vector based and will look as perfect as ever. Things that are pixel graphics like JPEGs and video should look pretty good too. Bipmapped graphics will have pixels almost double in size – remember the old screens are 160 pixels per inch while this new one is 190, so physically it’s not quite double. However, scaling and aliasing are pretty good these days and this should not be a huge problem. And there just aren’t a lot of bitmapped graphics in the applications – many have none at all.

Many legacy applications will look fine in native mode, where the system tells the application the screen is 1280 by 640 and lets the screen lay out the interface elements. For them, a simple internal flag can let the developer specify that this is OK. I envision the user being able to force an application out of compatibility mode, perhaps with something automatically added to a legacy application’s global settings.

App Store and iTunes

It’s fine. They won’t be touched. Some applications may say “optimized for NetPad” in the description, meaning they handle the larger screen size natively, but all will run fine.

Apple Mobile Keyboard

While the NetPad will work with any Bluetooth keyboard, I believe Apple will offer it’s own. Sold separately, it can work with a NetPad, with any other computer, or as a stand alone text capture device. This physical keyboard is the same size as the NetPad, and 0.25″ thick. It and the NetPad neatly click together into a single solid unit about 7.75″ by 4.5″ by 0.65″. This combination helps protect both the NetPad screen and keyboard keys.

The two units are not hinged together like a clamshell or laptop. They are separate. The keyboard has a foldout stand that puts it at an angle of about 15 degrees. The keys and spacing are identical to that of the large virtual keyboard on the NetPad so you do not have to adjust when going from one to the other. The keys are low profile like on current MacBooks, providing physical and audible feedback as you type.

The keyboard is a standard Bluetooth unit that could work with any device. It has an internal, rechargeable battery. The keyboard has an iPod connector and a female USB connector, and includes a standard (for Apple) iPod to male USB charging cable. You can charge the keyboard by plugging this into a USB port.

With a key layout the same size as on the NetPad, there is space above the basic layout for additional keys. A row of digit keys would keep you from shifting to type numbers. And a row of keys to adjust things like volume and brightness would be useful.

Charging and Syncing

You got a standard iPod to male USB charging cable, and a wall charger with your NetPad, same as those that come with iPods, Touches, and iPhones. You can sync and charge your NetPad just like the other devices.

You can also chain the NetPad and Mobile Keyboard together. Take one cable and plug the iPod connector end into the NetPad, and the USB end into the keyboard. Take a second cable and plug the iPod connector end into the keyboard, and the USB end into either you computer, or a charger. You can now charge both devices at once, and sync your NetPad, all with this hookup.

Pricing and Availability

“O-M-F-G! Are you kidding me? You’ll never sell a single one! You guys have got to be out of your mind. I mean, it looks great, and the features are great, and it looks great, and it sounds great, and it looks great but… (takes a breath…) Wrap it up. I can’t wait to get home!”

Conclusion

So you think I’m mad, eh? Pie in the sky? A science fiction writer? Well, let me tell you something, buddy. I’m a longtime systems architect and a Mac software developer since 1985. Oh, how they laughed at me when I made my pretty good predictions about the iPhone well before it happened. And they really laughed at me when I made my way, WAY off predictions about… but that’s neither here nor there. What’s the matter, an eight inch AOLED HDTV screen isn’t ready for prime time? And the cost of such a thing! Have I seen that 11″ Sony OLED TV set’s price? Yes, I have. And a stylus? Where you going to put that thing? The technology, the cost, the weight, the power consumption, it’s just not there yet, it’s not gonna happen. Ha!

I’m tellin’ ya. It may not be exactly this, but it’s going to be something very close to this. When will we be able to enjoy it? Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but SOON, and for the rest of our lives. Not a netbook, not really a tablet, certainly not a scaled down Mac. A NetPad. This is Apple we are talking about. They think… different. -Mike O’Connor http://www.myallo.com/blog