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3D Illustrations by Adam Benton.
Apple doesn’t develop category-creating products. Instead, it enters categories that already exist, deconstructs the competition, burrows deep into R&D mode, and returns with gear so dominant, you’d think Apple invented the category in the first place. This approach doesn’t require rocket science. It only requires a commitment to push the boundaries of what’s possible--and not release a product until it offers enough innovative new features and clever design to make people switch away from the competition.
Consider: The iPod has become a synonym for any portable music player. The iPhone has redefined what a smartphone can be. The MacBook enjoys near complete control of the $1,000-plus notebook market. And iTunes? It’s the world’s largest music retailer.
Apple watchers are well aware that the company is planning to release some sort of tablet computer, and given Apple’s recent history of making surprise announcements, that could very well happen between the day we put this issue to bed and the day you read this article. But what if the tablet rumors are bunkum? And even if the tablet is announced, what comes next? Jaw-dropping products can take years to develop, and Apple surely has tablet-eclipsing wonders brewing in its labs.
For answers, we turned to five tech journalists, people who follow Apple every day and are straight-A students of its products. Each expert was asked to fill out the same worksheet, wherein we requested details on the features, specs, wow elements, and essential “Appleness” of the gear they envision Apple making. We then took their worksheets and turned their ideas into the fully rendered fauxtotypes you see on the following pages. We did our best to stay faithful to our experts’ visions, but sometimes we did add elements of our own. But, of course, this entire little game is an exercise in interpretation: We asked our experts to interpret Apple’s magic mojo, and then we interpreted what our experts gave us. We hope we served our experts well.
Want to play too? You can enter our "Apple Fauxtotype Challenge" in January. But for now, please begin your tour of Apple’s future vision.
The Internet's everywhere-at-once tech reporter envisions the first mainstream application of full-color electronic paper.
Omnipresent Video Host & Blogger
Bona Fides: Belmont was a producer/reporter for CNET and now hosts Sony's Qore video magazine and cohosts the Tekzilla video podcast. She is also a columnist for MaximumPC.com, regularly updates her own tech blog (veronicabelmont.com), and has 1,442,554 Twitter followers as of this writing--making her Twitter's most-followed tech journalist.
With its Kindle device, Amazon proved that e-readers aren’t lame pieces of junk. You just have to use eye-soothing “electronic paper” (aka e-paper) instead of not-so-reading-friendly LCD displays. And just this October, Barnes & Noble released the nook, an e-reader with two screens: a grayscale e-paper screen for reading and a smaller color LCD screen for navigation.
Yes, e-books are hot, and its against this backdrop that Belmont conceived the iRead--because you didn’t think Apple would pin all its e-book aspirations on the upcoming tablet, did you?
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Belmont’s iRead concept uses two screens, but they’re nearly identical in their generous specs: 8 inches high, multitouch-enabled, and full-color-capable. That’s right: full color. The left-side reading screen uses e-paper, but it’s color e-paper--the first available in a consumer device. The right-hand screen, meanwhile, uses a regular LCD to display movies, games, and other traditional digital content. Belmont explains: “You can hold it open like a book to view rich media alongside corresponding text, or you can place it like an easel on your table top to watch videos or read hands-free.”
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E-reader on one side, full-featured media player on the other. Sounds like the iRead could boost sales on iTunes, right? Indeed, Belmont envisions downloadable e-books that complement text with video snippets, author interviews, and other treats that only digital technology can provide. For example, “premium edition” e-books could have an audiobook component that syncs automatically to your text--so you could segue from reading a novel in a café to listening to that same novel in your car, all without missing a word.
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Think your iTunes bills are getting expensive? Just wait until the iRead arrives, and you begin downloading e-books with abandon. It’s a pricey proposition, but if it reverses our descent into illiteracy, it’s a price worth paying.
Gizmodo's top gadget expert posits a cynical response to the AT&T clusterfrick.
Editorial Director, Gizmodo.com
Bona Fides: As the editorial boss of the gadget site Gizmodo, Lam enjoys unparalleled hands-on access to the product developments of Apple, a company that makes early looks of new gear as rare and valuable as Wonka’s golden tickets. Lam is often awarded “first seat” at Apple press events and has established Gizmodo.com as the world’s fastest live-blogging source of breaking Apple news.
The year is 2011. Apple is still locked in its suicide pact with AT&T. The reliability of voice and text-messaging service over the iPhone is as reliable as electricity service in Pyongyang. Anti-Apple protest rallies are a weekly occurrence, complete with cries of “No more telecom totalitarianism!” and placards of Steve Jobs bedecked in Kim Jong-il’s pompadour and glasses. Apple can no longer wait for AT&T to fix its network crisis, so it does an end-run around the iPhone’s greatest threat--it releases the iTenna, an add-on that allows users to tap into any cell network other than AT&T’s.
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Or at least that’s the vision we saw when Brian Lam provided a bare-bones overview of his concept. Here’s Lam in his own words: “It’s a repeater. Perhaps an antenna, or a set of mini bunny ears. The thing could be attached. Or not. It connects to Sprint, Verizon, or T-Mobile, and routes everything over the iPhone’s Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or perhaps a dock connector.”
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From this product brief, we extracted two features that really caught our fancy. First, we decided that connectivity over the dock connector made the most sense, so our fauxtotype integrates iTenna technology into a slide-on case. Second, we were smitten by the allusion to VHF rabbit ears, and thus begat the twin nubbins at the top of the device. The whimsy of the design matches the whimsy of the entire iTenna concept. As Lam himself states, “I’m perfectly aware that this product makes no sense, given the way Apple works. But, hey, neither does an iPhone that gets no reception in a major metropolitan city like San Francisco. Hello, I live four blocks from Haight Street--why do I have a zero percent call success rate for anything even resembling a human voice?”
The internationally focused gadget guru sees augmented reality making a quantum leap forward.
Editor, T3
Bona Fides: One of Mac|Life’s sister magazines from across the pond, T3 (“Tomorrow’s Technology Today”) not only publishes in the UK, but also has 21 country-specific international editions, making it one of the world’s premier sources for gadget news and reviews. With 10 years experience reporting on technology, Michael Brook leads this formidable charge.
Augmented reality apps bring science-fictiony data overlays to the iPhone--which isn’t a terribly ideal place for them, as the iPhone keeps reality (augmented or otherwise) at arm’s length from our eyes. Brook’s iVision concept fixes all that by placing augmented reality mere millimeters from our corneas, letting it integrate perfectly with our natural vision. Viewing life through iVision--with digital data served directly on top of all that we see--completes the promise of everything augmented reality technology has to offer.
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“Each lens will have a built-in HUD,” Brook says, “so you’ll be able to view the output of your augmented reality apps directly on your glasses. No need to hold up the iPhone. It will use Bluetooth, or a more advanced wireless standard, for connectivity. Low power, no need for constant charging. GPS positioning, etcetera, will be done on the iPhone with info relayed to the glasses for processing within the unit. Features like caller ID will naturally be viewed on the glasses, and when listening to music, track data will also appear on the head-up display.”
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And then there’s the curious Oakley/Apple logo on the iVision frames. We told our experts that it’s common for Mac|Life fauxtotypes to imagine a marriage between Apple and some equally iconographic megabrand. In years past, we conjectured Apple synergizing with LEGO and Audi, and we were thrilled when Brook followed our lead, and used Oakley in his product brief.
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“Apple has most areas of tech covered with the iPhone and computing products,” Brook says. “The glasses idea brings them squarely into the world of fashion, which, let’s face it, they’re already knee deep in from a tech point of view. Teaming up with a forward-thinking brand like Oakley allows them to be first to market with a groundbreaking product that makes more of existing tech.”
The maven of mobility wants his exercise data completely bespoke.
Products Editor, WIRED
Bona Fides: As the senior editor in charge of products at Wired, McClusky is the magazine’s gear and gadget gatekeeper, leading the charge in covering technology that’s actually shipping today. He was also an editor on Mobile (a former sister magazine of Mac|Life), where he honed his expertise in handheld technology.
There once was a day when just a single iPod ruled the portable audio universe. It had everything we needed in a music player--or so we thought. Now there are four iPods, with each version offering a form factor, feature set, and price point skewed to specific consumer needs. Could this same type of fragmentation and specialization be applied to the iPhone line? After reading McClusky’s exerPod brief, we’re excited by the possibilities.
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The exerPod is an Apple handheld devoted wholly to physical fitness. As McClusky says, “It makes the act of tracking your exercise and health totally transparent--it’s a thing you throw in your pocket, and it just does it, if you’ll pardon the Nike reference.”
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Actually, we like the Nike reference, because with the exerPod, we see more companies teaming up with Apple to create highly integrated telemetry systems that marry real-world gear (shoes, bikes, home gyms, and so on) with custom apps--much like the existing Nike+ system. But let’s let McClusky explain how this works:
“It’s the ultimate tracking device for athletes, and other folks looking to monitor their health and performance. For example, using built-in accelerometers and GPS, it tracks speed and distance for runners. There’s also ANT+ wireless support to hook up to heart-rate monitors, bike-speed sensors and power meters, and gym equipment like treadmills. Any time you’re doing anything active, it’s tracking and capturing the associated data. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi let it beam information to your computer, as well as the ecosystem of sites that will spring up to let you slice and dice the data.”
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Some might scoff that the iPhone can already do much of what McClusky envisions. Well, it can but at a hefty price--and not nearly as well. The exerPod is an inexpensive device (we see it costing $99) for folks who don’t want an Apple cell phone and simply need a small, rugged gadget that includes a battery of special features dedicated to a fitness lifestyle.
The mischievous master of DIY sees us making our own Apple gear in the future.
Editor-in-Chief, MAKE
Bona Fides: As the founder of BoingBoing.net, one of the world’s first tech-culture websites, Frauenfelder has the longest career in tech journalism of all our five experts. He was also the founding editor of Wired Online, and today he’s the top editor of MAKE, a quarterly devoted to creating DIY tech projects.
Good googamaloo, what has Frauenfelder asked us to imagine here?! His iMake concept came to us exceedingly well fleshed out, so we’ll turn the podium over to him:
“iMake is a desktop manufacturing system based on the RepRap (reprap.org), an open-source 3D rapid prototyping technology. Apple led the way in the desktop publishing revolution, and now it’s leading the way in the desktop manufacturing revolution. With iMake, you can make your own small products at home, such as Bluetooth headsets, iPods with unique form factors, wristwatches, eyeglasses, door knobs, and more.
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“To create a product, you visit the iTunes Store to choose from among tens of thousands of product designs--prices range from free to $9.99--purchasing one just as you would a song, video, or app. The 3D data is sent to the iMake, which builds the parts, layer by layer, out of high-quality plastic. The iMake will also make the circuit boards. Then, all you do is snap the pieces together! After purchasing a 3D model from the iTunes Store, it takes about 15 minutes to print a 3D part.
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“It seems counter-intuitive that Apple would allow its customers to have a hand in designing its products, but after witnessing the runaway success of its iTunes App Store--which has thousands of apps created by third parties--Apple realized that quality rises to the top and that enabling people to design and create their things is even cooler than giving them the tools to design and create their own media, as Apple did when it put the power of publishing in the hands of everyone.”
Thank you for this fascinating glimpse at the future, Herr Frauenfelder. And thank you for not spec’ing the iMake to have the ability to make its own parts, a feature of the RepRap.
Uh, hello?! Skynet?! Anyone?!
