Apple Tablet Rumors and the Future of Print Media

Gizmodo has an exhaustive guide to Apple Tablet rumors and below is a high level summary of that article:

• Rumored to be called the iSlate
• It is rumored to be announced in late January but it sounds like it will be on 1/26/10 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco
• Sounds like it will ship in March or April
• It is rumored to have a color screen
• It is rumored to have 3G capabilities

My take on the device (whatever it may or may not be) is it will revolutionize the print industry just as Apple revolutionized the music industry with the iPod.  If it has 3G capabilities I’d personally wait until it supports 4G.  Digital print as we know it is going to change.  Today’s books consist of plain text and occasionally they have a few illustrations, but with eBooks and eBook readers we will have the ability to offer interactive books like never before possible.  We will see a mix of TV, web, print, and mobile computing in one platform.

Textbooks will no longer be outdated once printed, every word will be able to be defined and we’ll be able to search and link to other sources just as we can today on the web.  These devices will offer students the ability to interact with one another in the classroom as well as their teachers.  Teachers will be able to quickly check for understanding and see who within their classroom is grasping various concepts and who needs more time and explanation.  We will have the ability to take notes on these devices and it won’t be long before someone comes and develops a service which allows us to summarize all digital articles wiki style so we don’t have to read the entire content (book, magazine, ebook, website etc).  If we like what the summary has to say you can read on, if you don’t like the summary we will simply go on to read other things to save us time.

I think bookstores as we know them will cease to exist in 5 years.  I still think there will be some bookstores but they will be more limited in quantity and they will have to differentiate themselves by getting into the eBook space or offering print services from an electronic format.  I think what happened to the music industry will happen to the book industry.  When you go into Best Buy for instance they still have CDs but it is a much more limited selection but some day CDs will cease to exist as well.

Jeff Bezos is one of the most brilliant minds in the business but Steve Jobs is also brilliant and I hope there is room for both the Kindle and the Apple Tablet to compete.  Bezos already has an advantage of having deals with content providers and has both print and electronic versions available allowing consumers one place to get both formats.  Jobs has an advantage of providing revolutionary devices which tend to do well for a few years but eventually others catch up with their innovations and content is what rules on the revolutionary devices.  For instance the iPhone was revolutionary and had lots of fantastic apps but the Droid and Google phone are going to quickly chip away at their market share.

Newspapers have been dying for a while and in 5 years we’ll likely still have a few major newspapers still around but local papers will die off and new models will be created to replace them.  I don’t think the Nook from Barnes and Noble will get very far, they were too late in the game and it doesn’t have the wow factor.  I love Amazon.com and if they are going to compete with the Apple Tablet they must get to a color display quick!  Who will want to read magazines, comics, and some books in black and white?!?!

Last but not least I think it will be easier than ever before to have a book published and I wouldn’t be surprised if both Apple and Amazon get into the publishing business which offers your book, magazine, article to be submitted into their catalogue for a fee.  Of course you can publish your own book and host it on a server outside of their catalog, but by paying Apple and Amazon you will get the marketing mega machine behind your book to provide you more exposure just as publishers do today.