Apple’s next killer product will not be portable
Under what conditions could you imagine that happening? Here’s my fanciful take
I prefer to live in a world where Apple’s products are shockingly not obvious until they are. The thing that would truly shock me is if Apple were to declare the next new thing as something that was not portable. Portability is the one attribute that is universally loved by users. So if Apple were to scrap portability it would have to be in the service of some higher design goal. I imagined how that might go down. Here’s my take on Tim Cook’s presentation for this October’s event in the form of a transcript.
[Curtain rises and we see a video of Steve Jobs describing what computers are for him from the late 1980's.]
“I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. Humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list….That didn’t look so good, but then someone at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle and a man on a bicycle blew the condor away. That’s what a computer is to me: the computer is the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.” —Steve Jobs
[Tim Cook walks out on stage]
Welcome to our October Apple Event. We are humbled and thrilled by people’s response to iPhone. It has become the most popular personal computer in the world, and it fits in your palm and in your pocket, as comfortable and convenient as a pen or a set of keys. iPhone has become truly the most “personal” computer in the world. With the power of a connected computer in your palm and the choice of over 1 million applications, we’ve delivered amazing experiences to our customers, and an unprecedented sense of convenience.
So this got us thinking: where do we go from here? And so we returned to the inspiration of our founder and asked ourselves, as we always do: how do we create a better bicycle for the mind? While others ask, “How should we create a better iPhone or a better Mac”, we ask instead, “How do we help people to more easily create magic, how do we help them to communicate more clearly and deeply, how do we help people to imagine brighter futures and to tell more compelling stories?”
And as we’ve watched our devices become smaller and more untethered, more portable, we noticed something extraordinary—people’s attention gets chopped up, our life becomes multi-tasking, and we experience a significant deterioration in a single human capability—a capability cherished by those of us at Apple—the capability to enter into a state of creative flow and bliss. We all know that feeling. In fact, how we all strive to achieve flow uniquely defines who we are: My mother, she gardens. My daughter: yoga. For me, its writing on a Sunday morning or watching a Yankee’s game.
The feeling of flow is about becoming so immersed in a feeling, an idea, a conversation, a performance, a debate that you lose track of time. It feels wonderful. And it is very deeply rooted in that which makes us human.
With iPhone, so much of our motivation and design thinking was about convenience—how to make a personal computer that is with you all the time and available to your every beck and call. With our latest product, we started with a blank slate and designed a computer whose purpose was to help the mind achieve flow —a device that magically concentrated our attention and quietly keeps distractions at bay and attempts to enrich our experience of life by deepening it.And so today, I’d like to introduce to you the next generation of personal computers. We call it: the iBubble.
We’ve had to rethink many beloved qualities that our users have taken for granted—for instance, portability. See, a palm sized device simpy can’t solve the problem we’ve chosen to tackle—the problem of achieving flow. To create this feeling, we’ve taken an iPhone display and scaled up by 100x times the size. Same with the speakers and cameras. The lack of portability is what allows us to reach a new height of experience. It is beautifully immense. It literally fills the walls of your room so your environment becomes a playground for the creative mind. Never before has creation and experience become so simple and so deeply experienced.
We’ve shown it to our friends in Hollywood and here’s what they have to say.
[Peter Jackson shows up on a large video screen]
“So much of movie making happens in the directors head, and the curse of moviemaking is how to close the gap between what’s in my head and what others see. When immersed in an iBubble, there is so little friction between what I’m imagining and what can be experienced it has changed my thinking about moviemaking and creation overnight. Every movie I make will be created in an iBubble.”
Last week, my mother died, and I was able to gather my family from all over the States, into my iBubble. We cried and cried as we reminisced about the beauty that was my mother. And it was the first time I saw my father cry. Never before has a personal computing experience created this level of intimacy with communication.
And as you know, those of us at Apple love Music. The first time we asked Elvis Costello, Sting and Norah Jones to jam together in an iBubble all of them left that experience knowing that making music, alone or collaboratively, will never be the same.
We took great care in the design of this experience. Every element in the experience has been carefully thought thru to create a singular vision—to enhance your sense of flow so you can be more creative, more present, and more human. Apple is thrilled by this new product, and we can’t wait for you to experience iBubble for the first time. With iBubble, your mind will pedal more effortlessly than ever before. We currently do not support third party apps, but hope to by this time next year.
[Audience is stunned. A smattering of clapping. Curtain comes down.]
