MG Siegler:

Apple is not afraid to step outside of the traditional comfort zones to try to create a new product — even if others have failed there before, as is the case with tablets. While this stirs skepticism in some, in many more people, it creates a sense of wonder. What if Apple can do it right this time? It’s exciting partially because it’s no sure thing. It’s exciting because the payoff is potentially huge. By this time next year, we may have a whole new genre of computing. It’s an undiscovered country.

Sebastiaan de With provides a quick look at Billings Touch.

I use Billings on the desktop, and can’t wait to have it on my iPhone. Looks like they did a great job.

Tapbots has a new iPhone application out called Pastebot.

I was thoroughly uninterested in the application, until the last section of the demo. Pastebot syncs your Mac and Pastebot clipboard back and forth, instantly. Looks like a much better way of getting text or an image to your Mac than emailing it to yourself.

Apple’s apparently impending tablet has grabbed me, for one reason: I love to read. Reading the newspaper over breakfast is a kind of meditation for me, a slow morning routine that prepares me for the rest of the day.

After that ritual, which I look forward to every morning, I go and read through my feeds on my computer, and the differences between the two are jarring. One is relaxed, considered and focused; the other frantic.

So I am interested in the tablet not because it will be a new toy to play with, but because it could be a suitable replacement for print — with all the advantages of a web-connected device — that a computer will never be.

I am interested in it, because I can see myself sitting down with a tablet in the morning, next to my bowl of cereal and tea, and reading the newspaper and a select few feeds for an hour.

But video and other multimedia content isn’t particularly appealing to me, like Time Inc.’s mockup. An excellent reading experience, just as engrossing as print, is.

I’ve done two mockups of what I would like to see for a newspaper. The first is the “first page”:

(Click to enlarge and reveal the rest of the page)

Rather than adopt the typical newspaper layout to the tablet screen, which would likely require zooming in on each article to read it, each article is perfectly readable without zooming. The central advantage of a newspaper’s first page is the large number of articles that it has, and thus the breadth of content it shows. I kept that feature, but did so in a way that is readable without zooming.

A newspaper works in a simple way — you either flip through it to get to the section you want, or pull that section out and read it first. I want the application to be just as simple for jumping to a new section, so you can move to one easily from anywhere in the application. Rather than make a navigation screen, it has a permanent bar at the top which gives you immediate access to any section.

When you want to read one of the articles, you just tap on it, and it opens it in the article view:

The article view has the same bar at the top, so you can jump to any section.

There is little UI, or any other visual distractions — just the text and relevant image. To change pages, you slide your finger from the right edge toward the left edge, just like other ebook applications on the iPhone.

While reading, I like to highlight and take notes for articles I might use in later work. To do this, you tap and hold with two fingers on the text, and then run your finger along the text to highlight it. You can add a note as well, which is then attached to the highlighted portion (this is signified by the dog-eared edge of the highlighted text).

As I discussed in an earlier article on the tablet, I want these noted sections to be compiled for you and synced back to your Mac with the citation, so it is ready to be inserted into whatever you are writing.

The UI elements at the bottom do what you expect — the plus button, when pressed, allows you to share it via Twitter or email, while the star allows you to save it for later. I wasn’t (and am still not) sure what the best way to do these things is. I want as little UI clutter on the screen as possible, so I initially wanted the UI elements only to pop up when you tapped on the screen (like several iPhone applications do), but this is too clunky. They pop up when you accidentally tap the screen, and end up being a distraction.

I also thought about using gestures, but I couldn’t think of a gesture that is conceptually associated with sharing, and would be discoverable by users. I then thought about a little tab at the bottom, which you could pull up to reveal the UI elements. I rejected this because it introduces complexity and more steps into something that should be dead simple.

Instead, I tried to make them as unobtrusive as possible. Rather than look like a bar overlaid on the screen, I wanted them to look more like they are a part of the page, just as the text is. As a result, the reader shouldn’t think about them at all — they are not covering any part of the page, but are on the page itself, and so they shouldn’t be a factor until they need to use them.

In Wired’s piece on the making of the iPod:

Knauss noted that there were no demands to add FairPlay, Apple’s copy-protection technology, which was appended to the second-generation iPod to coincide with the introduction of the iTunes music store.

“There was no discussion of (digital rights management),” Knauss said. “Their belief was DRM would hurt sales when they rolled out the music store. They specifically wanted no DRM in the original iPod.”

Interesting. This sounds likely, and would mean that DRM in the iTunes store resulted from the record labels, and not Apple.

Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil touch application is back in the App Store, with the computer artwork.

They apparently talked to Apple about it, and Apple agreed they were using their trademarks fairly.

I’m glad to hear it, but this doesn’t solve the problem with the initial rejection (and past rejections of other applications): the reviewers have absolute authority to reject applications, and there isn’t an appeals process. These absurd rejections are only solved when the developer goes public and the Mac community erupts in protest.

Louie Mantia compares selling iPhone applications to McDonalds:

My point is, just because that McDonald’s has all these people buying up their cheap burgers doesn’t mean that place across the street can’t sell deliciously better seven and a half dollar burgers. They might not sell as many, but it’s not about that. Again, success is measured when you can turn a profit. As long as those guys are making money and can run their business, they’re successful.

So, I have a suggestion. Let’s stop making Apple’s App Store out to be our scapegoat and let’s start publicizing our products on the web a little better. And just as with other businesses, if you can’t make a profit with your iPhone applications, for whatever reason, consider what you’re doing wrong and if there’s any way you can improve what you’re doing.

That’s Apple’s model, too: sell less quantity, but make more per unit. And do that by targeting customers who want (and will pay for) quality products that are lovingly designed and made.

(Via Jorge Quinteros.)

Jason Snell thinks the best model for Apple’s tablet is to let publishers build their own applications:

This is why if Apple’s developing a new tablet device that will be (among other things) a compelling reading device, its best approach is to carry the App Store through to that device. Rather than compete with Amazon and Barnes and Noble and all the rest, Apple can sit back and let them compete with one another while profiting from the popularity of its latest hit gadget. Why should Apple build its own comic-book reading app and set up a system for comic publishers to submit content, when it can just allow the existing comic-book readers to compete with one another while it sits back and rakes in the dough?

Snell later comments that Apple may find “print” content on the tablet so crucial that it will build its own reading experience. That’s very likely.

The tablet seems ideal as a reading device, and most of its other uses are unconvincing. (Watching movies on a bigger screen is nice, but not a reason to buy it. It’s a secondary, and not primary, feature.) Perfecting the reading experience for a majority of content types — books, magazines — and leaving other content types to third-party developers would be smart.

The benefit of making an inclusive reading platform (an excellent reader application, and a content “store”) is users would be more likely to subscribe to them. This is because they know what they’re getting with every subscription. They don’t have to worry about the application, because they’re already comfortable with it and how it works. They’re just thinking about the content.

If each publisher had their own application, users would have to make a larger investment for them. They would have to decide if they like the application or not, learn its design, and then deal with a separate application every time they want to read a different content source.

This shifts the focus from the content and to the application, and would make it likely that users would select one application that they like and only use it. I’ve done this on the iPhone with news applications — I have both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal applications, and I settled on the Journal’s because the Times’s application is cluttered, clunky and slow. The result, I think, would be that publishers would have to release their applications without charge (and without subscription), and so nothing really changes.

The tablet’s potential is to make users willing to pay for content again, by delivering it in a form that is as good as or better than print. I don’t think relying on third-party applications would do this.

Loren Brichter comments on Tweetie’s reload gesture:

So I thought about it, and asked: what was “reload”… really? In the context of Twitter, it really meant “load newer”. And when you loaded newer tweets in your tweet stream, where did they go? At the top of your list.

Jim Dalrymple thinks newspaper publishers will be for the tablet what music labels were for the iPod:

However, Apple does need a new hook for the tablet. That hook will, in part, be the worldwide publishers.

Think of it like this. Part of the overwhelming success of the iPod was the iTunes Store and the deals Apple was able to forge with the music labels. Part of the success of the iPhone is the App Store and what Apple has been able to do with developers.

Part of the draw for the tablet will be newspapers and magazines and the subscription deals they can offer users for publications around the world.

Publishers will almost certainly be an important part of the tablet. Hopefully, though, small writers will be on the same level has large publishers, and won’t be subject to App Store-like review.

While MacHeist is running, Daniel Jalkut has a 20% off coupon for all of his software.

The code is “OneFingerDiscount.”

Broadersheet is a new iPhone application which tries to deliver news articles you’re interested in.

Interesting, and incredibly exciting, idea.

Apple releases Apple TV 3.0.

Adds iTunes LP support and another UI redesign,

First thought: meh, The UI feels uninspired, and it’s quite ugly. The white at the top with the gray “floor” for the movie art is terrible.

Macworld reports that the new MacBook is missing the infrared receiver.

Unfortunate. Apple’s Keynote remote application isn’t bad, but I still prefer using the Apple remote for presentations.

Apple’s new Magic Mouse has no buttons.

That’s just shocking. (Right.)

Terrible name aside, the Magic Mouse looks quite nice. It uses multi-touch for everything other than moving the cursor, so it’s kind of like a trackpad grafted onto a mouse. Tap to click, flick your finger to scroll (in any direction, and it has momentum-scrolling like the iPhone), and swipe left or right to navigate (move backward and forward in Safari and iPhoto, for example).

Hopefully it works well in practice, because like everyone else, I abhor the Mighty Mouse’s scroll ball. I wonder about its profile, though; will its small profile cause people with larger hands to ache after using it for a while?

It seems like Apple is intent on people adopting the Magic Mouse and wireless keyboard. There is no wired version, and while you can opt for the wired Mighty Mouse (now branded the “Apple Mouse”) when buying an iMac, it doesn’t reduce the cost of your order.

It works the same way for the wireless keyboard, too, which now comes standard with the iMac. While you can opt for the wired keyboard, it doesn’t reduce the cost.