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Apple Tablet - Photographers Wish List

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I'm feeling G4 Cube all over again. will cost too much and do too little. Photographers can't really use it and the public doesn't need it. I hope I'm wrong, but after buying Apple stock at 38.00 and selling it all at 210.00 last week, I think I have a pretty good idea of what will succeed.
 
Agreed

tablet computers have been a solution looking for a problem for years. Just because apple is jumping in doesn't equate to instant sales or instant coolness. The fact remains you can do more better/easier with a laptop then with a tablet.
 
In some ways it is hard to disagree with your view that a Tablet is likely to fail. It may well do - let us remember indeed that as you point out Apple have had failures. Apple TV has not exactly been a run away success either.

And yes - CURRRENTLY tablets are a solution looking for a problem, but Apple can and have changed the game with products before. If the user interface does provide a better way of interacting for some applications that a keyboard then they'll have a winner - potentially. As I said in the OP this will be much easier for consuming media than "working" which is why tablets as currently configured have failed.

I also think that Jobs and Apple understand more than they did years ago about what makes a successful product.

Let's see!
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http://www.mbphotography.net
 
I don't think anyone is implying or even hoping that this thing would be really good for critical post processing of images. But it could be very useful for the very purposes that several earlier posters have stated, as a sort of adjunct viewer with possibilities for offloading images from cards for intermediate storage and review, tethering in remote locations. basic culling, rating, keywording, etc. I just had a new thought that maybe Aperture 3 will have built in connectivity with the new "Slate" thing! Not for running full Aperture, but for initial import, sorting, rating, keywording, etc., so when you get back to your main computer, you can connect it and all of the imported projects will sync with Aperture directly. That would be very useful.

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Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}

http://www.dougwigton.com/
 
Is it O.K. if in a year I get to say "I told you so" when Apples stock doubles again?
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Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}

http://www.dougwigton.com/
 
Have to agree I don't forsee Apple's stock nosediving anytime soon. Anyone that rides a recession that well is doing very well indeed.
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http://www.mbphotography.net
 
Marcus: Precisely! Look at "Smart Phones". For years, they were an answer to an un-asked question. Windows Mobile has been out for many years, and yet none of the phones based on it ever made any inroads at all. Palm based phones never had much impact either, but they have been around for many years. Blackberry did make some inroads in business because of push email, but never was a huge success in the consumer market. Apple comes along, way late for the party, and introduces a phone that completely shakes up the overall market, causes every other phone manufacturer to scurry to quickly develop and iPhone clone, and sells millions of units and changes smart phones to a "must have" item. Complete paradigm change. I don't want to go overboard on predictions for the new tablet, but I'm really thinking further paradigm change. On a big scale.

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Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}

http://www.dougwigton.com/
 
Before the iPhone came out, could you have percieved of what you might be using it for in 2 years? Would you have guessed that you would use it as a mobile sound recorder, or that you would use it to tune your guitar? Or would you have guessed that you would surf the web or watch YouTube on it? None of us could have predicted all the uses we now find routine on our iPhones. Similarly, it is hard to predict all the things that a slim, light, much smaller than any netbook or laptop device will do a couple years down the road. But it will be big.

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Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}

http://www.dougwigton.com/
 
maflynn said:
tablet computers have been a solution looking for a problem for years. Just because apple is jumping in doesn't equate to instant sales or instant coolness. The fact remains you can do more better/easier with a laptop then with a tablet.
Click to expand...
Your statement only makes sense if you're assuming Apple will simply do what the Tablet PC did, shoehorn a desktop into a tablet. It seems foolish to assume that. Remember how the fanboys thought Apple should do a PDA, and Apple never did one. Then everyone thought Apple should do a cell phone, and Apple didn't do one for the longest time, then they tossed one out there (the Motorola ROKR with iTunes) to show why doing the same phone everybody else was doing was a stupid idea, and then they came out with the one where they rethought it all from the ground up, the iPhone, a phone that is also a PDA but going well beyond that. Apple tries to give people what they need, not what they ask for (like Henry Ford's "If I asked my customers what they wanted they would have asked for faster horses.") Apple has to to be a tablet implementation we haven't anticipated, otherwise you will be right and it will be a disappointment.
 
Just because this product might not be useful for photographers it doesn't mean it will be a flop!! listen yourselves lol...there well might be some amazing features that other people, not photographers might find useful... you know, normal people who don't wander the streets in kakhi shorts and sandals with a back pack and 3 cameras dripping off their necks!Trust me, when apple designed this thing,. the first thing on their mind was , and i am really sorry to say this, was , I repeat not " lets put a cf and an sd card on it to satisfy users of DSLRs, especially canon/nikon/shooters"

any features beneficial to photographers is purely incidental, apple didn't give a sun dried dingleberry about photographers when they designed a product like this whose potential use is clearly in a more mainstream environment. In the same way a middle aged person who might be an avid e-reader care less if it could recognise RAW thumbnails.

I'd love this product to be a success, and I will wait and see, but just because it might not tick all my boxes as a photographer, that doesn't mean it will fail or is no good.
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/dipak49ers/sets/
 
I'm not particularly excited because it's going to be a 'consumer' device - not the useful tablet envisioned by heavymeister and others, but a glorified ebook reader and video consumption tool.

I really doubt it will be a device targeted at professionals or high end media producers because that market isn't where Apple is going. They are taking the high volume road and I don't think the tablet will be flexible enough to really benefit photographers in any measurable way:
  • it won't have a mat screen option
  • it will be hard to calibrate (maybe not so important)
  • it won't have a CF card reader, probably won't have any sort of card reader
  • it won't have enormous storage, although 150 GB or so would be adequate for short term use
  • it won't utilize a stylus so no fine grained manipulation of images
  • it won't run OS X and so no core image, no built in Raw processing.....
I'd love a tablet with all of the above, but I don't see it coming.
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RG
http://www.lostrange.com
 
I could find a tablet useful as a photographer. Maybe it isn't where I make critical color decisions, but in theory there should be nothing stopping the tablet from being quite useful as a touch-screen hands-on road tool for viewing mass thumbnails, rating and keywording via clicks and drag/drop, organizing client galleries, uploading to photo web sites...

Heck if Apple does it right, it might be fun to do all that on the tablet. You could, in theory, build a killer multi-touch app that works like the old-time "slides on a light table," lightly nudging virtual "chromes" around with your fingers, but with all the advantages of digital gestures/shortcuts for labeling, rating, rejecting, etc. We've all heard from photo veterans who feel more disconnected from photography these days having to go through mice, dialogs, and sliders to work on their pictures, who miss the old hands-on way of working with photos.

Maybe the tablet can bring some of that back.
 
rgolab You are right the tablet wont do any of the things you've listed and wont be aimed at photographers but that doesn't mean it wont be a great tool for photographers both in the field and with clients.

If you can see the value in some of the things the iphone can do then you are on your way to seeing the value of the tablet. It's not going to be a mythical 10" machine with the power of the MBP, or even the power of the MBA. This will be light, portable and with huge potential, the potential will come from apps.

Apple will provide the hardware and the slick UI and developers the opportunity to take the device into numerous different directions, the same way the iphone has. The iphone wasn't designed for photographers but some of the apps make it ideally suited.
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:🆕: Canon 5D MkII + 70-200 2.8 IS - Simply Sublime!!
A Fully fledged Mac fan now! MacPro is still waiting for me to push it!
 
graybalanced said:
Najinsky said:
How about gloves? Perhaps they could have grippy parts
Click to expand...
OK people, Apple's not going to use gloves, or a stylus, or any of that. It just isn't the way they do things, won't fit the simplicity mantra. They're going to make it direct manipulation like the iPhone or they won't do it at all.
Click to expand...
And Apple go to the expense of filing patents just for fun? Is that the way they do things?

http://www.macrumors.com/2009/01/01/apple-researching-gloves-for-use-with-multi-touch-devices/

-Najinsky
 
I just find it sad to hear that desktop computers and nice big wide screen monitors will soon become reduntant and in the near future will not be manufactured anymore because of the I-slate and I-tablet devices coming onto the market. What are graphic design studios and pro photographers going to do? Can these tablets and slates do what a powerful desktop can do and can their 10 inch screen replace a good wide screen monitor? Won't it be a big mistake for Apple and Microsoft to not manufacture desktop computers anymore? And what about the monitor manufacturers? Facing bankruptcy now I guess. Do customers really want to sit at home and work on a tablet or slate instead of a nice desktop? I for one dont. I can see these devices being handy when traveling but at home I want to be surrounded by my desktop and 2 widescreen monitors. I think it's all a big mistake.
 
If you can call it evidence, that is; points to a big version of the iPod Touch which is not necessarily a bad thing. The Touch is a super cost effective way of delivering the iPhone without the phone. Will the Tablet do the same? Can they upscale it and keep the cost manageable? Whatever business model they come up with will be interesting, bearing in mind they must sell this thing to a mass market at Apple Prices (eek)......

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Regards
J

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ThingFish said:
I just find it sad to hear that desktop computers and nice big wide screen monitors will soon become reduntant and in the near future will not be manufactured anymore because of the I-slate and I-tablet devices coming onto the market.
Click to expand...
Oh, I know, it's terrible, isn't it? It's going to be like when the coming of television killed radio, when the VCR killed the movie business, and most recently, when laptops killed desktops. It's so sad that we don't have radio and movie theaters anymore.

(But seriously, don't be ridiculous. How on earth could anyone portend the death of desktop computers from the appearance of a tablet? I mean wtf?)
 
Who ever said MS or Apple would stop making desktop or laptop computers? That is something you imagined or made up. Desktop computers and laptops will still be around for many, many years. The iPad or whatever Apple will call it, is just a new and different way to primarily view media files. It is more portable than a laptop, but bigger and bulkier than an iPhone. It will have all kinds of uses where portability is the primary issue. For instance, inventory devices for companies, portable medical record access for doctors and nurses, etc. It will allow you to watch HD movies on a plane, with out dragging your laptop out. It will allow you to take several books and some magazines along on a trip without dragging the physical books along. Think of it as a lifestyle enhancer that works alongside your computer.

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Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}

http://www.dougwigton.com/
 
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