Thursday was a good day to blog. I had an idea and a collection of notes – I wanted to take a look at the rise of the tablet PC with a nod to its uptake and use in various aspects of pro audio. The launch of the Amazon Kindle Fire, the prominence of the iPad and Steve Jobs’ recent retirement from Apple made it especially timely.
Then came news that Jobs had died…
Having only recently posted a blog (Dead Reckoning) devoted to the succession of losses pro audio has suffered this year, and the dilemma that reporting deaths presents to the press, it felt like revisiting strangely familiar ground. But no less sad or shocking for that.
Jobs’ part in Apple’s success – and in the development of interfaces that have brought computer technology crashing into everyday life on so many fronts – is well documented. His vision and passion are key precursors to the place that the iPad is now finding in the programming and control of audio gear and set-ups.
And it’s only just beginning.
The term ‘post-PC era’ is on the lips of the many industry analysts aware of the paradigm shift being wrought by the ‘app’ GUI model and the fact that there is estimated to be a consumer market of 5bn users up for grabs. For consumers, the key is the availability of mobile broadband services and the appearance of the Cloud.
‘When Apple released the iPad, it gave people what they wanted all along,’ says a recent report on tablet computers filed by Diya Soubra, a managing partner at SCH Consulting. ‘Access to content of all kinds on the go. No desktop to be attached to and no portable computer to carry around.’
Certainly, Apple has created the device and the user interface, but it has also been able to exploit many other elements that were already in place – 3G networks, extensive (and expanding) Wi-Fi access and GPS, as well as technologies such as touchscreens, Bluetooth and accelerometers.
That this is relevant to broadcast is inescapable, and Soubra rightly points to the appearance of broadband infrastructure suppliers ‘showing off 3G and 4G systems for mobile content distribution, mainly for tablets’ at the recent IBC show: Next year, Broadband World Forum is moving to Amsterdam just after IBC and will be combined with a Cloud Computing show. ‘This is a clear sign that convergence is here,’ Soubra says.
For audio, add in the use of a tablet as a wireless control surface for mixing desks and loudspeaker systems, as well as applications in sound installations and broadcast. It may not look like much of a market when compared to those 5bn civvies, but both music and pro audio have shamelessly benefitted from other industries’ R&D and scales of production for a long time now – telecomms, military security, microwave communications, brewing, pharmaceuticals…
While the Kindle Fire (see what they did there?) is not pitted directly against the iPad, it does appear to signal another very significant development in the tablet computer format. If, as I understand, it is able to supplement its onboard processing power by accessing Cloud processing (see Cloud Computing: Silver Lining or Stormbringer?), a tablet may become dramatically more powerful that the device you hold in your hands. Many, many times so.
Child’s play
While Apple’s VP of Operations in 1979, Steve Jobs was closely involved in the development of the company’s computers. By accident or design, his visit to Xerox’s Parc development facility allowed him to see the results of Xerox’s work on the possible use of a graphical interface and mouse – modelled on the early learning abilities of children – as an alternative to
incomprehensible and unforgiving command lines as a means of operating a computer. While these innovations came to nought with the Apple Lisa computer, they were subsequently to change the face of the personal computer. Literally.
With Steve Jobs’ Apple leading the charge, the GUI and mouse broke the personal computer out of the office and released it into the home. Apple’s later uptake of the ‘pinch technology’ developed by Jeff Han at FingerWorks (now part of Apple) enabled the interface of the iPhone and the subsequent iPad, further demonstrating that vision is as important as R&D.
‘Steve’s ideas, vision and force of will changed the way movies are made, how people design and publish printed material, how we buy and listen to music, and how we do things with computers in ways that only appeared in the lab or science fiction,’ says technology observer, Geoff Kratz. ‘His ideas and his drive made technology accessible to the average person, and has been a significant factor in the consumerisation of technology in business.’
If there was any doubt that the apps that define tablet and smartphone operation would feed back into desktop machines and out into other areas of computer control, it is gone (discussed in What's App Doc? The Death of the Desktop). And the pro audio manufacturers that are busy releasing and preparing new control and set-up apps know it.
Tablets and their connectivity herald an era of offline preparation and remote operation that will change audio – whether you’re talking about live sound, broadcast sound, installed sound or beyond. It’s going to be a great ride.
Of course, apps do not enable a phone or tablet to do anything that a computer cannot, but they optimise the use of resources and connections to make specific tasks much quicker and simpler. You can’t put the lid back on Pandora’s Box and development engineers from all walks are climbing over one another to take a good look inside.
It’s just another Jobs legacy.
US President Barack Obama went a stage further in his accolade: ‘He transformed our lives, redefined entire industries and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world,’ he said in recognition of Jobs’ achievements. ‘The world has lost a visionary.’
‘Steve Jobs’ prowess was not in engineering or design,’ Kratz observes. ‘He relied on Steve Wozniak in the very early days of Apple, then Jef Raskin for the Macintosh and later Jonathan Ive for the iPod, iPhone and later versions of Apple’s computers. What he did possess was a superbly keen eye for the needs and desires of consumers, the ability to attract talent to work with him and the leadership to bring out their best work.’
Put that way, he sounds more like the leader of a pioneering rock band than a businessman. I think he’d like that…
