JeffKirvin.net

Apple has caught a lot of flak recently for what are, let’s face it, some pretty damn consumer-hostile actions. Not only does the new iPod Touch turn out to be strangely crippled (can’t add appointments in the calendar, etc.), but Apple has brought the hammer down and relocked the iPhone with the 1.1.1 update, making it again impossible to run third party applications (not the least of those being apps to unlock the iPhone to use non-AT&T SIMs).

When I first read about this behavior from Apple, I thought what I always think about Apple: great hardware and software sadly crippled by a power-mad, control freak company. But what if there’s a method to the madness?

We’ve also seen recent rumors of a new Apple product, something that looks like the iPod Touch or the iPhone but is about 1.5 times bigger. This device, which I’ll nickname the iTablet, would also run the slimmed down variant of OS X used by the other two devices, but be more of a general purpose computing device, somewhere between a PDA and a UMPC.

Positing this existence of such a device makes Apple’s strict lockdown of the other devices make a certain kind of sense. Just as they released the iPhone before the Touch so that people who just wanted a touchscreen iPod would buy the iPhone (then either keep it and keep paying to AT&T and Apple, who gets a cut of the monthly fees, or upgrade to the Touch), if they allowed third party apps on the iPhone or the Touch, it would cannibalize the market for the iTablet. By releasing all three devices in this particular order, they get people who were initially looking for something combining an iPod with the Newton to buy all three. Jobs may be evil, but he’s not stupid.

I know, I know, Apple has said for years that they would never build a PDA. But they also said for years they would never build a phone. Apple has avoided the PDA, tablet and UMPC market for one reason: the Newton.

In 1985, Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple, forced to leave the company he founded. He blamed John Scully for this humiliation, and when he was brought back to Apple nearly the first thing he did was kill Scully’s pet project, the Newton. He’s avoided touchscreen devices in general for years, and even in the introduction of the iPhone, couldn’t resist taking a potshot at stylus-driven devices.

Now, he finally has the chance to take his revenge. Let’s assume the iTablet is real. Let’s also assume it is more open than the iPhone, comes with at least a basic SDK for developers and most importantly, includes special touch-enabled versions of iLife and iWork out of the box. Unlike the iPhone, it would fully support Bluetooth mice and keyboards, etc. So we’d have a device small enough to fit in a cargo pocket, stylus-free and capable of doing much of what a full size iMac can do. Price it reasonably, and they’ll sell by the truckload. I hate Apple as a company, and I’d have to seriously consider one myself.

And just like that, Steve would win. He’d have succeeded where Scully failed, and done it with OS X (which if you’ll recall is essentially a facelift on NeXTstep, the OS Steve built while away from Apple). It would be the ultimate middle finger to John Scully, and that’s something that Steve Jobs just can’t pass up.