| Home > Technology > It's time for an Apple Tablet - the iScribe - With new Keynote functions built in |
| It's time for an Apple Tablet - the iScribe - With new Keynote functions built in | | Date Created: 18 Dec, 2004, 07:21 PM |
 If you're an Apple user who follows the happenings within and around the company, you'll likely have a set of Safari/Firefox bookmarks which take you to sites which keep you updated on Mac-related events, including iPod happenings (can't really escape it anyway).
At the end of 2004, that includes subjects such as podcasting, the prospect of an Apple/Motorola cellphone, updated hardware, further developments in Tiger (OS X 10.4) being revealed, and perhaps new software from Apple to be demonstrated at MacExpo in a few weeks.
I plan to visit my first Expo in a few years, but whether I make to the Keynote to experienced the Jobs' effect in person, I don't know. Hopefully, if I don't there will be a videofeed in the Exhibit Hall.
In the past, I've stayed up til the early hours of Wednesday morning in Melbourne, set the Powerbook to output to the VCR and tape it for later viewing (and in case I fall asleep).
My favourite Expo was the one where Jobs revealed not one, but two Powerbooks (12" and 17") in what was a very well kept secret - only one rumour site published a new Powerbook rumour the day before, and the host of a well-known live internet show the week before had insisted "there will be no new Powerbooks" announced.
It was also the same Expo, if memory serves, when Jobs revealed Keynote, and let it be known it was the software he used for his presentations.
Most who watched his presentation (does Apple ever make these shows available on the Web?) were quite taken by what they saw, and even more so when Jobs said all Keynote attendees would receive a free copy. That's one way to launch new software in the face of the omnipresence of Powerpoint.
Since then, Keynote has received minor fixes, while Powerpoint has truly been upgraded, and improved.
Nonetheless, a community of practice (CoP) has developed around Keynote, eaking and tweaking the best out if its limitations, in the hope that sooner or later, a serious upgrade was on the cards.
Since I blogged about the iPodPhoto/U2 presentation back and October, and noted the transitions and effects which hinted at Version 2 being readied, many others have picked up the theme (!) and expectations are high that the Expo will indeed be the place a new Keynote will be revealed.
Right now, I am preparing a series of presentations where I will use Keynote. One on Monday for my local Mac user group on Podcasting, and a series of presentations for 2005 on Personal Knowledge Management, Information Overload, and Cutting Edge treatment of Anxiety disorders - pretty wide selection, but that's where my interests take me currently.
In putting these together, I have three or four different Keynotes "on the go" where I am adding new movies, graphics and idea as they come to me. In that sense, I'm using Keynote almost like a Notetaking application, as a place to store ideas I might use later. I actually do use Aquaminds' Notetaker to store whole webpages for later reference, capturing their graphics, fonts, and links.
Indeed, one of the many features requests for Keynote 2.0 has been live links, similar to Powerpoint. I want those live links to enable me to go to a webpage within Keynote so I don't have to leave and come back into Keynote. I want to keep its magic going, rather than reveal how Keynote does its job. Others may not care about it, but frankly, I really dislike seeing the guts of Powerpoint in action - I much prefer to keep the illusion alive.
Which brings me to a vain hope - that Apple releases a Tablet or Notepad hardware.
Now it's well known that Steve Jobs has patiently waited to see how Microsoft's Tablet PC software melds with the hardware from numerous first-tier manufacturers like Toshiba and Fujitsu.
And there are persistent stories that Apple was very interested in Palm at one point.
For me, as someone who wants to present as interactively as possible with his audience, I can see the value of a Tablet Mac: call it the iScribe (with thanks to my friend and fellow Mac user Peter Schmideg for the suggestion).
My previous blog entry about the poor use of Powerpoint contains within it the idea of using Keynote to illustrate stories rather than be the story, and like most things Apple, it lets me do my job and gets out of my way.
Keynote can be improved when matched with an iScribe.
The problem with a slide presentation is how it limits audience interactivity. Look at how tight is Steve Jobs' presentation. Hundreds of slides, screens on stage cueing him in, and likely months of preparation and rehearsal to get it right. It has no intention of being interactive, unlike my own presentations.
Now doubt Jobs would always prefer to avoid what happened to Bill Gates and a sorrowful employee some years back when demonstrating the "Plug and Play" abilities of Windows 98 and a flatbed scanner - which promptly saw it throw a Blue Screen of Death image. The video re-appears on the web frequently.
Jobs had his own BSoD moment some years back when demonstrating iPhoto and how easy it was to use the first generation of inexpensive digital cameras to sync. It didn't after one or two attempts, and in a fit of pique, he threw the camera at or to a halpless helper, and moved on.
Whatever, there is room in Keynote to allow for greater interactivity with the audience. Sure, use the slides to generate ideas and demonstrate your thinking, but I want greater ability to handle audience questions and ideas too.
I have advised one of the groups for whom I am slated to speak to go ahead and purchase a new videoprojector (which their committee of management had agreed to monhs ago) but make sure it comes equipped with wireless connectivity, bluetooth or Wi-Fi.
With the iScribe, I could walk around the presentation venue, and not be immobilised by needing to be in close proximity to it. Right now, I can move around and use my Sony Ericsson Bluetooth phone and Salling's Clicker software to also move around the Keynote presentation.
But what if ideas are generated by the audience or I want to illustrate a thought not contained in my scripted presentation? Then I have to rely on a whiteboard and marker pen, or an overhead projector.
What if my iScribe tablet could allow me to open a blank slide in Keynote and write notes by hand which are then projected on the same screen. And of course, my writing would be recognised by Apple's Inkwell software. Which means I have captured these new ideas to print out or distribute later to the same audience.
Naturally enough, the iScribe would function as you'd expect a Tablet to work, but of course with some additional Apple flourishes in design and useability. I don't have the imagination to know what this might look like, but I trust Apple to continue the conversion to fuse its innovation DNA into hardware and software that works.
It would go way beyond what I have selfishly suggested.
As Cringely wrote a year ago:
.... Steve Jobs would prefer something more than just modest success. He wants to define a new product niche or, in this case, finally give practical definition to a niche that already exists, kinda-sorta.
The tablet PC killer app for the mass market is functioning as a digital hub, a general concept both Apple and Microsoft have been pushing for a couple years. It's the idea that your computer ought to control your TV and your stereo and your VCR. The only problem has been that there isn't a good way to link these things all together, and even if we do, that digital hub isn't anywhere near your TV, at least not yet.
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