I, Cringely . The Pulpit | PBS
I, Cringely is the blog of Robert X. Cringely. Copyright 2006 PBS Online.

• Kindling
  

  When I started writing this column in the spring of 1997 Apple was on the skids. It was the era of Gil Amelio, still several months before the return of Steve Jobs. Apple's products were a confused mish-mash, with product planning coming more from CompUSA than from Cupertino. There was no long-term vision and the company was clearly for sale with no buyers. Sun had taken a look and passed on the deal, simply seeing nothing worth the couple of billion it would have cost to buy the company. In terms of market cap that was more than $160 billion ago, as Apple has gone up by more than 80X since the return of Steve Jobs in the summer of 1997. Jobs and Apple are now on top of the personal computing and consumer electronics worlds, "firing on all cylinders" as Wall Street analysts like to put it. That means it is time for a more nuanced look at the company and where it is headed. Is it really that valuable?

  Yes.

  Apple is used to setting styles and inventing platforms, but at the risk of undercutting next month's 2008 predictions column, let's first look at where the product line could use some help. If there are obvious gaps (there are) then they probably need filling, and soon.

  1) A new form factor for the Mac Pro towers.

  2) Better LCD displays. Apple's are big but expensive and the specs are no longer better than the competition -- or even close. Where are the HDMI ports and the built-in iSight cameras?

  3) Blu-ray or, for that matter ANY HD optical storage. This was promised years ago.

  4) H.264 hardware support.

  5) Black or dark gray MacBook Pros.

  6) And of course the now-leaked-by-AT&T 3G iPhone.

  One product I believe WON'T be coming soon from Apple is a Flash plug-in for the iPhone. Though this was at one time promised, it is hard to say how real that promise ever was because of the strategic importance of Apple's WebKit -- the basis of the Safari browser on Mac, Windows, and now the iPhone and iPod Touch.

  WebKit, an open source web browser engine (not a web browser in its own right but all the parts you'd need to build a web browser), is key to Apple's vision for devices like the iPhone and the iPod Touch that live somewhere between computers and phones and define where Apple is headed with its mobile strategy.

  Not much is said about WebKit and this is a surprise to me since it is such a big hit. Google's Open Handset Alliance Android smartphone software platform uses WebKit as its web rendering engine, and the open source KDE and GTK+ projects both use KHTML, on which WebKit was based.

  The point of WebKit for Apple was to define an open source standard for rendering web pages on all sorts of Internet-enabled devices. This also explains why Apple used KHTML instead of Gecko or its own web engine for Safari -- even though KHTML was terrible at rendering web pages that were optimized for Internet Explorer. KHTML is the only rendering engine that can pass the Acid2 web-rendering test, and following a standard was more important to Apple than correctly rendering poorly written web pages.

  Which brings us back to the lack of a Flash player or plug-in for the iPhone, which is the single greatest reason why we do not yet see true third-party iPhone applications. Had Apple allowed a Flash player on the iPhone, it risked having Flash -- rather than the Apple-preferred Ajax -- become the dominant iPhone web application development environment.

  Apple sees much of its future in Internet-enabled consumer appliances. It's the third or fourth rebirth of the whole Network Appliance concept, only this time mobility and media are added and the mix may finally be right. But this strategy won't work as well if Apple has to depend on a third party to bless its platform. These days the options are to embrace Microsoft (.NET and Silverlight), Sun (Java), or Adobe (Flash), but Apple wants to control its own destiny, zigging and zagging as it likes to crush competitors, hence WebKit. It's a huge success for Apple that people just aren't talking about.

  I'm not saying that a Flash player or plug-in won't eventually appear, but Apple won't allow it to happen until Cupertino feels the WebKit/iPhone/iPod Touch platform is established well enough to stand on its own.

  The next logical WebKit product for Apple, it seems to me, is a much larger version of the iPod Touch. It would be Apple's first tablet computer and, while they'll still claim it runs OS X, Apple WON'T call it a Mac.

  I'm not the only person thinking like this. Here's more from an old friend who is much smarter than I. He sees an Apple tablet coming in January for five simple reasons:

  1) Because MacWorld in January is when Apple stuns the world with improvements and innovations. A well-designed tablet could be a great innovation. An SDK for February 2008, not for just iPhone but for multi-touch devices in general, including a newly available iTablet-- that would be stunning.

  2) Because a multi-touch tablet would provide a patent-protected interface for a new class of communication and computer device that Microsoft and its hardware partners would be hard-pressed to clone. The question now is does one get a Mac or a PC? There would be no PC analog to a well-designed Mac tablet, so if an iTablet is compelling, the question then becomes more like, when can I get one?

  3) Because a nice form-factor tablet could be a significant addition to a video-viewing ecosystem. Apple's success in music is not just about well-designed music players, but the way iPods work with iTunes, and the fact that people could easily move their CD collections over and play them on these new portable devices. A nice iTablet could be great for viewing videos. It's not clear that Apple can build in DVD ripping ala Handbrake, but if they did (on the legal grounds that people can make a copy of what they already own, like a CD), then that would be another significant video ecosystem factor. Add good video-storage options on local disks, home networks, and "the cloud," sprinkle in the option for HD viewing, and then mix all that with being able to view videos on iPods and iPhones, Macs and PCs, big screens via Apple TV, and then sleek, portable iTablets... Well, then we'll watch the major studios start to provide their video libraries, all but Disney kicking, screaming, wringing hands, and gnashing teeth.

  4) Because an iTablet with a camera built in could potentially have the power and bandwidth to enable portable video communication. Video communication is another ecosystem for which I believe Apple is laying the groundwork.

  5) The fact that an iTablet could be a great e-book reader, too, is not a driving reason for such a device, I don't believe. But it's a nice capability. Read the book and watch the movie. Then watch Amazon's new Kindle go up in flames.

  To this I might add a sixth reason for an iTablet intro, which is because AT&T last week stole the thunder from an Apple 3G iPhone announcement. Jobs sorely needs something even better to announce.

  Frankly, I wasn't fully convinced until reaching point five. Killing the Kindle and deflating Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos -- now that's something worthy of Jobs and Apple.

• When Networks Collide
  

  AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson this week said what I have been saying since last July -- that Apple and AT&T would soon introduce an iPhone that works with AT&T's faster 3G wireless data network. I said it because I had heard last summer that AT&T was already testing 3G iPhones in Florida, but the better question is why Stephenson said it and why now? For AT&T, his announcement looks, frankly, stupid.

  Here's a guy who is head of the largest telephone company in America and its largest mobile phone company. He has a five-year iPhone exclusive giving AT&T the number one selling U.S. smart phone and a huge generator of primo subscribers mainly poached from other carriers. Christmas is a month away and 1-2 million Americans have been planning to give -- or hoping to get -- an iPhone. So what does the guy do? He lets it slip that next year Apple will release a faster iPhone that will make the existing model obsolete. The only impact this can have on current iPhone sales is to stop them in their tracks, unless Apple offers a free 3G upgrade, which believe me they never intended to offer and may not.

  So what's up? Was it a simple slip? Or is the guy so out of touch with reality that he doesn't realize that with a few words he has probably deferred -- maybe forever -- at least a million new customers worth to Wall Street at least $1 billion in market cap for his company?

  I don't think Stephenson's statement was by accident and I don't think he is out of touch with reality. I think, instead, he was sending a $1 billion message to Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

  It is no coincidence that Stephenson made his remarks in Silicon Valley, rather than in San Antonio or New York. He came to the turf of his "partner" and delivered a message that will hurt Apple as much as AT&T, a message that says AT&T doesn't really need Apple despite the iPhone's success.

  It's one thing to have a private disagreement between companies but quite another to take it public in a way that costs real money.

  What I believe is troubling the relationship between AT&T and Apple is the upcoming auction for 700-MHz wireless spectrum and AT&T's disco