A Savior in the Form of a Tablet

Last year about this time, I was talking with an executive from Apple about e-readers and print at a conference we were both attending, much of it in the context of the mainstream media’s original sin of giving away content if people happened to be reading it in digital form.

As we chatted casually over drinks — he wasn’t on the record and wouldn’t be even if it would end world hunger, because he works at Apple — I told him that a workable tablet that featured content that could be priced and sold as an app would fix some of what ailed print. “What the world is waiting for,” I keened, “is a lightweight device that has a backlit, four-color screen big enough to comfortably read on with touch navigation and a wireless connection.”

“What you are talking about is a computer, not an e-reader,” the executive said soberly. “And it would be more expensive, probably closer to $1,000 than $200.”

“Good,” I said. “Where can I get one?”

Later this month, we all might get a glimpse of that future. According to The Financial Times, Apple has rented a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and is expected to make a major product announcement on Tuesday, Jan. 26, where many have speculated that some version of the Apple tablet will be unveiled. The Web site Gizmodo guessed that the device was likely to be called the iSlate, will cost around $800, and won’t hit store shelves until March or possibly April. (And it’s not just Apple: Word of a color tablet device called Courier from Microsoft made a big splash on the site as well, and a company called HTC reportedly has one in the works that uses the Google Chrome operating system. And there are others.)

The secretive Apple has made fools out of predictors in the past, but Kai-Fu Lee, the former head of Google in China, posted an item on his personal blog suggesting the Apple tablet would feature a 10.1-inch multitouch screen with three-dimensional graphics. And it’s worth pointing out that many publishers are building content in the belief that when it comes to the tablet, it’s not if, it’s when.

So, is the Apple tablet a figment of so much Web-borne pixie dust or is it the second coming of the iPhone, a so-called Jesus tablet that can do anything, including saving some embattled print providers from doom?

I’m an optimist, so I will pick door No. 2.

There hasn’t been this much hype about a tablet since Moses came down from the mountain, but in order for a product to have significant value, it has to solve a problem or be very useful, or both. Conventional wisdom suggests that computers do a fine job of allowing people to read digitized content, but the act of clicking a mouse actually has little in common with flipping a page: users are scrolling vertically down into text when what they really want is to scan across as they have for hundreds of years. One reason that the Kindle has done well in spite of its limitations is that computers are made for drilling into data, not reading.

The tablet represents an opportunity to renew the romance between printed material and consumer. Think of sitting in your living room, in your bed or on a plane with a publication you really adore nestled into your lap. Since print was first conceived, people have had an intimate relationship with the text, touching, flipping and paging back and forth.

The tablet, properly executed, will be an iPhone on steroids, and anybody who has spent any time with that device knows that much of its magic lies in replicating that intimate offline navigation. It is a very human, almost innate, urge — readers want to touch what they are seeking to learn.

There are many practical problems to be solved, including making the device lightweight enough to hold while still packing enough battery to feed a power-sucking screen. And the cost is a significant issue. Although a well-executed tablet will play videos and do other magic an e-reader can’t, will it be worth three times as much? It will to me, and perhaps a mass-niche of readers. Estimates of first-year sales of such a device have ranged from one million to 10 million, but Apple doesn’t play small ball.

Jack Shafer, writing in Slate on Dec. 22, says that even if technical questions are solved, the tablet will not help print. He reminds readers that a lot of hype surrounded the introduction of the CD-ROM back in the ’90s, and that fizzled out quickly.

He quotes the academic and thinker Pablo Boczkowski to make the point that the tablet is an answer to a problem most people don’t have: “Most people need a simple surfboard, rather than the complex — and costly — diving gear.” Mr. Shafer suggested that a tablet displaying a souped-up version of Sports Illustrated is really just competing with television, not enhancing print.

“Can the tablet version of SI really compete with the dozen channels of ESPN, Versus and regional sports on my cable channel?” he wrote.

Yes. Magazines and newspapers have competed with television for years and done just fine because they offer qualitatively different media experiences. Readers are not passive viewers; they navigate their way through content at their own pace and whim. And CD-ROMs were a clunky adaptation to an existing device, not a next-gen device built to make reading a deeper pleasure.

If I were lying in bed next to my wife, she may not share my interest in Peyton Manning’s adjusted net yards per passing attempt, but I’m free to go as deep as I want on my own screen. (Insert your own joke here about the touch interface and Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue, but suffice it to say that stellar photography that suddenly morphs into video at the flick of a finger will have all manner of applications.)

But even if I am right, what good does that do print providers? Well, for one thing it helps magazines and newspapers enter a world where they can measure consumer engagement with ads, which is pretty much the only game in town going forward. But even so, why would people suddenly be compelled to pay for something that they’ve gotten for free? That’s where Apple comes in. A simple, reliable interface for gaining access to paid content can do amazing things: Five years ago, almost no one paid for music online and now, nine billion or so songs sold later, we know that people are willing to pay if the price is right and the convenience is there.

Of course, if loads of quality content are available free elsewhere, no interface is going to make paid content attractive. A large number of publishers will have to step to the other side of the pay wall if paid digital content is going to gain any traction.

People have pointed out that there is far more value in repeat uses of “Stand by Me,” by Ben E. King than, say, a copy of this column. But somewhere between the iTunes model and the iPhone app store, where people pay for applications that make their life better or simpler, there may be a model for print.

I haven’t been this excited about buying something since I was 8 years old and sent away for the tiny seahorses I saw advertised in the back of a comic book. Come to think of it, the purchase didn’t really meet my expectations, but with the whole new year thing, a boy can dream, right?