January Apple Event is Official. Time to get the Review and Reaction out of the Way

Official invitations to an Apple media event scheduled for 1/27/2010 were sent out Tuesday. 

What clues can we divine from the invitation?* Well, if you look at the sequence of colors, noting that the wavelengths follow the classic Fibonacci sequence and transposing the values to Greek letters you'll discover.... It just doesn't matter, everyone and their dog knows what is coming at the event, and it's a tablet.

Even if the tablet is the worst kept secret since KFC tried to pass off fried chicken as health food, the details are in short supply. Seems like a perfect time to get the reviews and reaction out of the way. You're likely thinking that the paucity of details would make it difficult to write an accurate summary of what will happen after the introduction. Like pairing socks and sandals, you're simply wrong. These things follow a pattern and, thus, what happens during and immediately after the event is predictable. 

Let us start as the event happens, like some weird ghost of Macworld present or something. 

Reaction as Steve demos the device:

"This is unbelievably slick. Another home run. I've got to get one"

"I can't believe how cool this looks"

"I'm sold, when can we get it Steve?"

"I'm questioning my choice of wool pants, things are getting a little warm here" (someone always goes off the reservation and posts something unintentionally).

So while the demo is going on everyone wants one, but then the price comes. This is a buzzkill on the level of Nalaxone, one minute you're in a blissful new Apple product cocoon and the next second you are violently snatched back to reality. But Apple tries to make it easy:

"It does everything a four hundred dollar netbook does"

"Everything a four hundred dollar iPod does"

"Everything a two hundred dollar iPhone does. Except the calling part. But AT&T sucks anyway."

"It's ten inches on the diagonal, how much does a ten inch picture frame cost.? No, not a cheap one, a really nice picture frame."

"We've designed this to interact with gravity. If you've got a stack of papers and a fan the iTablet can hold your papers down even while the fan runs! Environmentally friendly!"

The only bit of hucksterism that will be missing is the free steak knives and the exhortation:

"How can you afford not to buy it?"

Reaction to the tablet after Steve reveals the price:

"No way, I can get an entire laptop for that much! Too expensive. Why doesn't apple make products for people with normal incomes?"

After the world has had five minutes to digest the device it is time for the people who live for this stuff to start complaining. The complaints will be about some missing feature. Those that pay attention to technology won't like the way it prints or the lack of a FireWire port or something. Others will try to assuage their feelings by noting the feature they are demanding is used by two people and only works in damp basements but the tech types won't care. They'll go on screaming that the tablet is missing the obvious option of a quantum audio port or something.

They'll be joined in the chorus of hate by those who will point out that the device really isn't revolutionary. Nokola Tesla (or someone) patented the idea way back in 1933 but couldn't get the roaches inside the housing to respond consistently to the jolts received when the touch screen was used. Oh, and other companies have had tablets for years. How is that innovative?

Reviews of the actual product (instead of first impressions) will start to trickle out. Likely Walt Mossberg will get his hands on the thing before anyone else outside of Apple. After he gets to play with it he'll stop just short of calling it revolutionary and declare that Apple has done something very special yet again. Thus cementing his place as the preeminent tech guy in America and ensuring he'll get the first crack at the Apple iHologram five years from now.

Once the device shows up for the masses (if you don't order the second the Apple store reopens you'll be waiting for awhile) people will start raving about the thing. They'll get it in their hands, drool over the refinements to the OS, how smooth the scrolling is and so forth. At this point most people still won't have any idea how they would actually use the thing but they will know that someone else has one and they are having the equivalent of an opiate-amphetamine-fueled organism every single time they touch the silly thing.

Apple will have another hit on the company's corporate hands and then the imitators will start. In the end, the tablet won't do anything new but it will do almost everything anyone actually wants to do with it better than any competing product.

Once all that happens the long road of imitators and wannabes is travelled. Microsoft, Dell, and every other tech company you care to name will come out with knockoffs but they'll all fail.

Unless of course the tablet just sucks. In which case, the iPod Hi Fi finally has someone to hang out with. I bet the Apple TV will stop by every other week just to see how things are going.  

*Prediction: Ten years from now we'll learn that Steve Jobs got a copy of Photoshop for Christmas and this is what he cranked out when he learned how to use layers.