Yesterday something really clicked for me. On my way to Shropshire Geek Fest Revolution I had some, ahem, issues with my rather beloved MacBook Air. It refused to read the memory stick with my as yet unfinished presentation on it. Since I had to change at Birmingham New Street I went into the Apple Store in the Bullring to do some file transfer things and to see if I could get someone to look at the machine. Genius Bar was predictably full, the store, surprisingly to me was full almost to bursting; mid-afternoon on a Friday. I dread to think what peak time is like. 

Whatever clever calculated thing they’re doing about making the Post PC era work it’s clearly successful. I’ve never seen so many people in a technology store on a mid afternoon on a Friday. And lots of normals too. I was convinced that I had the day wrong for a few moments. Then this morning there was an interesting little exchange on Twitter with Paul Bennun and Matt Jones about Apple’s way of long termism and relentless focus on building sustainable markets out of quality and good fiscal/tactical control of supply chain and clever techniques. Yes, so that’s it.

I think they’ve done something extraordinarily clever. They’ve really focussed so hard on holdability and touchability and ergonomics that through having bricks and mortar stores containing all that they make or approve they have essentially created a physical museum of the present for their aesthetic. The store and the display systems only add to enhance this… the iPads perfectly angled on lucite acting as both an information display and yet more temptation for the unconverted.

Then there are their front of house displays which are quite extraordinary both in quality of construction and the systems they integrate in. It’s a machine for an overarching vision and conveying it perfectly and in a very measured and controlled way.

It’s no wonder the other tablet makers are finding it hard to find their feet. I’m sad that the TouchPad is no more. I thoroughly enjoyed my weekend with one and still think my Pre2 has a lovely UI. The PlayBook is powerful but let down by software and that leaves us with Android and the many devices. Market fragmentation is not for the win.

I’m “lucky” enough to have played with a few. Original GalaxyTab is an ungainly 7” brick, the Motorola Xoom has some severe problems in physical design and the GalaxyTab 10.1 feels to me that it’s designed for online sales. From a distance and on a website it has awesome specs and design. For starters it looks like the iPad’s taller thinner brother. It’s slim which is an improvement too. Pick it up and play with it and you realise the gulf between it and an iPad is huge in terms of OS, UI, tactile feel, materials and of course the apps you can get for it. It’s a throw the kitchen sink at it design with a nod ot a successful piece of aesthetic rather than a reductionist and holistic product and experience. 

The Android device that feels the best and feels properly designed so far is the Nook. Surprise surprise it’s available primarily in physical bricks and mortar stores. It’s designed to be handled and the industrial and interface design shows clearly in this. It’s priced well and it’s selling well. It also has excellent store presence with a store within a store, often at the front of a Barnes and Noble

So this brings me back to Amazon and the chatter about two blog posts on Techcrunch. If the mockup in one of the blog posts is the physical device then a big sigh and a Jones style “Good Luck Buddy” award to it. Hopefully the mockup is just about the user interface design. I know Amazon has a huge distribution network. I know the Kindle is a strong brand and I know they have deep pockets and a very big reason to want a share of Apple’s hardware revenues, but poor un-differentiated industrial design and a highly subsidised and substandard device feels like the wrong way to win a market that everyone is losing in. 

If they create something that feels amazing as you unbox it, they have a chance because people will enjoy their first interaction with it, the one which Apple is winning so well with in the physical stores. If they don’t I think it’ll just be another casualty with a high return rate. Yes it’s way cheaper than the iPad, but it’s also a lot more expensive than a Kindle and if you tune a cheaper device to that audience and use case and don’t do great industrial design I’m not sure you’re ever going to win in the bigger tablet market. The opportunity to provide the healthy dose of competition will go lost for another round, more people will be heading to iPad and if at some point they do a cheaper iPad as a partner for the expensive one as is rumoured it’s hard to see how anyone can catch up in the medium term. I think now you need a great device and a good price, a vibrant app ecosystem, to tune it to be a tablet that is also an e-reader and some high quality bricks and mortar placement which isn’t in the middle of also ran and poor devices in a Best Buy or other tech emporium.

As Charles Arthur sagely pointed out the other week to me, Apple had the iPad before they had the iPhone… they’ve been working on the tech for a long while, ensuring they have the right supplier relationships in place. In fact it’s probably hard for others to get the volume of parts. They’ve been working on this particular future for years now. Dropping prices can work as the sell out of the TouchPad have shown, but true innovation and designing an experience not just playing a catchup game feels like the only way to make sure your device has longevity.