Apple is designing an entirely new entertainment experience designed specifically for its upcoming tablet, the Financial Times claims today in an interesting but rather vague story.
Apple’s fabled touchscreen tablet will have a 10-inch screen and will be more like an oversized iPod Touch than a full-fledged tablet computer (a key question is what OS it will run).
Contrary to previous rumors, the tablet hit stores in time for the holidays, the FT says, citing record label sources out of New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
To accompany it, Apple is working on a new entertainment package to rival the album experience in days of yore, when the release of a new album was a cultural and social event.
“It’s all about re-creating the heyday of the album when you would sit around with your friends looking at the artwork, while you listened to the music,” one executive told the FT.
Codenamed “Cocktail,” the entertainment bundle would resemble an “interactive book,” but be more than a bunch of hotlinked PDFs, the FT says.
Apple is reportedly working on Cocktail with the big four record labels, who describe the project as “revolutionary” and are hoping it will offset declining album sales. When consumers buy music online, they biuy low-margin singles, not profitable albums.
Unfortunately the FT doesn’t have many details of this intriguing idea. Reminds me of the hype surrounding “multi-media CDs” in the late ’90s when CDs with music and video were supposed to provide a similar revolution in entertainment and education. There was talk about amazing immersive encyclopedias, but instead we got unreadable digital books with tiny embedded QuickTime movies.
Its also hard to imagine friends sitting around an Apple tablet reading band biographies while listening to music.
Much easier to imagine a couple of kids on the couch sharing the device to watch episodes of Spongebob.
Indeed, one record exec told the FT: “It’s going to be fabulous for watching movies.”
The FT says Apple is also in talks with book publishers who are “optimistic about their services being offered with the new computer.”
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
