There is a screen coming that does not exist yet, and the whole trade is standing around arguing about whether it will matter.
The tablet is being met with a lot of doubt, and I understand why. At first glance it looks like a large phone that cannot make calls. Nobody is quite sure who it is for. And the App Store has become a strict place, genuinely hard to get anything into, so even the path to building for it is not obvious.
I will be honest and say I have not prepared for it at all. I just find it fascinating, and I suspect a lot of us do. There is a particular thrill in a device whose purpose has not been decided yet, because for a little while it belongs to whoever is curious enough to go and find out.
What draws me is the thought of taking the paper out of the equation, and here I have to admit a contradiction I have never resolved. I want to be green. I do not want to waste paper. And I love print. I love the act of writing something down by hand, and I believe there is an art and a small magic in it, a coordination between the hand and the brain that does not seem to happen any other way.
There is also this. You cannot turn the power off on a piece of paper. The battery never runs out on a page. So when I look at a tablet, the first thing I think about is not the interface at all. It is the battery, and what it means to put something as permanent as a book onto something as mortal as a charge.
How do you design for a screen that does not exist yet? You cannot, not really. What you can do is get clear about the things that will not change. What is this person actually here to do. How little can you ask of them. Where does the hand go. Those questions will still be true whatever the thing turns out to be.
I do not know what the tablet is for. I am not sure anyone does yet. But I would rather stand here with my questions ready than be surprised later.