We've heard about the whole "wow" factor of the interface *the part that's presumably different from anything we've seen. Assuming that's correct (that there will be a "One More Thing" of shininess to it), then what could it be?
We've seen gestures, we've seen nicely responsive touch capabilities, we've seen coverflow, we've seen drag-stuff-around-with-finger. What haven't we seen?
To my mind, it's either it's the 3D eye-tracking stuff; or it's something based on how the tablet interacts with other users and/or the world.
Here's where it gets "out there" for my point. I just saw
Avatar recently. In one scene in the lab/bridge/control-room, techs and crew are walking around. Some are tied to 180º displays, others are walking around with tablets running similar programs. One of the crew walks past one of the big displays, and "grabs" some data off of it and slides it onto her tablet. Completely non-chalant, completely run-of-the-mill for her. I, however, was blown away. I immediately thought "that's how the iTablet has to work".
So, what if the tablet not only has gestures for itself, but for surrounding devices. What if there is a way to transmit and receive proximity and directional queues from other Tablets, phones, notebooks? If that were the case, then you could "slide" or "throw" documents to devices (and the people using them) with gestures in their directions.
Similarly, what if you could "grab" a file/video/song off of your buddy's iMac (using camera to track, maybe?), and throw it onto your Tablet as you walked by it?
Think about a boardroom, or classroom, or living room with that going on.
"Hey Bill, where's that report from last week?"
"*slide* There you go buddy."
"Hey man, what was that sweet video you were watching?"
"*toss* That the one you mean?"
Yes, the same job can be accomplished via any number of other methods, but most require
typing (IM, FTP, passwords, etc.). If there's one thing people probably won't love doing on the Tablet, it's a lot of typing. If you could "toss" a youtube video, why open IM and copy/paste the URL?
The device could basically have a live, on-the-fly "trust this device" notification *even turning on the cam to show your buddy holding it *and the transfer would take place via any available method. No logging onto a network, no manual Bluetooth pairing. Just literal drag-and-drop.
Sorry for the long-winded post. Just thought it was a snazzy, Apple-esque idea
PS- To add a little conspiracy intrigue.
Avatar has been huge about co-branding with a bunch of companies and devices. What if the drag-drop scene (or other cool interface scenes) are actually based on a preview of the iTablet James Cameron was allowed to see for that reason? In other words, when the "wow" interface element is shown, people will be saying "Holy sh*t! That's just like in Avatar!" - or for that matter, any interface-heavy film; like Minority Report.
