Redux Reverso
Saturday, September 15th 2007 | Ismael Ghalimi
The idea of designing the Redux Model 1 as a mere shell wrapped around an iPhone or iPod Touch is getting me more and more excited, and I had a hard time finding my sleep yesterday night. What was keeping me awake was the fear that we could not propagate user inputs back to the hand-held. If so, the design would fail. When something gets in the way, don’t fight it, just go around it. Could we apply such thinking to the problem at hand? If getting user inputs back to the hand-held is not possible, could we do without user inputs altogether? This is where I got another epiphany, and finally fell asleep. Sweet dreams…
The idea came when I remembered about a patent recently granted to Apple for a Back-Side Interface for Hand-Held Devices, or what ThinkSecret called back in May a Multisided Full Screen Touch iPod. What if we were to nest an iPhone or iPod Touch on the back of the Mini Tablet, with its screen facing out? With such a design, the user would control the Mini Tablet by using the iPhone’s multi-touch interface. Granted, this would be quite a challenge from a haptic standpoint, for the user would not see her fingers directly, and the Mini Tablet’s device would not display any visual cues as to where the fingers are. But it would certainly be the quickest and dirtiest way to get a prototype out of the door.
Not being a lawyer, I cannot tell whether such a design would violate Apple’s patent or not, so I will leave intellectual property considerations out of the discussion for the time being, focusing on the hardware, software, and industrial design aspects of the project while we’re still at the brainstorming stage.
From a hardware standpoint, such a design would solve pretty much everything. The iPod Touch can provide 480i video out (720 x 480), and the only challenge is that getting this to work requires the use of an expensive authentication chip (Source: Engadget). This chip is used by Apple’s upcoming Component AV Cable, which is certified to work with the iPod Touch. Since the front screen would not provide a multi-touch interface directly, adding simple controls on the side of the device might be a good idea, especially when the Mini Tablet would be used as a picture frame or portable video player. In such a case, adding the standard controls offered by the Apple Remote seems like the most obvious option, and should be relatively easy hardware wise. These are: Play/Pause, Previous, Next, Volume Up/Down, and Menu.
From a software standpoint, the device could work without any modifications to the iPhone’s or iPod Touch’s software, but it would be quite challenging for most users to master this funky interface without any visual clues displayed on the Mini Tablet’s front screen. Granted, you could market this limitation as a great way to exercise your brain (think Brain Age for geniuses), but the best solution would be to make some modifications to the embedded version of Mac OS X in order for it to display some kind of pointer when the iPhone or iPod Touch is docked on the back of the Mini Tablet. I have no idea whether there is a legal way to do this without breaching the iPhone’s and iPod Touch’s terms of use, but the technical challenge does not seem too great.
From an industrial design standpoint, this new concept is a lot easier to productize than the one we introduced yesterday, for the iPhone or iPod Touch would be docked on the outside of the device. Coming up with an easy-to-use locking mechanism might turn out to be tricky, but I would not be too worried about it. Another benefit of the approach is that the device could become really, really thin, especially if we limit ourselves to supporting the iPod Touch only. At its thickest point, all we would need is to stack the iPod Touch (8 mm), the Mini Tablet’s back panel (1 mm), and the LCD display (2.5 mm). Altogether, the Mini Tablet could be about 11.5 mm thick, which is one micron thiner than the iPhone (11.6 mm).
What would make such a slim design feasible is that the iPod Touch would need to be docked longitudinally (instead of laterally as envisioned yesterday) in order to preserve the display’s dynamic orientation. As a result, this would leave plenty of room around the iPod Touch to strengthen the Mini Tablet’s enclosure with some kind of light-weight metal frame or molded struts. This room could also be used for storing two removable batteries. During normal use at home or at work, only one battery would be used, making the Mini Tablet lighter to carry around. But on a long trip, the second battery would be added, turning the device into a fantastic media player that could be used for hours at a time during a long airplane ride.
This last iteration of our design would make our Mini Tablet quite cheap to produce. By using a regular LCD screen with a relatively low resolution (800 x 480) instead of an expensive high-resolution multi-touch screen, we would remove the most expensive component from the bill of materials. As a result, the device should not be more expensive than standard LCD picture frames, which retail for $100 to $150. Even if we were to use expensive materials for parts of the enclosure (aluminum or titanium), it seems that our device could retail for less than $250. If you were to add the price of an 8GB iPod Touch, the total bill would be less than $500, taxes included, which seems like a bargain when you consider the value you could get out of this composite device.
Next step: experimenting with the iPod Touch’s video out capabilities…
Entry filed under: Office 2.0
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Hi Ismael,
I don’t quite get why you want the Mac OS when everything is supposed to run through the browser for the Web 2.0 effect. Also, how different is the Redux Model 1 from the OLPC XO? If the touchpad is not on the screen itself, and the XO can be folded into a book-reading, web-surfing tablet, what else do you need? The XO depends on the net for everything, but is peer-2-peer wireless. It’s in the price range, but at approximately $300 for the individual purchase, two with one donated to the 3rd world. The XO has reduced power consumption specifications like no other device. It has few ports, is durable for 3rd world use, etc.
What am I missing?
Cheers,
-Darius
Also, the XO is smaller than most notebooks.
Hi Ismael,
I am curious as to what use case is driving you towards needing a larger display? I am wondering if you could not spend the energy in creating a UI abstraction that would let the user perform the same take with the constraint of the iPod touch device.
Thanks,
-Edwin
Darius,
You’re right, the XO is a fantastic device. Nevertheless, the Redux Model 1 is going after a very different form factor, in order to support a very different use case. It’s a lot smaller, does not come with a keyboard by default, and is aimed at adult users (green is cute bot too casual for your average business user). I’m also very interested in the idea of reusing an existing device (iPhone, iPod Touch, etc.) and building a different form factor around it.
Also, the reason why Mac OS X is interesting is because even though most activities would be handled through a web browser, things like configuring the device, listening to music, or watching a video, are still better handled with native applications, and the embedded versions of Mac OS X used for the iPhone and for the iPod Touch do a great job handling these.
Best regards
-Ismael
Edwin,
There are a lot of applications that are not usable without a screen that is at least 800 x 600. Salesforce.com is a perfect example for it. It’s mobile edition is essentially useless, and I do not believe that one could make it significantly better without loosing a lot of functionality, even for mere data consumption. Also, a lot of people have less than perfect eyesight, and a small screen with tiny fonts like the iPhone is offering for web browsing , is not a good enough option.
-Ismael
Ismael, 2 ideas:
Instead of having the iPhone/iTouch docked in the back of the Redux, why not have it lie like a trackpad, below the Redux’s main screen but on the front, and just use the pod’s screen as a trackpad. It would change the form factor a bit, but would be much more usable.
Another possibility : maybe some commands (remote-control like buttons, or even a multi-touch display) could talk to the iPhone/iTouch through Bluetooth? I mean, even the Wii remote is now working on the Mac.
What do you think ?
-Rup
Rup,
Regarding your first idea, we’re on the same wave length. Read this!
Regarding the second idea, since we cannot modify the software running on the iPhone or iPod Touch, we cannot add the software driver required to make any input device work, beyond what is supported by default by the hand-held through its docking port.
Best regards
-Ismael
Hi Ismael,
Regarding the form factor and use case of the XO: since the XO is open source hardware, you can change its form factor, rather than design a whole new device. Putting the same guts in another case with the help of its current manufacturing plant should not be hard. Squaring the oval should make it smaller and changing the green to glossy-black and brushed-metal should meet your needs. You could provide a belt holster like other cell phones do.
I know you don’t want the keyboard, but for Web 2.0 use, a touch screen keyboard may not cut it either. Do you blog or use Google Office from your iPhone?
You wrote:
“I’m also very interested in the idea of reusing an existing device (iPhone, iPod Touch, etc.) and building a different form factor around it.”
I wish you luck, though, such a path might make it bigger than you think. The XO’s software is all open source, so you could focus your time on very functional software instead, such as leveraging how the XO is Wi-Fi community physical location aware for those “business card sharing”, “I see what you see” shared desktop demos, and “sign me up at the expo booth where I’m standing now” type applications.
As for a use case, the XO is all about eLearning via the Web 2.0 platform, and simplicity of use for any age group. Alan Kay helped design the original Mac interface and the XO interface.
And again, it’s a power miser.
Cheers,
-Darius
Darius,
You’re making a very eloquent case for the XO. Nevertheless, the XO is a laptop, and I think we might be more successful if we start from a cell phone platform, mainly with respect to power consumption. With that in mind, you might be interested by this new design, built around OpenMoko’s Neo 1973. All that being said, I’ll take a closer look at the XO. This is an option we should consider seriously.
Best regards
-Ismael
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