Could Apple's "iSlate" be a Digital Comics Game-Changer?

While the news, rumors, and speculation of a possible Apple's tablet device are making waves in the digital world, the industry that may be most drastically changed by the device is the world of comic books.

"It will definitely change the dynamic of digital comics," said Andy Ihnatko , technical writer and contributor to the Chicago Sun-Times, MacWorld and the CBS Early Show"
On January 27 2010, Apple is hosting one of their famed media events, the entire tech and media world is anticipating it will be to announce a tablet device expected to be called the "iSlate." The comic book industry has been talking about the possibility of the iSlate for months, because the device could be a game-changer for the industry.

Why does Apple's tablet mean so much to the future of the comic book industry?

1) Color Touch Screen

While news and book publishing are already in the throes of a digital revolution, comic books haven't been as affected. The color, vertical format of comics doesn't translate well to a horizontal computer screen, and Amazon's Kindle can only handle black and white.

But that all might change with the Apple tablet, which is expected to have a 10-inch touch screen that would finally offer a viable option for reading digital comics.

"It's going to be the first device that is a true color tablet computer, so we're going to have those features that we desperately need on a comic book reader," said Ihnatko, who is a comic book reader as well. "We need good color. We need crisp displays. We need high resolution because of the digital coloring that's going on these days.

"It also seems as though a touch display is going to be the ideal way of working with these comics. You want to have the entire page in front of you and workable as one page, but you also want to be able to sort of sneak a closer look at what you're reading," he said. "And for turning pages, or manipulating the library, I think a touch screen is going to be the way to go."

2) Existing Audience

Comic book fans tend to be the early samplers of new technology, so there may be a ready audience of tablet users soon after its release. For example, Twitter was embraced very early by the comic book fans, and they were also among the earliest Internet users.

"I suspect the tablet is going to have small market penetration for awhile, although that depends on the price, which I expect to be high at first," said ComiXology’s David Steinberger, whose Comics application through Apple is already one of the most popular reader apps for digital comics. "But I'm sure a lot of comic book people will pick the tablet up, because we seem to have some sort of crossover with tech people."

3) New Audience

While the comics publishing industry is an adult-targeted, multi-million-dollar entertainment business, most book readers don't even have access to paper comics. Not all markets have comic book stores, and there's an audience of only a few hundred thousand loyal readers who buy most comics, visiting their local shops to pick up the latest monthly issue of their favorite serial.

But those same stories have a proven mainstream appeal because Hollywood is constantly harvesting comic books for film ideas. Besides the many superhero films that have dominated movie theaters in recent years, films like Surrogates, Whiteout, Hellboy and Wanted all started as comics.

"The exciting thing about the tablet is that, unlike the current situation with the direct market, we're going to have millions of people to distribute to," Stephen Christy Director of Development of publisher Archaia Comics said. "But we've had comics on the iPhone for a long time, and there hasn't really been an amazing mainstream breakout comic on the iPhone yet. I think the tablet's going to change that because it's a different reading experience. It's a completely different thing. It's much more similar to reading traditional comics."

The distribution method is also a lot cheaper than printing comics on paper, which opens the door for smaller publishers who have limited resources for distribution.

"A lot of us, particularly the guys at my level who have a limited number of releases, are rooting for it because it's a huge production cost save. Huge," said Jeff Katz, who publishes comics through his new company, American Original. "And it just makes sense. The comic book industry has got to expand audiences. Newspapers are the canary in the coalmine, to a large level. And we need to keep people in a place where they think these are worth paying for. I think the price point has to adjust accordingly. But I don't think we have much of a choice but to root for these things to work because it's the lifeblood of the business in the future, because everything is going digital."

4) App Store

Experts believe the Apple tablet will utilize the same "app" technology that is currently used for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which offers an existing, accessible way for comic book companies to release their publications to an audience that is already interested in reading digital books.

While Ihnatko once thought Apple might get into the book distribution business, much like it distributes music on iTunes, he now believes the company will simply provide a marketplace on its App Store like it did for the Amazon Kindle app.

"I think Apple will simply say here are the tools you need. They are free. We just want a cut of every sale you make. And this would be a good deal for those publishers," he said. "There are a lot of reports that Apple is making it very clear to publishers that, we don't want to own your business; we just want to make money. When you make money, we make money."

The future of digital book readers has more potential now than ever before, as Amazon recently announced it had sold more digital books during the holidays than paper books, and Kindle digital readers were the Internet retailer's top gift item.

This past year also saw a substantial growth in the strength of the App Store market, which launched just 18 months ago with 500 apps, but has now passed 3 billion downloads and 115,000 apps. And that existing marketplace is one that offers a competitive outlet for comic book publishers.

"Even if they stick to the same App Store cut, which is 30 percent of all sales, that's going to be much, much better than the deal that publishers normally get through Amazon," Ihnatko said. "And Apple's not going to ask for exclusives. It should be a very attractive deal for publishers."

5) Security

One of the fears comic book publishers have had about releasing their products digitally has been piracy. But the App Store technology expected on the tablet would effectively negate that concern, Ihnatko said.

"There is a way that someone can spend time and effort to break into the app and access that comic. But it's not going to be a trivial process. And frankly, anybody who's going to try to get that comic is just going to go to the store and spend $2.99 for a copy and produce scans themselves. And there's no way you'll ever prevent that.

"With the App Store, piracy's not really a big worry. i don't think it's a realistic problem for publishers to even think about," he said.

Of course, the future of comics on the Apple slate all depends on publishers' willingness to commit to the digital format. "The real sticking point has never been the technology of the reader; it's always been the store. It's always been the availability of the comics I want, when I want to get them," Ihnatko said.

So far, most comics’ publishers don't have a significant digital presence for their new monthly comics. But with a giant like Apple entering the field and offering a technology that most publishers have already tried out on the iPhone, reading new comics on a digital reader seems more possible now than ever.

"I think just the presence of the Apple tablet in the marketplace is going to make 2010 the year that all these publishers and all these distributors start to commit to electronic publishing," Ihnatko said, "not just because of this one device from Apple, but because of the presence of several tablet devices from companies that have been spurred on by the release of the Apple tablet. "

Along with the delights of reaching a wider audience and eliminating publishing costs come several challenges that the comic book industry is facing. One of the biggest is the established method of distribution supports hundreds of existing retail businesses through the "direct market" of comic shops. A digital revolution would, presumably, be detrimental to that direct market of stores.

"It's going to be a very interesting push pull, because we all want to support the direct market," Katz said. "We love the direct market. But at the same time, we've got to expand audiences. The same debates we're having about this in comics is the same debates that we've been having for 10 years in film, and that were going on in music prior to that. We're all getting caught up in this.

"But everything's going to be digital at some point. The audience demands having what they want, when they want it, how they want it. That's just becoming the nature of the game here," he said.

Christy also pointed out that advertising in a new tablet-driven marketplace will also be a challenge, particularly if the ease of distribution means more comic apps, making it tougher to differentiate one comic over another.

"It's new technology. It's definitely going to help revolutionize the way we read and the way we distribute our product," Christy said. "But along with that comes another interesting set of challenges that are similar to the challenges we already have with the direct market and the book market, but are new and different in scale, that we'll have to figure out."

How Yamaha's new electronic piano improves upon a 300-year-old instrument.

There are nine pianos squeezed into the back of Yamaha's music salon in the old Aeolian Building in New York, and between them they represent an abridged history of technology's assault on the instrument. Against the wall you'll find a majestic 9-foot grand and two of its 6-foot cousins—not an electric bone in their bodies. A few feet away is a modern player piano, the Disklavier Pro, which is still an acoustic piano but is outfitted with gadgets that can resurrect Art Tatum if you insert the correct 3½-inch floppy. (Think Darth Vader: still human but with a lot of gizmos for extra functionality.) And over by the door is the newest addition to the Yamaha family, the just-released AvantGrand. It doesn't even have strings.


The AvantGrand is at the cutting edge of electronic piano technology, though you wouldn't know to look at it. It looks like a small baby grand, 4½ feet deep with the usual folding lid. In place of strings, it has four speakers, but if the lid is down, the only obvious sign that this isn't an acoustic piano is a small control panel that tucks neatly under the keyboard. More important, it actuallysounds like an acoustic grand piano. Since the timbre of a piano is derived in part from the way the instrument itself vibrates as the sound resonates inside, the Yamaha engineers sampled notes from a variety of locations inside the 9-foot concert grand they used as their model. When you play note on the AvantGrand, you're basically triggering an extremely high-quality recording of a concert piano, adjusted in volume depending on how hard you hit the keys. 
The lengths to which the designers have gone to replicate the experience of a top-notch grand piano are almost absurd. Each key is attached to a hammer that, while it has no string to strike, imitates the kick you get when you hit a traditional piano key. Two resonators under the hood cause the entire instrument to vibrate subtly the way a real piano does when the sound is resonating inside—an effect that is solely meant to imitate for the player the physicality of a real piano. A Tactile Response System even replicates the way the pedals vibrate a little when you're really hammering away. (It's kind of like the Nintendo 64's Rumble Pak.) The pedals are also precisely calibrated to the variable resistance of a real piano. Yamahahas the graphs to prove it.


What all this means is that the bottom 95^th percentile of the world's pianists will not notice much difference, if any, in the tone and quality of this piano as compared to a traditional one. In fact, the AvantGrand probably sounds considerably better than the baby grand in your living room.


I got a chance to try the AvantGrand for myself recently. A gaggle of Yamaha employees gathered round to explain the piano's virtues while I moved them all to tears with a little Rachmaninoff. (Actually, Magdalena, my handler, helpfully pointed out the correct chords as I honked my way through a prelude.) Despite my clunky playing, I found the AvantGrand entrancing, more responsive than even the expensive pianos I'd tried in college, the ones you had to get a special key from the music department to play.


Which is why it's a little odd that Yamaha isn't giving itself more credit for this remarkable product. The company seems desperate for acceptance from traditionalists—the crowd that doesn't think a piano should ever have to be plugged in. The press materials insist that the AvantGrand is virtually identical to a concert grand, only cheaper, smaller, and always perfectly in tune. (The AvantGrand goes for $20,000; there is also an upright version which sells for $15,000.) Testimonials from concert pianists extol its virtues. In essence, the company is doing the same thing Les Paul did when he debuted an early model of a solid-body electric guitar: namely, dressing it up like its acoustic forebears. Paul glued the wings of an Epiphone guitar on the sides of the pine 4x4 he was using for his prototype, which he called "The Log." Yamaha's hammers, resonators, and lid are a little more sophisticated and functional than those Epiphone wings, but the emphasis is still on verisimilitude.


It's a shame, because Yamaha has done more than capture the soul of a grand piano in an electronic device. They have improved on a 300-year-old instrument. Keyboards come with all sorts of dubious bells and whistles, but some are genuinely useful: The ability to record your playing very precisely and play it back, say, or to make simple adjustments in how responsive the volume is to the force you use striking the keys. The most obvious advantage is that digital instruments are always precisely in tune, which is especially important when you're forcing your young child to take piano lessons. (Even if perfect pitch turns out to be genetic, it's probably a good idea to start ear training on an instrument that plays the right pitches.)


An instrument like this could actually change the way all pianos are tuned. Contrary to what you may have learned in Disney's Donald in Mathmagic Land, choosing exact frequencies for the notes in a scale is far messier than tuning the strings to the neat fractions of thePythagorean scale. Tuning an instrument very exactly to one key using the standard ratios between notes makes it out of tune in every other key. (There's a very good, non-animated summary here.) The modern scale simply splits the difference between every key so that they're all equally out of tune.


The AvantGrand can instantly retune itself to a variety of tunings, or "temperaments," from Donald Duck's Pythagorean scale to those that were standard during Bach's lifetime, which is very titillating for baroque-enthusiasts. Those wishing to precisely re-create the tuning that Bach used can hit a few buttons on the control panel, and the pitches of the notes will revert to the asymmetric tuning used in the very early days of the piano, when different keys had different personalities, since they weren't all equally corrected. 


Are you a devotee of the 17^th-century organist Andreas Werckmeister? You can set the piano to his preferred frequencies if you like. The AvantGrand even has a harpsichord setting that, like a real harpsichord, produces the same volume no matter how hard you strike the keys.


There are, of course, plenty of purists who will insist that an acoustic piano's sound is far superior to the AvantGrand's. But it is not necessary to win these people over for the AvantGrand to change the way we think about the piano. This instrument represents a psychological victory for the electric piano, which no longer feels merely like a better tuned or more tech-savvy alternative to the real thing. This is a really good piano. I would train my kids on it—whether they liked it or not. - Chris Wilson

Off-Topic: An Input/Output Device for the Brain - Made of Light, Algae, and Bacteria

Michael Chorost, author of science autobiography Rebuilt, has a great article in Wired this month about a biotechnological breakthrough that could result in functional cyborgs. Using this biotech, people could access the internet with our brains.

Chorost's article is about the dawning of the age of "optogenetics," a field where scientists stimulate neurons (such as those in your brain) to fire or stop firing by genetically-engineering those neurons to respond to light. Thus, optogenetics: optics plus genetics. An inserted algae gene makes neurons fire when exposed to blue light; an inserted bacterial gene stills them when they're exposed to yellow light. Imagine being able to make the neurons responsible for chronic depression or Parkinsons stop firing with the flick of a switch. That's the dream of the scientists who are working in this field.

You've probably heard about a few optogenetic experiments over the past couple of years. Chorost describes one of the more famous ones, where students got a mouse to run counterclockwise by exposing a few neurons in its brain to blue light using fiber optic wires. He writes:

The counterclockwise-running mouse was something new - a triple fusion of animal, plant, and technology - and the students knew it was a harbinger of unprecedentedly powerful ways to alter the brain. For curing diseases, to begin with, but also for understanding how the brain interacts with the body. And ultimately for fusing human and machine.

Mice with Parkinsons symptoms who underwent optogenetic treatment also saw dramatic improvement.

And Chorost is quick to point out that Parkinsons treatments are just the beginning. Optogenetics open the door for two-way traffic between computers and the human brain. He explains:

No matter how good they get, one-way prostheses can't close the loop. In theory, two-way optogenetic traffic could lead to human-machine fusions in which the brain truly interacts with the machine, rather than only giving or only accepting orders. It could be used, for instance, to let the brain send movement commands to a prosthetic arm; in return, the arm's sensors would gather information and send it back. Blue and yellow LEDs would flash on and off inside genetically altered somatosensory regions of the cortex to give the user sensations of weight, temperature, and texture. The limb would feel like a real arm. Of course, this kind of cyborg technology is not exactly around the corner. But it has suddenly leapt from the realm of wild fantasy to concrete possibility.

Of course, there are darker fantasies that lurk here too, of perfect mind control and memory suppression. Indeed, optogenetic devices could one day lead to the consumer-grade memory-eating devices in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Or to Google implants in your brain.

You have to read this mind-blowing, brilliantly-written article: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/mf_optigenetics/all/1